Taiwan Trip, Day 2

My second day in Taiwan I woke up bright and early (kind of) but unfortunately I almost immediately realized I felt really crappy. Some kind of stomach bug maybe? I hadn't even eaten very much yet at that point, so I don't know why. At any rate, I sat on the couch in the living room and felt sorry for myself for a few hours. Eventually I did start feeling better, and I decided that I didn't want to waste my whole day! It was probably around 11 or 12 that I finally ventured out of the house. I was planning on going to the National Palace Museum, but I wanted to spend an entire day there! So, in the end, I ended up just doing some random stuff. It was a really fun day!

I started the day out with a nice meal at a little coffee shop/cafe place near my hotel. Just a sandwich, I believe it was. I decided to go to Chiang Kai-Shek's memorial hall, first of all. I just wanted to have a look, since it was quite famous and impressive looking. I took the subway again--it really does work so well! The weather was very nice, as you can see, and just a little bit chilly.



There were a number of big fancy buildings near the memorial hall--a theater and a strange gate thing. It was a fairly impressive work of public architecture. I believe you can usually go inside it but it was closed when I was there--they were remodeling the inside, I think, to make it less rah-rah Chiang Kai-Shek. Turns out he was kind of a dick. They renamed it the "National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall" apparently. But I didn't get to see the museum which is apparently inside the building. The surrounding gardens are also quite nice, and I enjoyed a quick walk.

That visit did not really occupy much of the day, however, so I took the subway to the end of the line and then managed to find a bus (by pointing inquiringly at the entry in my guide book and looking hopefully at various bus dudes) to the place I wanted to go--which was a place called Yeliou. According to Lonely Planet, it was a nice place by the sea with interesting rock sculptures, and I really wanted to see the sea! Ironically, although I know live on an island, I almost never see the sea--much less than when I lived in Oregon. I got placed right smack center in the middle of Japan--pretty much as far as you can get from the sea in this country!

So I headed out on the bus. It was me and not a whole lot of other people, and I felt vaguely uneasy, but it was an adventure. I do so love adventures! The highlight of the bus trip was passing by this place--it's an abandoned resort and even from the road, you can tell it was something crazy. I had seen the pictures on the internet before I went to Taiwan, but had no idea where they were from. Seeing it suddenly from the beach was a strangely exciting feeling--I almost demanded the bus driver stop and let me go look! But there was no bus stop near the resort and we continued on to my destination instead.



When we finally got there, I was more than a little baffled. There were no signs or anything to show me the way, but I figured I would just see what happened. I started walking and soon realized Yeliou was a tiny little fishing town! There were boats and drying fish and squids all over the place. There was a pretty looking temple on a hill and a building of some kind with an inexplicable mural. People stared at me a little bit, but not in an angry or threatening way. I stopped for a brief lunch of onigiri at a convenience store (they had almost as much coverage in Taiwan as they do in Japan) and unexpectedly stumbled upon some random foreigners on motorbikes. They sketched me out a little bit, though, so I quickly continued on my way, and found the "Scenic Area" with no problem. It was near some kind of aquarium, but it didn't look very welcoming, so I just went with the Scenic Area. It was filled with tourists, which was reassuring.



The "Scenic Area" basically consisted of a long spit of land with a number of different rock formations. They were really strange looking, and it was more than worth the price, especially if you had been starved for the sea. There were fossils in the rocks,



and strange stubby-looking knobs of stone in weird formations,



and big perfecty round holes in the ground. Down in the sea there was an interesting formation that, according to the Taiwanese, looked like blocks of tofu.



The place was well presented though. It was obviously touristy and for a profit, and they just let you climb everywhere you wanted, pretty much. However, there were no big ugly concrete blocks anywhere and the man-made bits, like stairs and a lovely stone bridge, were very tastefully done.



Tourists were swarming around the most famous and popular rock formations--they all had names like the Queen's Head or Bee Hive, or Fairy's Shoe. However, the coastline continued out in a long penninsula, if you wanted to go for a walk, and I, being in the end my mother's daughter, did. You could walk all the way around the headline and get some really stunning views. Plus, as a bonus, there was almost no one there--all the tourists stayed on the lower part of the penninsula! The view was lovely.



I stayed there until it started getting dark, browsing around the gift shop a bit, and then caught the bus back to Taipei. Luckily, I was with another group--a small family of Japanese tourists were waiting for me, otherwise I might have gotten a bit nervous, because it took quite a long time for the bus to show up. But I wasn't worried. I returned to my hotel and got a private room, instead of the rather unpleasant dorm I had been put into. I "borrowed" a futon from the other bunch and made my mattress a bit softer.