Monkey Mountain: Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Day 2 had us waking up to a beautiful sunny day in Tainan. Our mission for the day: a day trip to Kaohsiung! After so many hours in flights and then trains, I figured we would be a little jet lagged, but we woke up fairly refreshed and excited for our day. This is one of the few nights that we stayed in a hotel for our large north-south trip, with hostels making up the balance of our accommodations. The breakfast offered at most places were comparable - not large by Western standards, but definitely enough to start your day. Lots of couples and families with small children were traveling and sharing breakfast with us.

We finish breakfast and hit the street and are greeted by a beautiful, warm, sunny 17 degree weather. It's such a pleasure to be able to feel the warmth of the sun on our skin after the dreary weather that we left behind in Toronto. Note that there was actually a massive ice storm blasting Toronto at this time of the year, so we were lucky enough that our plane even took off. We definitely counted ourselves lucky.

This is the weather in Tainan

This is the weather we left behind in Toronto

This second day in our Taiwan trip took us on a day trip to Kaohsiung, Taiwan. 高雄市 is apparently classified as a special municipality, meaning that it has the rank of a province. Wikipedia tells me that the earliest evidence of human activity in Kaohsiung goes as far back as 5000 years ago! This makes sense given the proximity to water, and the large river that flows out to the ocean in this region. There is a history of indigenous people that dates far back, and then also history of colonization, starting with the Dutch in 1624. The popularity of the Kaohsiung region is due in part to the Takau
 port, which was particularly popular for fishing.

Taiwan is very well connected and so we were able to take a bus to the local bus terminal and then hop on a train for our day trip to Koahsiung. The prevalence of buses and taxis and the general good weather made travel planning a breeze.

Our stop at the local train station and the 7-11 reminds us that it is indeed Christmas time. Hard to think of Christmas when it is sunny and nearly 20 degrees out already!

Taking the typical tourist photos

Waiting for our train!

The whole process of buying train tickets is relatively painless and then we are on our way. By the time we get to Kaohsiung, it's nearly noon already so our hours in Kaohsiung are somewhat limited. Knowing that the daylight hours are a lot longer in Taiwan than we've been having in Toronto, we aren't too worried. We grab a map at the train station and make a bee line to the West, in search of our first location: Shoushan (壽山) mountain. It was affectionately named "Monkey Mountain" by the Dutch in the 17th century, who noticed an abundance of monkeys on it when they first explored the area. 500 years later, it is still crawling with our distantly related cousins.

Our first sight when we get to the base of the Shoushan monkey mountain

The monkeys are generally quite peaceful and not troubled by humans, which is in part due to humans feeding them

We start hiking up the mountain, and are again surprised at how easily the locals outpace us, even while they make it look like leisure. Both Melody and I are quite warm at this point, and are having trouble keeping up with the locals.

There are quite a few good lookout points on the way up, which show the size of the city. There is a little bit of smog to contend with though.

We make our way up to one of the higher points on the mountain and take a short detour,and we find this beautiful, quiet little hiding place where the large banyan trees have all but blocked out the sun. You can see below that some of the roots have taken very wild routes on their search for water and anchorage, suggesting that some soil erosion has taken place over the years.

Lovely, quiet place we found along our hike, which shows the supremacy of the banyan trees

Right near the top of the mountain, we stumble upon what I can only think of as a monkey convention. The little guys are everywhere! They are just relaxing, looking for food, and grooming one another.

It's hard to properly see the view of the city in the mid-day haze, but it's still a relaxing sight

We had a few patient monkey models

Our trip down is almost as difficult as the trip up, because our legs sore and we are getting hungry! 

Some well thought-out designs to aid traction

We make our way down and find ourselves at the base of the massive Martyr's Shrine. There appear to be several Martyr's Shrines throughout Taiwan; we found one in 2012 in Taipei.

Martyr's Shrine, Taipei, 2012

Martyr's Shrine, Taipei, 2012

This Martyr's Shrine looked quite different, and looked right out over the city. It's as majestic as any I've ever seen, so it never gets old for me.

I love big temples - Martyr's Shrine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan 2013

These courtyards always take my breath away. So peaceful

The gates to the Martyr's Shrine

We wander around the Martyr's shrine for a little while and then wander a little closer towards the coast where we see a massive display with the word "LOVE" in big block letters.  Part of the reason for this is that the river that runs around the base of the mountain is literally called the "Love River"

Picture of the Love sign with Kaohsiung in the background

Photo time

By the time we were finishing up taking photos on the mountain the sun was going down. Time to start making our way home, or at least get some dinner! We also had to make our way back to the train station to get back to Tainan! Luckily the train is running pretty frequently throughout the day so this didn't require a lot of planning.

Melody enjoying her Dorayaki

Dorayki (銅鑼燒 or Tóngluó shāo) is the favorite food of Doraemon - Melody's favourite comic of all time. Can you see the resemblance to the photo above? 

More bizarre Christmas tree displays in Taiwan

So on December 26, Boxing day, we woke up to 20 degree weather, took a train from one city to another, hiked up a monkey mountain, found a giant Love sign, and then discovered random interpretations of Christmas trees that I've never seen before in Canada. Quite a different Christmas holiday indeed!

Tainan Night Streets: Shennong 神農街

There are some absolutely beautiful night walks to take in Taiwan's oldest City, Tainan. 臺南市(Tainan). There are several old, cobblestone streets, which serve as a reminder to this city's important place in Taiwan's history.

One of these ancient streets is Shennong Street (神農街), is considered one of the best preserved old streets in Tainan, and is something I knew I had to visit ever since I read the following blog post and saw the following Flickr Photo.

Once we got back into Tainan from our day trip to Kaohsiung, I knew I wanted to head out for a night walk, so that I could find this mythical street.

Here is what I found on our walk!

There are some beautiful, old buildings that seem to have stood the test of time in Tainan

I can't tell if it's graffiti or an art display. Regardless it is amazingly calming and the night is silent.

This eerie corner marks the entrance to Shennong street. 

Shennong Street 神農街 itself. Without the motorbikes, I'd have trouble guessing what century I was in.

Seeing Shennong street was almost exactly as I imagined it. Walking down the street, quiet, and dark, is like walking through a silent film. Candles and lights flicker. I swear someone must be watching us but I am not troubled - just reminded that people dwell here and that they deserve respect. We wander in awe for a few minutes, take a few photos, and then depart, leaving this old street and its residents to their peaceful night.

Christmas in Taiwan

So it appears that Christmas trees are really at thing in Taiwan. I guess my first visit was in mid January so most of the trees had come down but this time we visited right in the middle of Christmas season and I was surprised to see so many festive trees.

That said, they don't seem to be overly biased to the evergreen looking Christmas Tree. I only saw a few trees that look like a real evergreen tree

Christmas tree at Sun Moon lake

The vast majority of trees I saw were all extremely unique. Several appear to be re-purposed from plastic bottles or the like.

See below for a summary of the Christmas trees of Taiwan! 

Christmas Tree in a train station

Santa's pink sleigh in Taipei 101

Big gold tree (think like Ferrero Roche) outside Taipei 101

Christmas tree in Tainan

Tainan Christmas tree

2-D Christmas tree

Lots of flashing lights!

Like a Christmas postcard

There are several interesting takes on the Christmas tree

Even 7-11 is feeling festive!

This Christmas tree is made from reused bottles

This Christmas tree is outside a historical prison 

Each Christmas tree is different, and all of them are pretty

Taiwan2013 Travels: Train from Taipei to Tainan

After our long debacle on flights from Toronto to Shanghai to Taipei, the last thing we want to do is travel some more right?

Right?

Well the first thing we did in Taipei was prepare to take the train down south to Tainan as part of our Taiwan Travel Tour! From Dec 25 - Dec 31 we're going to sweep through 4 different cities of Taiwan before rejoining the family for the wedding!

Melody's Dad showed us to the train station, which conveniently gives us more views of Taipei 101!

Taipei 101: I never tire of seeing this architectural marvel

Trying out my new 10-20mm Sigma lens and loving the effect it has on an urban scene!

Tickets are bought and we're ready to see Tainan

Intrepid traveler right here!

I don't know if you've ever been on a high speed train before, but these things are FAST. Like really fast! Take this magical bullet train of Engineering madness to Tainan, and make our way to our hotel. For our trip across Taiwan, we've opted to use a hotel in the first city, and to use hostels for the rest of the trip. We generally enjoyed the younger, chill hostel atmosphere throughout our trip! Hotels can be a bit of a downer when you're a young travelling couple - a Hostel culture has people who are young, curious about the city, and want to share their adventures.

We got into Tainan in the evening and this gave us time to settle in and find our Christmas dinner! I think this was one of the only sit-down, indoor meals that we ate together on our trip. We ate a lot of indoor meals with Melody's family in Taipei but most of our meals were fast little meals from stands so that we could keep on the go!

Remember we've been on the road since Dec 23 so it hasn't really hit us that it's Christmas day. The biggest reminder ertr  the sheer numbers of Christmas trees which I really was not expecting, and we found them everywhere! There will be a separate post for all the Taiwan Christmas trees!

Love in Tainan :)

There were a lot of Christmas trees throughout Taiwan :)

Now wouldn't this be a lovely post card?

Jordan and Melody revisit Taiwan! Dec 23 2013

It was a little over 1 year ago that Melody and started our trip back Taiwan. We had visited Taiwan for about 10 days at the start of 2012 prior to us starting exchange at HKUST, which you may have read a little bit about on our Exchange Blog.

Remember that trip we did to HKUST? What a dream and it feels like forever ago!

I remember that our flight was on Monday Dec 23rd. It was two days after our family Christmas party, and we had been pretty busy finishing work, exams, gifts, and family events. We secured a backpacking bag for Melody and got to packing sometime on the Sunday Dec 22 afternoon. We packed until about 1230 in the morning at least and were surely just running on adrenaline at that point.

These bags are ready for an adventure!

The trip from our apartment to the Pearson airport should have been pretty easy, all things considered. I live near Lawrence street, which has an easy single bus route that can take us to Pearson airport. The one big wrench in our plans was an ice storm that rolled in that day. Anyone who was in Toronto over Christmas 2013 remembers a long icy holiday with lots of power outages right? Well that rolled in somewhere in the morning of Dec 23 when we were supposed to take that flight, but luckily the more intense parts of the storm held off until sometime later in the day. There was so much ice all over the sidewalk and trees that we had a very precarious walk to the subway to catch our bus. Some of the trees were bending clean over the sidewalk due to the weight of the ice.

We had also shed our jackets because of the balmy weather that we were anticipating in Taiwan - so we were happy that the Toronto temperature was still about -3C! Average daytime temperatures in Taiwan were about 17C at this time of the year, so we definitely didn't intend to bring our snow parkas just to grab our flight!

This is pretty much how the walk looked

We crossed the icy, snowy tundra of North York Ontario and made it to Pearson airport. Thankful to hear that there were no flight delays listed on the board! We breeze through security and get into the lounge and we are ready for our 12 hour flight! The one concern we had when we were in airport is that our seats were still not assigned for the Shanghai leg of our flight. The flight from Toronto to Shanghai had successfully been checked in, but I had no certainty on what seats we'd have in our flight from Shanghai to Taipie. More on this later.

 Last time we flew from Vancouver to Hong Kong to Taipei. This time we are flying from Toronto to Shanghai to Taipei. Although we are not leaving the airport, this will be the first time I touch foot in Shanghai.

Melody is ready for an adventure!

Let's start this trip off!

The 12 flight is always a weird experience that has at least 3 distinct stages:

• The initial excitement for the trip, where you are smiling, and playing with the free headphones, and playing with the seatback TV
• The boredom onset stage, that you try to fight as long as you can, by reading, watching shows, trying to sleep, etc.
• The exhaustium/acceptance stage where you are just drained, greasy, and sweaty. All you can do is just lie there and wait for the flight to finish 

Our plane touches down in Shanghai without incident and then we have to make our way through Chinese security, which lacks overall signage and seems to divert us down a secondary wing that that they don't usually use.

Our biggest concern when we hit the ground in Shanghai is that we still didn't have those seats confirmed. We go talk to a very confused front desk staff at EVA Air, and things just got worse. They were confused and agitated, Melody was agitated, and I was just sweaty. We didn't know what was going to end up happening at all here. I believe we didn't end up making that initial flight at 8pm Shanghai time, and ended up on a flight an hour or two later.

They end up putting us in business class to get us on the flight. I was just happy to get on the flight. Were were further amused to discover that we were on our first ever flight on the Hello Kitty decorated planes. They offered us some very heavy handed drinks on this flight. I got a glass of cognac so full that I could barely finish it before the 2 hour flight touched down. I think it must have been 5 oz of cognac.

We unfortunately didn't get the red carpet treatment

I was OK that they gave the day off to the nightmare inducing mascot

Super cute bento style meals were indeed present

After we sort out the flight debacle we have a bit of time to stretch and get some food. Food cost about as much as Toronto; which I guess isn't bad since we're in an airport. $25CAD for the two ramen and drinks.

Shanghai airport is massive, and very nice looking. I'm using a wide angle lens to capture this massiveness

Ramen for dinner!

Ramen for dinner!

I like to take pictures of random objects and see how the English translations came out

We wander the airport for a bit since we don't want to sit any longer and I find some places with Johnny Walker Blue samples.

Time for this plane to take off!

We land in Taipei at some unholy hour (I think 12am or 1am) and get to the hotel around 3am. This means 3pm on Dec 24th back in Toronto, meaning that we've been up for about 33 hours.

As tired as we are, it's nice to see Taipei!

Time for a sleep!

Time for some shuteye!