NAFTA across Lamma Island

I spent my Saturday hiking on Lamma Island, which is just south of Hong Kong Island. The group was Chase, his friend who was visiting Kalen, Chris, Antonio, and myself. Chase dubbed it the NAFTA hike since he and Caleb are Canadian, Chris and myself are American, and Antonio is Mexican. We left at around 11 to get to the piers in Central in Hong Kong. After we found the pier with the ferry we needed we had about 20 minutes to eat so we grab something quick from the nearby Subway. We then just barely made it back to the ferry in time. The boat was decently fast but the trip still took about 45 minutes. We docked at Sok Kwo Wan, a little village on Lamma Island.

There was one "street" which was more of a very narrow path. All down this walkway were restaurants with the building containing the kitchen on one side of the street and the seating area on the other. Awnings hung from the building across the walkways and connected to the tent like structures making the eating area. It was all very lively with some many people walking up and down the path and all kinds of sea food still alive waiting for someone to pick them for lunch. We did not spend much time in Sok Kwo Wan as we wanted to get our hike underway. Not too far from the village were some Kamikaze caves.

During WWII Japanese soldiers would hide in these caves. We wandered through one but it did not go too far. We then continued on our way. We walked for a while before coming to a point on the path where a smaller trail split off. We decided to go see what was down there. After walking quite away from the main path we eventually came to a beach.

There were only a couple of people on the beach and it was very clean so we rested for a while. Around the beach were squatter huts that the government had posted signs that they were going to remove. This did not stop one man from sitting at the door way and stare out to the sea. Once we realized that we spent too much time on the beach we headed back to the main path. It was not too long before we came to another little village, Hung Shing Ye.

This seemed to be the place people wanted to go. It was a much bigger beach and had lots of trees that provided nice shade. We stayed there long enough for a bathroom break as we were not interested in all the people. The path continued on through a more forested area until ending at Yung She Wan. Yung She Wan was like Sok Kwo Wan but a little bit bigger.

There were a few "roads" but most of type of stores were the same, sea food. There were a couple of bars and the only motorized form of transportation was a golf cart like vehicle so it seemed like the Chinese version of Put-In-Bay. We made it into Yung She Wan just in time to catch the ferry back to Hong Kong. All in all it was a good hike, even if the day was a bit hazy.

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Taipei: Day Three

The third day in Taiwan we set completely aside for a long hike. Just east of Taipei are lots of trails. The one we picked to do was from Fulong to Daili which was about 10km long. We woke up early (8am) to get a quick breakfast and head out on the train. The train ride was about an hour and half and there were no seats left. The train, unlike the metro system, was not designed to have people stand. There were no bars to hold on to, we just stood in the isles. The train was packed with lots of other people also standing. Needless to say, it was a long train ride. The scenery did make up for it as most of the train ride followed a river out in the country side. When we got to Fulong we immediately started looking for the beach. Fulong was pretty small (one road) but had lots of people visiting due to the popular beach. We never figured out how to get to the beach but we kept seeing it while standing behind a fence. We really were more interested in finding food. We stopped in the visitors' center hoping to find a café but the only food they served was expensive desert (and oddly enough "Fried Toast"). We talked to the equivalent of a park ranger who was very helpful in showing us where we could hike and how to get to the trail head. We were given about 5 different maps all with different details and none of which were in English. We then walked down the one and only road in Fulong to look for food. We picked a small family restaurant and had the most amazing fried rice with pork. I got what I thought was just apple juice that turned out to my surprise to be sparkling. I was excited about it but Pierre thought I was crazy (it must be common in France). After paying for the meal (it came out to be about US$3) we started to walk the trail. The trail started off nicely paved with white lines drawn on both sides. It didn't take long for us to get into rural Taiwan. We saw lots of farms and run down shacks. There were not too many locals outside, but the one old lady we did pass eating a bowl of rice on her porch did seem friendly. As soon as we started going up the hill we saw the layered rice patties (I am assuming they were for rice, but nothing was growing in any of them at the time) along the hillside. The paved path then ended in what we first believed to be a dead end. It just became some ones parking area adjacent to a house with a wall then cliff. Thinking we missed a turn we walked back to the next intersection. There it seemed clear that the direction we were originally going was the correct one. So we turned around and went back the same direction again. We investigated the area around the dead end for a while until figuring out that what we thought was the gravel path to a different house nearby, was actually the path. The path literally went through some ones front yard. From there it started to become forest. I would describe it as semi-tropical and dense. The path then became a road as it passed a park. This park had rice patties separated by stone walls on flat ground. We didn't stay too long as there were lots of people. The trail then followed a stream which had waterfall after waterfall. At one point the stream joined another stream, both having a waterfall at the joint. The path left the river at a set of stairs. These stairs were really steep and went up quite a ways. There was easily a thousand steps which we had to take a break part of the way up. We passed a stone inscription. Apparently the popular thing for ancient Chinese generals to do was to inscribe things on rocks in hard to reach places. At the top of the climb the forest ended and the scene looked like a hilly meadow. Where the path starts to descend again was an observation point that overlooked the small ocean side village of Daili. After spending some time resting and looking out over the ocean we began the decent which took a lot longer then we had expected. The path cuts back and forth all the way down the mountain side. At the bottom was the ruins of an ancient inn that didn't look like much other then two squares of stone, but it was interesting. The trail ended in Daili at a temple. We didn't look at the temple since we had spent some much time at several the other day and this one didn't look that unique. In stead we went to the beach front. It was mostly stone and very very polluted. Trash was everywhere. We then got on the train back to Taipei. The train station was incredibly small and the train wasn't that big either. It was a long train ride home (I think about 2 hours but we were stuck at one station for a while). We were so exhausted we got some pizza and went to bed.

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