Day 184: Making the Most of It

With only one full day in Taipei, I wanted to squeeze in what I could. I started by visiting the site shared by the National Democracy Hall, Concert Hall and Theater since they were just down the street from my hostel. The traditional architecture of the buildings adds a nice touch, and it's interesting comparing them to similar architecture I've seen in Korea and Hong Kong. I find the little characters on the roof edges an especially interesting shared feature. They mark official buildings, and the number of figures on the roof reflects the importance of the building's function. The most obvious difference with the Taiwanese buildings is the colours. Most of the temples and other traditional buildings I've seen have the roof tiles painted dark colours (usually black), but in Taipei everything seems to be painted up in orange, green, blue and violet. The buildings also have lots of very colourful carvings and ornamentation on them which really catches your eye.

One of the major things I wanted to visit was the National Palace Museum. It contains a lot of objects from the Forbidden City, and is probably the most complete collection of Chinese art and artifacts in the world. I really liked some of the artwork, especially the long painted scrolls of sweeping landscape scenes and some of the elaborate jade carvings, but in general it was a lot of furniture, jade, small bronzework and pottery, none of which I really have the background to appreciate.

I visited a few other temples in the afternoon. I wasn't really hunting them out, but they do stand out more than anything else, and look more interesting. The most interesting of the places I visited were the Xingtian Temple and the Taipei Confucius Temple. The Confucius Temple, in addition to the temple itself, had small exhibits through the surrounding buildings talking about Confucius and his teachings. There was also a school band practicing on the grounds, and while they weren't terribly good it was interesting to see all the differences in instruments to what our bands have.

My final stop was to check out some of the Taipei night markets. There are many different ones throughout the city, each with their own focuses. I found them to be much less touristy than the Hong Kong ones, and were a mix of clothing, shoes, electronics, food with some random carnivalish games thrown in. I found a lot of the street food smelled pretty terrible, and I wasn't going to take any risks when I had to get up early for another plane, so I stuck to things that weren't quite so exotic.

In general the city seemed less built up than any of the other big cities in Asia I've been to, but that could also just be that I didn't see enough of it to get a good feel. The temperature was still hot, but I found it to be much more comfortable than Hong Kong was just because of the lower humidity. My biggest complaint was things relating to getting around. Street signs were confusing and misleading and the huge number of scooters zipping around combined with poor/no sidewalks made walking a pain at times, but again, it might just be that I never had time to adjust properly. On the plus side, Taipei is the cheapest city I've been to so far (that won't last long), with none of my meals costing more than $5 CDN, and often considerably less.

Day 183: Taipei

Another plane ride over with. I must say though, Hong Kong International Airport has a rather nice departures wing. My flight this time wasn't until noon, so I could get up at a reasonable time and not frantically rush to the airport.

The ride into Taipei from the airport was a fairly lengthy bus ride, followed by another, much shorter bus. The city bus at the end was reporting stops out of sync with where it actually was, so I got off at the wrong stop which was a bit troublesome since the instructions I was given were landmark based ("go towards the Starbucks on your left...") assuming I was beginning at a place I wasn't. I still managed to find the place pretty quickly, which was good because there is no actual staff at the hostel and I had to be let in by one of the people that run it who was waiting for me. I had estimated in my correspondence with them that I'd show up around 4:00 and in the end it was like 4:15, so it wasn't too awful. The hostel I'm in is actually pretty amazing. It's brand new, having only been open for a month, and it's sparkling. There's a dorm (where I am), and two private double-rooms, but the only people staying here, at least for tonight, are me and one girl in one of the private rooms, so I have the dorm to myself. The place has two very modern washrooms, its own kitchen, and laundry (unfortunately I just washed everything before leaving Hong Kong). It's just another reason to be disappointed I have such a short time here.

I didn't want to do anything too wild tonight, so I just explored the neighborhood a bit and scrounged a dinner from a mix of street vendors. Tomorrow I'm going to squeeze in as much as I can, but I'm focusing on a few things in particular that interest me. I've found that with all these big cities, especially when you have a limited time, the most interesting thing to do is to check out the places that make the city special or give it its character. My flight out of Taiwan on Wednesday is at 8am (ugh) so I'll probably need to go to bed early or just spend another day exhausted.

Day 182: Hong Kong Last Lap

I didn't have anything on the agenda today, so I just enjoyed my last day in Hong Kong hanging out in Kowloon checking out shops. I had quite a bit of money left over, and in addition to treating myself to a nice lunch I was considering buying some electronics (specifically an external harddrive) to use up the last of it. Ultimately I decided to wait, since I'll be returning to Hong Kong after the month in mainland China. I did buy a fancy new rubix cube (well, a knockoff rubix cube, but a kind that's actually better than the real ones) at one of the markets. I'm still working on my haggling skills, but I got them to knock the price from $280 HK down to $80 HK ($40 to $11). The starting price was ridiculous though, and I'm sure the guy has never actually sold one at that price. I also bought a cheap compass and a pedometer for a combined $22 HK, since both are things I've regretted not having at times.

Not really any pictures for today. I took a few random ones, but not of anything terribly interesting, and it's not worth uploading them right now just for the blog. I did go through and update picasa with all the Hong Kong/Macau pictures, so things there should be pretty much up to date now.

Notice: Potential Upcoming Issues

This is my last day in Hong Kong, and since I had to cut my time in Taiwan much shorter than I had wanted I might not have a lot of free time there to post things, so I wanted to get this post done before I left.

Mainland China has a very broad firewall blocking a lot of things, including Facebook. Since this is one of the longest stages of my trip, and the one I've been looking forward to the most, I hope I have access to post pictures and accounts of things, but it's very possible I will not. If that's the case, I'll make notes the old fashioned way as I go and try my best to provide a good summary of things when I'm finished.

Basically, please don't freak out if there aren't any posts for a few weeks.

Day 181: The Reverse Dragon's Back (not a sex position. probably)

I was really determined to get the hike I messed up done before leaving Hong Kong, and with only a couple days left, this was the day to do it. Unfortunately the weather was hot and incredibly humid, and the 600ish stairs I almost jogged up last time were hellish obstacle this time. The Hong Kong Island Trail is divided up into 100 sections, with a marker roughly every 500m marking the section. The navigational mistake I made last time was following the trail the proper way (from 92 to 100 or something), when I should have followed it backwards (the Dragon's Back section is like 82-87 or something).

The initial stages, to get to the trail I wanted to do, were a bit dull. The trail hugged along the hills, but the jungle was too thick to have much of a view. Eventually I got to the marker confirming that I was on the right path this time!

Why exactly is it called the Dragon's Back? Well...

The hills/mountains stretch out as a peninsula that makes up Shek O Country Park, and the Dragon's Back is the section of the trail that runs straight across the line of peaks, undulating up and down over their summits with views down at the water on both sides.

This was far from the end of my hike though. The trail does its best to keep away from civilization, and I ended up having to go quite awhile without water in less than ideal conditions. I hiked all the way back up the peninsula around the sides of the mountains (checking out a few beaches along the way - boat access only), then around the Tai Tam Tuk Reservoir to end up near Stanley.

I came upon a nice little rest station which had vending machines, so I got myself a much needed lemon green tea and relaxed for a bit before catching a bus from here back north to near the subway line. I'm not sure how far I went, since it's hard to map out with all the winding trails following the hill countours, but I started out around 10:30am and caught the bus around 5pm. Overall it was a good hike with some lovely views. The only person with a better view? This guy.

Day 180: Fade to Black

The main notable activity of my day was the exhibition I mentioned yesterday. In Europe, I got a bit museumed out, and in Asia there is an ever-present risk of being templed/shrined out, so I'm trying to throw in a few random interesting things to mix it up. The exhibition is called "Dialogue in the Dark", and it's a 90 minute exploration of the senses in complete darkness being led by a blind guide (quite literally the blind leading the blind!) You can see why getting a guide that can speak english is important, which is why I couldn't do it yesterday. Our group was a real mix, consisting of me, a german, an indian and an argentinian, plus our guide Henry. It was an interesting experience. We start off in utter darkness without having met our guide, and from the start he is just a voice. The tour takes you through different situations blind people face: getting on a boat, visiting the market, going to the cafe, etc, but set up to focus your senses on touch, smell and sound. After the initial disorientation I adapted quite well, although it's a lot easier to have confidence moving around when you know there's no real cars that can hit you. At the end of the tour they have a real cafe staffed by more blind people where you can buy things and enjoy them in the darkness. Overall, an interesting and fun experience, but obviously not one that can be documented with photos.

Tomorrow, barring bad weather, I'm planning to get up early and start the day hiking, and see where things lead from there.

Days 178-179: Chilling

The last few days have been pretty uneventful. Yesterday I went out to the eastern side of the island to try to do part of the Hong Kong Island Hiking Trail known as The Dragon's Back. Other than having a cool name it's highly recommended as one of the best trails in the area. Everything went well at first - getting to the starting point involves climbing 625 (I counted) steps up through a graveyard on the side of the hill. The problem came at the actual start of the trail, when I went the wrong way and hiked the section -after- the Dragon's Back instead. It led down to Big Wave Bay, and was still a nice trail, just not as impressive. After getting down to the bay and checking out the beach I just started taking random trails. The island is small enough that I figured with a few hours I could get back to civilization from anywhere I ended up, which is more or less what I ended up doing. I think I'll try again this weekend now that I know where I went wrong and which trail I should be taking.

This morning I tried to go see a special exhibition, but it requires a guide and the english ones are at specific times so I couldn't do it. I reserved a spot for tomorrow, so more on that later.

Mostly I spent the day hanging around Kowloon and checking out various markets and shopping centers. I visited the Lady's Market and Temple Street (Night) Market, which were very similar except that the Temple Street one had more sex toys. There are a few things I'm considering buying, so I'll probably revisit this area again before I leave. In the evening I met up with a former colleague who now lives in Hong Kong and we had some spicy Chinese noodles for dinner, and a few squid balls from a street vendor to round things out.

Day 177: Mission Accomplished

Despite going to bed late I woke up early to check the status of my visa application for India. All the checks had been approved, so I got up to go drop off my passport at 9am so that I could get in completed today. I came back to the hostel and had a brief nap before getting up again. Since I was going to have to return to the Kowloon/New Territories region to get my passport in the afternoon anyway, I decided to finally hunt down the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery and then hopefully pick up my passport on the way back afterwards.

The monastery isn't actually a monastery, since no monks live there, and apparently there are 13,000 buddhas, not 10,000. The place was created/funded by an old wealthy Buddhist who, after his death, was preserved in lacquer and gold leaf and enshrined as a statue in the main temple. The monastery itself was a bit challenging to find. I knew around where it was, but the path leading to it is behind some buildings and not advertised terribly well, so it's easy to miss. Once on the path, you immediately know you're in the right place though. Lifesize gold-painted statues line both sides of the path as it winds up the hillside. The quality of the statues wasn't all that great, but when you come to a place called the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery you're expecting quantity more than quality, and it delivers on quantity. While the majority of the thirteen thousand is made up of tiny figurines in the main temple, I estimate there are between 500 and 1000 of the full, life-size ones, each unique and individually interesting.

I know almost nothing about Buddhist folklore and stories, but I get the feeling it must be pretty elaborate. I don't know if all the statues are of specific characters, but a lot of them are just too random and unique to not have a story behind them. After exploring the temple, shrines and statue-lined paths I headed back down the mountain and continued on to go collect my passport.

Everything went smoothly, and I have my passport back with both visas I came to get. When I set time aside in Hong Kong I gave myself some extra days just in case, so I still have quite a bit of time here. I have a few small things I still want to check out, and a list of good hiking spots to visit, so I should be able to keep busy. It's just nice to finally have all the paperwork I need in order.

Day 176: Macau

Originally I had planned to go to Macau later this week, but a guy in my room was heading back over yesterday to bungee jump off the Macau Tower, and I decided to tag along for the company. Getting there was pretty straight forward. We took the metro to the ferry terminal and took the ferry over. Unlike his previous visit, this ferry went to Taipa island south of the main part of Macau, but with a little effort we crossed over the bridge to the tower so he could do his jump.

The Macau Tower has the highest bungee jump in the world, as well as activities for walking around the top of the tower like they do at the CN Tower now, and an outdoor climb to the very top mast of the tower. I was tempted to do the bungee jump as well, but it was expensive ($350 CDN) and after realizing the appeal was more to say I had done it than the actual experience, I just couldn't justify spending the money.

We went on a walk from the tower, getting some lunch and admiring the casions (for those not familiar, Macau is the Las Vegas of China). One of the random pamphlets in the ferry terminal had a blurb about a traditional Chinese pawn shop museum, which sounded like something a bit different, so we tried to find that. The museum was pretty terrible - it was just architectural layout of the pawn shop, but with none of the actual items (which is the part I thought would be cool) and very little information. Luckily there were lots of other neat things in the area, so heading over to that area wasn't a waste.

We popped into a casino to play a bit, and it some really nice carvings on display in the central lobby. Annoyingly, Macau slot machines won't accept Macau currency, only Hong Kong currency, so I couldn't use the money I took out to gamble to actually do half the things.

After the casino we decided to head back to the first island, where we'd have to sail home from, and check it out. There were fewer casinos here, but the ones that were there were huge, sprawling complexes with entertainment, hotels, shopping malls, etc. It was dark by now, so we got to enjoy all the lights as we wandered around and popped into random places to check things out.

In the end, we didn't get back to our hostel until around 4am. What happened in all that time? Well... you know what they say: What happens in Macau, stays in Macau.