Monday, October 22, 2007

Seisui 清水

Another Sunday, another family outing. Blessed with fine weather today, we headed out to the nearby town of Ch'ingshui (Cingshuei) 清水, or more specifically, the Kaomei (Gaomei) 高美 wetlands, a rest stop for many birds heading south from Siberia シベリア for the winter. The first thing we noticed upon arriving at Kaomei was the wind turbines. A number of these have been built in recent years along Taiwan's western coast to take advantage of the windy conditions. We also saw several people looking for crabs in the mudflats. Someone had left behind a jarful of the pitiful creatures, so I set them free, and hopefully earned some karmic brownie points in the process.

 
風力タービン

 

After ensuring that I won't be reborn as a cockroach ゴキブリ in my next life, we had lunch at a seafood restaurant located across the street from what appeared to be a lighthouse 灯台. Even though it was only around noon, there were two extremely drunk middle-aged men in the restaurant. Fortunately, they never bothered us, but to my astonishment, both men got into cars (staggered into them is a more accurate description) and drove away afterwards. After finishing off a bottle of Taiwan Beer 台湾ビール with lunch, we took a walk along a promenade プロムナード, and then went down to the shore. Amber joined the multitudes there in looking for crabs and clams.

カニか貝を掘り出している人がたくさんいた

The last thing we did before leaving was to go for a stroll along a bike path. We didn't see anyone actually riding any bicycles, but several people did go by on scooters. At one point, we came across an observation post for watching birds, but apparently not many use it as it was overgrown with weeds.


The surrounding scenery was pure Taiwan countryside - ponds filled with birds, fields, houses, small factories and elevated highways.

台湾の田舎のシーン

Once back in Fengyuan (Fongyuan) 豊原, we stopped off at the local department store to do a bit of shopping. In the toy department, I noticed that models of Taiwan's own high-speed trains 台湾の新幹線 are ready to be purchased in time for Christmas. On the way back to our car, we bought some donuts at a newly-opened Waili Donuts stand.

 

As the sign says, Waili Donuts is Taiwan's No. 1...ripoff of Mister Donut.

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