Yangmingshan with the 523, and a Night Market to Boot! 陽明山與夜市

Two hikes in the same week! Hurrah!

While we were still in the States, we found a hiking and mountaineering club in Taipei that goes by the name "523 Mountaineering Association." They have a Facebook group you can join. Of course, we joined it! Right away we got invitations to various hikes. They do about one a month. Ping remembered it and we made a point of going on this last one to Yangmingshan National Park. Sunday looked kind of iffy, weather-wise, but again...let's go take a look!



We arrived at the Jiantian MRT station and immediately noticed a gathering group of foreigners. We asked a few of them if they were there for the Mt. Ding hike. They said they thought they were. Turns out there were 29 of us there for this hike! Simon Han, a local guy, had organized the hike and quickly realized that we wouldn't all fit on the little bus that was already partially full when it arrived at our stop. He quickly changed our route and we all queued up to wait for another bus, which we filled to capacity.

Because we had to take a different bus, we ended up getting out another kilometer away from our intended drop-off point. No worries! Ping snapped this shot of the view shortly after we got off the bus. Not a bad start!

This is the first of an entire 10 minutes that Mark wore his big, floppy, white hat that keeps the sun off. After that, it was obvious there was no sun to keep off! Our group stretches out a good distance ahead of us.

Nice exposed earth along the way. Note the light colored vertical line in the greenery. Cable? Rappel line? For all we know, it could be an extension cord. (In Bali, the river rafting company had a long , orange extension cord running down to the riverbank so they could blow up the rafts with, essentially, an industrial strength blow-dryer. Wait, aren't you NOT supposed to use a blow dryer while standing in the water? But that's another story.)

We dubbed this "Chicken Wire Cascade Falls." It was picturesque nonetheless!

A view back down the road. We gained quite a bit of elevation just walking the paved road up to our intended drop-off point. Everything climbs quickly around here!

Here's a part of our group as we're trying to decide if this will get us to our trail. Simon is the guy in the green shirt and the hat in the middle of the picture. He's a local. There were several local Taiwanese on this hike, plus people from Australia (Noel), South Africa, Germany (Michael), the U.S. (Richie, an alpinist doctor who is a self-described "bum" for half the year). We met Miguel, a half-Mexican teacher and serious foodie from Austin, TX, now teaching Math, Geography and English in Ilan on the east coast of Taiwan. We also met a Russian named Aleksandra who is spending her sixth year in Taiwan; she's getting her PhD in Comparative Literature here.

Nice to have such a wonderful mix of people! Definitely a good thing!

After everyone else made it up that spot, I got a shot of Ping just before she disappeared over the little rise. It was ALL uphill from here for quite awhile longer.

Yes, it was dark. The forest is pretty dense.

Somewhere in here, Simon announced: "This is a shortcut." We didn't believe him.

That's Richie, the alpinist doctor, in the lower part of the frame, looking for another bit of sushi he picked up at the MRT station before we left. Directly above him, with the dark shirt is Noel, a teacher from Australia with a very dry wit. We stopped here at this little shelter by the trail head, well warmed up after the climb from our bus stop, joking about "when do we start hiking?"

That's Micheal, the tall, young German who had nothing but a bag of food and a couple of water bottles, next to Richie who was packed to tackle Kilimanjaro. "I think I kind of over packed," said the doc.

We're getting up there now, even closer to the scudding clouds. This is the view from a short break in the woods. There was a lot of upsy-downsy on this trail, but the upsy was pretty upsy. We climbed quite a bit.

The higher we got, the thicker the fog became. It was pretty magical! We would have loved to stop more and take pictures, but with a group of 29, you stick with the pace more. Still, it was a lovely hike!

This was the order of the day! The place is really magical. I kept expecting a Hobbit to spring up out of nowhere.

Ping's pictures are always different from Mark's! Thank goodness she had her camera so we could capture more of this place. This is right by where we all stopped for lunch. As is typical on the trail, we all shared food. We're learning how it's done here. Rather than making a sandwich at home or packing jerky and bagels you bought from the store the night before, most folks around here just grab something from the street vendor on their way to the train station. It's so much easier! Don't have food? Pick up some on the way to the trail head. What do you want? Sushi? Crackers? A sandwich? "Iron eggs?" Bientang (bento)? Grab it on the go. No need to sweat over what you're going to eat for lunch. We'll start doing that, too.

Here's the famed grassland ridge up on this trail. Usually you can see for miles. Today? Kilometers were hard to come by. If you look carefully, you'll see a few black dots off to the left in the middle of the picture. These are the Shui Niu ("water cow," the Taiwanese water buffalo) that left such prodigious piles of excrement along the side of the trail. We couldn't figure out why they were so polite as to leave them next to the trail...Okay, all but one who left a generous, two-liter offering smack dab on the paving stones. Fortunately, some kind soul left a branch sticking out of it so those of us with our heads in the clouds wouldn't inadvertently sink into it up to their ankles. Further on, we found some even fresher piles someone had carefully decorated with bright flower and fern arrangements! Everyone got a laugh out of those!

Wetness and wind met us any time we got out of the trees. Mark used an umbrella for the first time ever on a hike. It works! If you can angle it correctly to keep it from getting whipped out of shape, it's much more comfortable than a jacket when the weather's still warm. Besides, when it's 100% humidity outside, and 100% humidity inside, what does a waterproof jacket do?

Shortly after this, we got to the visitor's center where we ended the hike. We all thanked Simon for setting it up. Mark thanked him especially for the "shortcut!" We're hoping to hook up with him again for another hike. He has such a great attitude, and he just loves the outdoors. On the bus ride down, Ping asked him about a certain trail which he said wasn't particularly good. He likes the ones that "aren't so artificial." Fortunately, there are LOTS of those. The 523 Mountaineering Association goes to a lot of them.

We were going to head home after the hike, but several of the hikers, including Richie the doc, Michael the German, Miguel the Texan foodie and Noel the Aussie, wanted to get some REAL Taiwanese food. "Not the tourist stuff--authentic!" Richie insisted. "So we need someone Taiwanese to order for us!" Fortunately, Miguel's surfing buddy from Ilan, a girl named Sunny, and Ping were all able to do that. Sunny used to live in this area, so she directed us down a side street where we were able to get some Ma La Chou Tofu, the famed "Stinky Tofu" in a spicy soup. Well, the soup wasn't that spicy, but the tofu was plenty chou (stinky!), so it turned out all right. The weird thing about stinky tofu is that while it smells pretty bad, it tastes really good! That's the tall German, Michael with the iPad adding another image to his "Food folder."

This is another side of the famed Night Market that most tourists don't generally get to see. Shilin wasn't quite open for business yet, but these side streets have really good food and lots to sell. When we got started, only half of them were ready, but we made the most of it. You can see (right to left) Michael, Noel and Richie.

Think that's a real Nike bag the girl with the purple shoes is carrying? Maybe.

There are lots of knock-offs for sale in Asia. We've seen good and bad imitations of all kinds of brands. You'd be amazed at how many "Gucki" handbags are out there.

Not only can you get four or five different kinds of sausages, you can get one of them wrapped inside another one! With basil! Oh, yeah, baby. We had one. Awesome.

Here, the lady shows Ping how to eat it. You just push it up from the bottom of the bag and take a bite! We did. It was good. Price? $NT50. That's about $1.65 US. Worth every bit!

You want squid on a stick? We got squid on a stick. Heck, we'll put anything on a stick, marinate it, roast it, fry it, you got it. The "ghosts" hanging in front aren't for Halloween; they're on a battery powered rotating mechanism that helps keep the flies off. That white glove on the vendor is to keep from roasting the vendor.

The orange hat out front is on Miguel, the half-Mexican Texan teacher/foodie. We didn't get a good shot of his Taiwanese buddy and Sunny. You can see (L-R) Ping, Noel, the western summit of Richie's head, and Michael. Yes, Michael is very tall!

We were already too full after chou tofu, sausage-in-a-sausage, some baked ground meat-and-onion biscuit-bun thingy...but Mark had to take a picture of this ice cream stand. ...Wait!...That ain't ice cream!

No, indeed! Read the sign and you can see that this delectable concoction in a waffle cone is in fact "Minced Shrimp with Lettuce...Everyone's favorite!" We are definitely coming back for this one!

Sometime around then, Michael, Ping and I got separated from everyone else, so Michael and I followed Ping who was a terrific guide to whatever was being sold on the sides. Michael, who seemed to be still able to eat, had the tomato with a plum stuffed in it, some other fruit, and a tall glass of bitter melon drink. We laughed a lot as he tried to convince the juice lady that "his fire was too hot so he needed more bitter melon." He didn't want much sweet stuff in it, but even though he protested a bit when the honey went in, we asked him how it was after he took the first sip. "It's GOOD!" he said, eyes shining!

Ping walked us through the Shilin Night Market which was now really getting going. There was a line thirty meters long waiting for the giant, flattened, breaded chicken-in-a-bag. Last time we were here, there was a long line for the same thing. It never ends! We walked a few aisles and came back out. Micheal commented that it was "sensory overload!" Mark agrees. Every sense you have is taxed to the max. The smells are great (stinky tofu notwithstanding), the lights are bright and colorful, and everyone is hollering out to you to come eat their special noodles or try their special dried fish jerky or buy their bags of sesame snacks. The hardest thing about the night market is that you can't sample everything. There's just too much!

When it was finally time to go home, we bid Michael good bye. Ping was going to recommend a bus that might get him to Neihu, but he did what he usually does: pulled up the JPEG of the Chinese directions to his lodging on his iPad and when out to find a taxi. We're still learning the good ways to get around here. That's clearly one of them!


We'll sign off here with one last image from our hike. Ping snapped this shot just before it got really windy and rainy again.

We're very blessed to be living here. The country is rich. We're meeting good people everywhere.

It's not easy; we're still working our way through the transition, but times like this remind us why we came.

Since the hike yesterday, Noel, Micheal and Miguel have all made contact with us in one way or another. We hope to see them again. Life is good.