Chasing Summer –

September 15-18th

I apologise for the delays, but Taiwan and our ship’s internet system don’t get along, and I couldn’t upload pictures or videos in a timely manner.

On the morning of the 15th, which was a Monday, we rolled into Taipei actually, we rolled into Keelung, which is a port across the island, but remains within travel distance.

Paul and I took a train after lunch to Taipei, which took an hour and a half. From the Taipei main station, we caught the red metro and then a bus to the National Palace Museum. The train was 62 NTD, the Metro ride was 25, and the bus was 15 for each single journey.

At the National Palace Museum, we took some pictures of the buildings and contemplated going into the museum. There were two, and together they would cost about 800 NTD or Canadian $40. We decided not to go in and retraced our transportation to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall.

At Chiang Kai-shek, they have a Changing of the Guard every hour on the hour. It has become a tourist highlight. In the same location, there is also a park, library, performance hall, and Liberty Square.

After going up to the memorial to see the bronze sculpture, we stayed around to watch The Changing of the Guard.

From there, we went to Taipei 101. To get into the building and up to the 89th floor costs 600 NTD. If we wanted to walk out on the 101st floor, we would be harnessed in, and it would cost an additional $380 Taiwanese dollars.

On the 89th floor, we had 360-degree views around the tower. We could also walk up to the 91st floor and have an outdoor view of half of the building.

Also inside there was a giant ball which helps stabilize the building during storms or earthquakes.

Tuned Mass Damper of Taipei 101 – Atlas Obscura

We went back down from the 88th floor and in the basement visited a dumpling shop. We had a dinner of pork dumplings, vegetable dumplings, marinated cucumber salad, pork wrapped in sticky rice, beef bone soup, hot tea, and a cold beer. The cost was about $600 Taiwanese dollars each, or 30 Canadian and 20 American.

The sun was going down, and it was becoming dark. So we caught a bus to Elephant Mountain. Paul mistakenly thought it would be an easy hike. It wasn’t.

It was about a kilometer upstairs. Now, these stairs were not like regular-sized stairs; they were short so that you needed to take two stairs for one standard stair, and then there would be some big stairs just to keep you guessing. By this time, it’s dark and still hot.

About halfway up, there was a platform to take pictures of downtown and the 101 building. Jokingly, Paul took his picture with two young ladies on the platform. They agreed, laughing, but wanted me in the picture too. We would run into them the next day, as well at the night market in Keelung.

Then we went up the second half of the stairs. Paul ran ahead as I huffed and puffed my way. When I was about 90% there, Paul came back down to tell me the view wasn’t any different, so I stopped, I turned around, and started back down. Spoiler alert: There are no elephants on Elephant Mountain.

To conclude our adventure, we took an Uber to the nearest outdoor night market. We were way too full to take advantage of a lot of the treats, but we did get bubble tea before heading back to the train station to get back to the ship.

On our second day, Paul and I decided to stay in Keelung and do some adventures there. Our first one was to get off the boat and walk to Buddha’s Hand Cave, Fairy’s Cave, and a temple.

They’re on an outlet about a 45-minute walk from the boat. The morning was already pretty warm, but at least not too hot yet. We had a general idea of where to go and walked around and through the Zhongshan tunnel to cut off some of the distance. Zhongsahan is a driving tunnel, but it did have a narrow walkway that we could use. Of course, being sweaty and it being narrow, I really didn’t want to touch the sides of the wall, and kind of walked with my arms up in front of me to avoid hitting it.

We made it to the Buddha’s Hand Cave following some signs and even markers in the cement. When we entered the cave, it opened into two directions: one straight ahead and the other to the right. In the right-hand tunnel, I saw a Buddha hand sign with an arrow pointing in that direction, so I figured that was where we needed to go.

We went there first. We walked until we reached the end of the cave, and there were a couple of bunches of flowers lying there. We took a few pictures and then decided to go back and take the straight path. And we got to that end, it was actually the beginning of the cave, but the path to it was closed.

Here, there was a sign showing us what Buddha’s hand actually should look like. This is when we realized that the other trail led to Buddha’s hand, but we didn’t look up and see it. So we retraced our steps.

After leaving Buddha’s hand cave, we walked just a couple of minutes to the Fairy Cave. I have no idea why it’s called the Fairy Cave and must admit that I was expecting to see some fairies. There were no fairies, just a lot of different other Buddhas and reliefs etched into the walls.

This cave also branched into a couple of directions and became quite narrow and short in some spots. After getting some pictures, we left the cave and approached a steep staircase heading up. After a bit of debate, we decided to climb it and reached a temple on the hill.

The temples here are very colourful and elaborate. I realized that there was another trail on the opposite side that would bring us down closer to the tunnel that we had walked through, so instead of going back down the stairs we had come up on and returning to the caves, we went down this other staircase. The staircase took us by people’s back yards all the way down and did indeed deposit us right at the beginning of the tunnel. We walked back to the ship to cool off and have some lunch.

We decided to head out again after lunch to Zhongzheng Park. This park is on a hillside that overlooks the city and harbor and has a bomb shelter area, shrines, Temples, and a pavilion with a big Buddha Temple and a large golden statue of a laughing Buddha.

We set off and walked to where my maps guided us, and much to my delight, there was an elevator. A free elevator that would take us up the mountain. I was so happy you couldn’t even believe it.

At the top of the elevator, a sky bridge ran across to the first of several temples. From the temple, there is a footbridge called Magpie Bridge as well as a road that has decorative umbrellas on each side.

There were many fairy lights strung about, so I imagine it is beautiful at night. Across the bridge, we wanted to go up to the pavilion, so we needed to climb up the road. At the top, we could see another temple and, of course, the giant Buddha statues.

The large white statue was actually climbable inside as well, but with the hot temperatures and lack of ventilation, I decided I did not want to go up it.

From there, we began to make our way back to the ship. This outing was about an hour and a half. That seemed to be my limit for being outdoors without cooling off.

That evening, we went out for the 3rd time that day, to an outdoor night market. This night market was larger than the one we’ve been to in Taipei but smaller than Halien. There were a variety of treats to try, and I chose to eat the spicy corn and a nutritious sandwich. The nutritious sandwich made me laugh because it involved deep-fried bread with cucumber, tomato, with a sweet sauce. Not exactly nutritious.

https://videopress.com/v/35lMkV5S?resizeToParent=1&cover=1&autoPlay=0&controls=1&loop=0&muted=0&persistVolume=1&playsinline=0&preloadContent=metadata&sbc&sbpc&sblc&useAverageColor=1

The next day, I needed a bit of a break, so instead of going out on another outdoor adventure, I went to Costco. The closest Costco was about 20 minutes away, and I had fun walking up and down the aisles.

On our final day in Keelung, I went back to the park with Scott, Angela, and Steve.

It was a fun stay, but the lack of Starlink Internet has made communicating difficult while we are in Taiwan. We have a sea day and then our final port in Taiwan before we are back to Starlink access.