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...

Taiwan Trek, Day 4: Running from the weather

Japanese-style lodgings at the Hualien Sugar Factory

The weather gods taketh away, but they also giveth. The forecast yesterday had warned of impending dangerous heavy rains in Hualien County 花蓮縣 starting at around 11 o'clock this morning. This had then been pushed back to 1300 hours when I checked again following breakfast. If the skies did open up as predicted over Hualien 花蓮, we were long gone by that time, and the only rainfall we experienced today was a few drops as we approached Taitung 台東. The views from our hotel room in Hualien as we awoke this morning:

It would be another hot and humid day this Wednesday, so we bought some cold teas for the road as we prepared to head out of Hualien:

We were soon out of the city and driving south on Highway 9, the inland route that cuts through the East Rift Valley 花東縱谷, with the Central Mountains 中央山脈 on our right and the Coastal Mountain Range 海岸山脈 on the left. My daughter busied herself by taking some photos from the passenger seat:

Our first stop was at the Hualien Sugar Factory 光復糖廠, built in 1921. We had the obligatory ice creams, the thing to do at former sugar factories all over the country:

There was nothing unusual about this carp pond except perhaps the knowledge that it was created from a crater caused by American bombers during World War II:

Sugar dominated the Taiwanese economy up until the 1930's, when it went into a long decline. Another crop that used to make Taiwanese farmers rich is bananas:

The old wooden workers' dormitories have now been repurposed as guesthouses:

At its peak the factory was processing 2600 tons of sugarcane a day. It closed in 2002 and some of the rusting machinery can be examined up close:

The next stop for us was the Fuyuan Forest Recreation Area 富源國家森林遊樂區, home to Taiwan's largest remaining pure camphor forest (camphor was a major Taiwanese export in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). I made sure to be properly kitted out for the walk in the forest in the 34°C (93°F) heat:

This man was spear fishing in the river running next to the trail. I envied him...:

Lunch at the park:

After eating, my daughter borrowed the camera and eagerly pursued the many butterflies flitting about:

Back in the car and continuing along Highway 9. Our last stop en route was at the Tropic of Cancer Monument, with a marker erected at latitude 23.5 degrees north. Even Amber agreed it was a non-event (there's another monument on the opposite side of the country, near Chiayi 嘉義). The view across the road was more interesting:

The monument was our last stop as Highway 9 began to turn into a long slog (we did try to see the "Water Running Up", but when the GPS pulled us off the main road and had us begin climbing up toward the clouds, we turned around and continued on to Taitung). That isn't to say there aren't interesting places to visit along the road, but when you're 12 years old, scenery can only hold your attention for so long (though the giant rice grain man spotted while passing through Chishang 池上 was good for a laugh). Good thing Dad brought along the iPad:

It was around half-past four as we pulled into our hotel in Chihpen 知本, on the outskirts of Taitung. The view from our room at the F Hotel Chihpen:

For dinner we drove into Taitung to eat at Uncle Pete's Pizza, run by a friendly fiddle-playing expat from Tennessee who told me he has lived in Taiwan for 19 years, during the last eight of which he's been operating the restaurant. The pizza and the atmosphere were worth the drive, as was the locally-produced Highway 11 IPA, further evidence that the Taiwan Beer tyranny may finally be ending:

We ended our long day with a stroll over to Seashore Park 海濱公園 , where the ocean was much calmer than it was the previous day in Hualien:

Tomorrow will be spent exploring Taitung. To be continued...