Taipei: Day Two

On the second full day in Taiwan we decided to go to one of the outlying cities, Keelung. We went to the train station, which was conveniently located across the street from our hostel, to figure out how the train system works. The station was pretty simple but had a sense of grandeur at the same time. The board displaying the train times seemed out dated as panels flipped rapidly to change information. We eventually bought our tickets and went to the platform to wait for our train. All the platforms were underground, and after our train left we were still underground for quite some time. When we emerged, we were in a much more rural part of Taiwan. I saw shacks with small vegetable gardens around them and lots of other rural poverty. Probably the strangest thing I saw was a half completed high rise that seemed abandoned for some time. Surrounding the building was shacks and lots of vegetation. The exposed steel framework looked rusted and it was clear construction stopped long ago. We reached Keelung after a little more then an hour train ride. Keelung is a shipping port on the northern tip of Taiwan. It seemed small for a city but there was plenty of activity. We wondered around for a bit. We went through a very crowed street market that sold mostly food. A scoop of snails or a tentacle on a stick were common items sold. We then went to lunch at a very small local restaurant. None of them spoke English and there was no menu so it took some creative communication methods to order. After trying to talk to each other in our native languages we ended up going to another patrons table and pointing at what we wanted. We each got a bowl of rice with minced meat (I'm fairly certain it was pork). It was NT20 each which is about US$0.60. It was very good. We then headed up the hill to a park that overlooked Keelung. It was an interesting view but nothing sensational. We didn't stay too long before deciding to try to go to the limestone cape in Yeliu. We had no idea how to get to Yeliu. We assumed by bus but all the bus schedules were in Chinese. After spending some time trying to figure it out we eventually just got on a bus that had a destination in English written on it that seemed close to Yeliu. The driver didn't speak English either so we looked at a map posted in the bus. That map was also not English so we tried to match it up with ours which was in a language we could read. We didn't make any progress as the map posted didn't have enough features for us to identify where we were going. Fortunately there was a woman on the bus who spoke English and recognized our problem. She told us that we got on the right bus and then told the driver to alert us when we got to the Yeliu stop. The bus traveled through the country side and stopped at all kinds on little towns. I wondered what it would be like if buses ran regularly through the country side in Ohio. It was about an hour before the bus driver started shouting to use in Mandarin that this was where we wanted to get off. Yeliu is a small harbor village. It only had a couple of streets but they were long and followed the shore line. It took us a little time to figure out how to get to the limestone cape. It's official name is the Yeliu Geological National Park. There was a long building that was a market we walked through. It turned out that was a mistake. It was a lot longer then it looked, poorly ventilated, smelled like fish, and at the end was the exit to the park. So we walked back around the building and found then entrance and paid the small fee it get in. Inside there were a ton of people walking around the strange limestone formation. The limestone formations are rather hard to explain. They seemed like giant mushrooms. I wondered around a bit looking for places there were not a lot of people and just generally relaxing by the ocean side. We stayed until dark at which point we walked back to the bus stop to figure out if there was a way to go straight from where we were to Taipei. The few signs were in Chinese so that didn't help. I managed to find an Indian man how spoke English and he seemed pretty confident that where he was standing was where the bus to Taipei stops. It wasn't long before a bus came but it was too full for Chase, Pierre and I to all go. We waited about 10 minutes before two buses came at once for Taipei which we had no problem getting on. It rained the whole way back to Taipei and took well over an hour. The bus stop we got off at was right by our hostel and we ate a quick dinner at Burger King since it was so late and then went to bed for the night.

Album:

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(second half)