Keelung-aka JiLong, Taiwan's 3rd largest seaport
I've only got a couple of weekends left and so I'm trying to cram a bunch in. This makes it hard to keep up with the blogging, what with the Chinese class, studying etc. My apologies for the paucity of entries. Last weekend I took the train out to Keelung (pronounced Ji1Long3). Don't ask me about the weird spelling, Taiwan is full of English "names" that look nothing like the chinese pronunciation. Keelung-aka JiLong, is Taiwan's 3rd largest seaport, and is located on the coast, north-east of Taipei. The train ticket cost NT$45 kuai, the journey was about 1hour 15minutes and relatively non-crowded. There is a bus that costs about the same and is about 45 minutes (which is the recommended way to go), but I prefer trains since they go in straighter lines (motion sickness...)
Here's the view from the south east corner of the harbor just beyond the train station. You can see the massive cruise liners waiting to set sail for Okinawa, Japan. Sabina met me at the station and immediately asked me if I had eaten (which is the polite way to greet someone in Chinese). Of course I answered that I was starving (the impolite but truthful answer) I had heard good things about the street food in Keelung. To that end, we wandered down to the food street (Ren Er Jie) and then headed out for a tour around the city and a hike up to a Qing dynasty fort.
Even tho it was only a little after noonish, Ren Er Jie was completely packed. At nite the MiaoKou Market explodes into being centered around the Temple (DianJi Gong) and RenEr lies at the heart. It's so popular that during the day, the food stalls are always open. There were so many stalls, and we wanted to get moving so we sampled the "nutritious sandwich" (deep fried yummy goodness but hardly healthy), peanut dust veggie spring roll, and the BBQ'd octopus arms. Across the way, Pao pao Ice stand was crammed with people waiting for a tasty shaved ice treat, and so of course in the interest of sampling as much as possible, I got a mango shaved ice. They have other flavors like peanut and red bean which looked delicious too. Just down the way I looked longingly at the sushi/sashimi and Sabina promised that we would have sashimi later at a great seafood restaurant.
Here's Sabina howling with laughter, after I asked her to pose with the International Asian symbol of picture taking. We crossed the Tian Liao river and walked a couple of blocks north to XinEr Jie and started our climb up to the Martyrs' Shrine opposite the local fire station. It's pretty steep but you get a good workout to compensate for all the eating planned for the day. Continue onward, upward and inward to JiLie Temple. They have an excellent little museum that mostly focuses on the summer "Ghost Festival". (Sadly I'll miss it by just a few days.) Keep walking faithfully uphill (another 30 minutes?) and you'll get to the Kuanyin Temple with the massive white statue of Goddess Kuanyin. There are quite a few temples on the ridgeline, so don't worry if you don't get there immediately.
When we got to the temple there was an old fashioned mini market, and you could imagine what the original Keelung market must have looked like hundreds of years ago. It was pretty quiet, except for the massive bell tolled constantly. Ring the bell & make a wish. I'm sort of templed out so I didn't take any pictures of the massive statues or temple itself.
It's really more of an uphill stroll on sidewalks than a trail hike. If you get beset with doubt, you can always ask a friendly local who will stop and keep pointing you in the right direction. The ridgeline extends out to the Qing (1800's) Dynasty Fort (Hai3men2 Tian1Xian3), on the way you'll pass a great lookout space, and a small dirt bike course.
The woods were pretty dense and there were a ton of butterflies and insects. These were kind interesting looking caterpillars wandering the the walls. Anyway great views, old guns and lonely soldiers' graves. I definitely recommend this hike.
On the way down we took a different trail and ended pooching out onto the seafront road, by a shipyard with those massive shipping cranes that inspired the Star Wars "AT AT walkers". Walking back, we passed a derelict village that had the old fashioned Japanese style houses. Kind of sad to see these houses abandoned but really cool to be able to see how they're actually constructed. You can see the plaster and wood walls, raised sprung wooden floored platforms that used to be covered with tatami mats.
Total time spent including breaks for hanging out etc 3 hours.
