Taiwan Trek, Day 5: The perils of parking as the weather finally catches up with us

An unusual-looking housing complex not far from our hotel in Chihpen 知本

You can only outrun the weather for so long, and on this Thursday the rain finally caught up with us. This was the view that greeted me this morning from our 8th-floor room at the F Hotel Chihpen:

When the rain puts a damper on planned outdoor activities, you make lemonade by moving indoors. And what better places to do so than museums? Taitung 台東 is home to one of Taiwan's finest, the National Museum of Prehistory 國立台灣史前文化博物館, situated away from the city center but a relatively short drive from our hotel. My daughter was immediately drawn to the special exhibition on aboriginal music and singers:

The permanent exhibits ambitiously chart Taiwan's geologic history, as well as providing in-depth explanations of the island's original human inhabitants and their place in the wider Austronesian culture:

According to Amber, this diagram proves millenials are at the highest evolutionary stage. Obviously, she's never heard of Devo:

After examining this human-faced pottery jar, my daughter painstakingly attempted to piece together a replica (with the help of magnets):

Success!:

The museum's best displays are those on Taiwan's 16 officially-recognized aboriginal tribes, though your humble scribe could have been a little more culturally sensitive:

Like indigenous peoples elsewhere, Taiwan's aborigines have suffered greatly at the hands of invaders, and have many of the same issues - alcoholism, poverty, the assault on native religious traditions by Christian missionaries etc. For many, the main routes to a better life still involve athletics (baseball) or entertainment (music), and aboriginal communities often have little choice but to conform to Taiwanese stereotypes of colorfully-dressed singing and dancing performers for the benefit of the tour bus hordes in order to survive:

Lunch at the museum was a pleasant surprise - I had the sticky rice with beef, Amber ordered meat and rice cooked in a bamboo tube, and we shared a plate of wild vegetable dumplings, all washed down with homemade lemonade:

The museum's grounds provide good views of the surrounding countryside:

The rain had let up by the time we were finished at the museum, so we drove along the coast to check out the geological curiosity known as Water Running Upward 水往上流. My daughter found the optical illusion endlessly fascinating:

Durians for sale at the top of the stream. Or is it the bottom? MJ Klein explains the mystery here:

My daughter suggested we next go to see the bizarre coral and rock formations known as Hsiao Yeliu 小野柳, but it was at this point that the rain started coming down hard. So instead we drove around central Taitung waiting for the downpour to ease up a bit. When it did, we parked at Liyushan Park 鯉魚山公園 and took a stroll in the rain, checking some out of the views of the city below:

The wet conditions encouraged a great many huge snails to seek out partners:

From the park we walked down to the Taitung Railway Art Village 台東鐵道藝術村, a "cultural space" built utilizing the platform and tracks of an old train station. I'm sure it would've been more lively had it not been a rainy weekday afternoon. Fortunately, there was a Mister Donut in the shopping plaza across from the bus terminal:

You may have wondered about the title of this blog entry. The clue lies in what happened when we returned to our hotel in the late afternoon. Trying to back our rented vehicle in the cramped confines of the underground parking garage, I didn't realize just how close the front right fender was to a support post. This is the result, and it's liable to be costly:

What is done is done, and there's no point in worrying about it any further until the car is returned on Sunday. In any event, Amber and I went out for dinner in the pouring rain, where I  drowned my sorrows in a bottle of Taiwan Beer 台灣啤酒 (it was either that or Heineken). At least the shrimp fried rice was good, and my daughter got to feed one of the neighborhood felines afterward, courtesy of some fish pieces provided by the woman running the restaurant:

Tomorrow we leave Taitung and head back north to Hualien 花蓮, this time along the coastal Highway 11. Here's hoping the weather will be better and the parking lots wider.

To be continued...