Making a Mountain out of a Molehill

We achieved a major milestone today, although incomplete preparation shorn it of its full glory. Mary managed her first successful ascent of Bukit Timah, all of 163.8 metres high. But having forgotten to pack any form of insect repellant, we kept to the sealed road that led to the summit and eschewed any of the jungle trails that might have provided a little bit more adventure, and that might also have added some gloss to our chest-thumping.

It's been a while since last I was at the Nature Reserve. The intention was to start a regular walking programme that is meant to gradually condition Mary for our year-end trip. Furthermore, we recently learnt the reserve would be closed for a year starting September to allow the vegetation time to recover from the impact of mass access. And it was pretty crowded by the time we arrived at about half past nine in the morning.

One of only two tracts of primary rainforests left in the world which are situated within municipal boundaries (guess the other, answers at the bottom), Bukit Timah is a biodiversity hotspot in Singapore. However, my previous visits have hitherto only yielded sightings of the ubiquitous long-tailed macaques. Sticking to the main trail this time round would significantly reduce the chances of spotting anything else. We got lucky this time, as we spotted a Malayan colugo not long more than five minutes into our walk.

Below: I -don't- like to mov'it, mov'it. Spot the colugo.

This particular individual seems a fixture in that particular part of the forest. It was visible from the main trail, not far from a plastic information board which enjoined walkers to look out for colugos. We could have ignored it for just another blotch of brown in the woods, but for a second glance and the zoom from my Dad's trusty Nikon (which I've adopted because its 30x optical zoom helps it act as a reliably functional binoculars - for birds, the kind that'll interest ornithologists).

The largely herbivorous colugo is also known as the flying lemur, although it is unrelated to its eponymous terrestrial namesakes from Madagascar. With its skin membrane with stretches between its front and hind limbs, it possesses the ability to glide between trees, reportedly over as long a distance as 100 metres without losing more than 10 centimetres of height. Most of this takes place at night, at which time the colugo does most of its foraging. The most significant action we espied was it turning its neck for a quick scan of its surroundings.

The rest of the walk yielded little more than rustlings and the calls of unknown birds, which we stopped to investigate inconclusively - often just us peering blankly into indistinguishable shades of green. We were up and down the hill in about 40 minutes, without counting the many minutes we spent ogling at the colugo. The maiden wildlife sighting was well-timed, particularly as the undiminished possibility of a second trip, and of more such sightings hopefully, meant we got off to an auspicious start.

Below: take a bough, Singapore's very own Hundred Acre Wood.

Five Taipeis, One Taiwan, How Many Chinas?

Taipei - what can I say? No, we've not been hopelessly captivated. There seems to be little beyond that oft-repeated summary of the quintessential Singaporean experience in Taipei - 买东西, 吃东西, 买东西, 吃东西. (This translates to "shop, eat, shop again, eat again".) But there are several other Taipeis in the traveller's imagination, beyond this consumer's epicurean paradise.

One is Television Taipei, portrayed in the epic drama serials which many follow religiously back in Singapore. Another is Green (clean, too) Taipei, loved by both locals and expatriates alike, who enjoy the long rambles in the wilderness on its very doorstep. Finally there is Cultural Taipei. The term here is contentious, because everything and nothing written about here could fall under this very heading. There are two principal, intertwined strains here - the Taipei which originated from imperial Chinese times, another modern Taipei which had its roots in the post-war regimes of the two Chiangs. It might be more helpful here to speak of a Historical Taipei and a buzzing Creative Taipei with its proud monuments to modernism and its bold postmodern doodlings. Again, these aren't discrete categories, for neither could exist without the other. We partook of all the above, in varying measures, to varying degrees of satisfaction.

Below: five Taipeis but one China? I bought this set of figurines (together with one of Teresa Teng, who I suspect had little to do with any form of political dialogue in this or any other parallel universes) from a Ximending souvenir store.

Green Taipei and Television Taipei shared some broad similarities. This is particularly evident in the tireless recycling of plots in the intractably lengthy local soap operas that never seem to end. Moreover, one cannot escape either within the confines of the city, as ample visual reminders of green hills on the city edges demonstrate. We got more than enough of our fair share of Television Taipei in the hotel room. If you thought either 爱 ("Love", the 787-episode series which polarized its Singaporean audience) or 夜市人生 ("Night Market Life", its 940-episode successor) was too much to handle, Taipei cable television ran simulcasts of three or four of these, on different channels, at any one time. Needless to say, our Taipei experience lacked the unquenchable bathos these serials offered.

We had, on the other hand, a more earthy and ordinary experience, especially where Epicurean Taipei and Cultural Taipei. Those who know me know I'm not much of a foodie. And while Taipei contains many stops for those here on a gastronomic pilgrimages, what I remembered more was the ready availability of street snacks - a packet of muah chee here, a bowl of ice shavings with fruits and syrup there, and after another mere hundred metres emerging from another shop with a whole bag of tau sa (red bean) buns with meat floss and a cup of bubble milk tea. On our penultimate day in Taipei, Mary convinced her mother to visit a Hello Kitty-themed cafe on the pretext of sating my obsession with the character. My protestations that I very much prefer cats with mouths fell on deaf ears.

Below: Large Fried Chicken Skin and Dough. My camera lens wasn't wide enough to capture the rest of the signboard.

Below: We stumbled upon this in the Dinghao shopping district (顶好商圈), one of the few places in the world where you can dismember and devour cats at your leisure.

Then there was the shopping. Amongst the three of us I had, predictably, the lowest purchase to shops ratio. The different per unit measurements in this indicator run the entire gamut of consumer behaviour from restrained to rampant. The lowest rung is the purchase per country, then per city, per shopping district, per mall, per level, per shop, per section and finally per shelf. There exists also a range of eco-systems to satisfy every sort of shopping preference. You had your upmarket air-conditioned mall, your utilitarian underground malls located right next to the subway station and your bustling night markets filled with bargain-hunters. A plane full of Singaporeans flying home from Taipei often weighs more heavily than a plane headed there from home.

Below: the perennially-crowded Ximending shopping district, and that unmistakable Taipei landmark, Taipei 101 (a facet of both Historical and Creative Taipei too?)

Regrettably, we did not have more a couple of fleeting glances at Historical Taipei. At least not this time. Historical Taipei, you could say, was everywhere, given our location at the heart of the old city. For us its most recognizable face was the Tianhou Temple (天后宮) on Chengdu Road which we passed everyday on our way out and back. A friendly middle-aged lady who approached me as I was fumbling with my camera in the temple courtyard also provided a brief history of the temple - that it was established in Qing times by merchants when Chengdu Road was (and still is) a trading street. Devotees come to worship Mazu, the Goddess to whom many communities in the Fujianese diaspora previously gave thanks for safe passage. We forget sometimes that Taiwanese isn't completely Chinese.

Below: Tianhou Temple, wedged between modern shophouses in Ximending.

It would be fitting to round off with a description of Creative Taipei, which my cousin, herself a fine artist, goes on and on about. While we comparative philistines lack that finer appreciation, two particular moments revealed Taipei's more cultured persona. The first occurred at the Zhongxiao Fuxing (忠孝复兴) subway station, on the first of our several train changes in Taipei. Mary drew our attention to the colourful walls and some interestingly lit panels. I had earlier instinctively dismissed these as space given over completely to garish over-advertisement, as they would have been done in subway stations the world over. The second was the couple of harpists in Ximending who were dressed as elegantly as their instruments provided a melodious antithesis to the brash consumerism on blatant display all around. On the one hand we felt mightily reassured that harps did not only exist on Guinness mugs. On the other, we recognized full well that these were only velvet cultural trimmings on the edges of what remained an unmovably iron structure of capitalism. After all, Chinese have historically been both shrewd merchants and faithful patrons of the arts at the same time.

Below: great walls of Taipei, and one of our harpist virtuoso.

It was a testimony to the prodigious energy in this pulsating city. As with most urban circadian rhythms, life really begins at sundown in Taipei. But while much of our shopping in Singapore winds down close to ten, in the ceaseless hives of the night markets this carries on deep into the wee hours of the morning. Our wee bit of travel this time just wasn't enough. But then, it almost always isn't.

Taiwan - Life's a Peach

On Day 3 we went south into the mountains, towards Lalashan Forest Reserve (拉拉山国有林自然保护区). We decided to set off a half-hour earlier than usual, since we wanted to get there before mid-day when mountains tend to get clouded over. This time we skipped the municipal meandering and got on to the highway fairly quickly. It was a smooth ride on the three-laned Highway 3 until we had to branch off to a smaller single-laned road leading to the mountains. Henceforth, the road started climbing and twisting through increasingly rugged country.

We only stopped at a few viewpoints en route to Shangbaling (上巴陵), the last township before the reserve. The weather was kinder than we expected it to be. A north-bound typhoon heading towards the Guangzhou seaboard was expected to bring rain over the entire island. The morning dawned mercifully - there was just enough cloud to make it a comfortably cool day, but not enough to obscure the many mountain vistas along the way.

Below: Goldilocks-zone weather, cool enough but not too cloudy otherwise; and the kind of views we enjoyed on our way up the mountains.

We had entered Atayal territory, and the relief was unforgiving - ridge after lofty ridges gave way to deep valleys via precipitous forested slopes. The Atayals were one of fourteen recognised aboriginal tribes in Taiwan. From the early years in the twentieth century, they fought a vicious, on-and-off struggle against the Japanese in these mountains. The remote, rugged terrain ensured that these aboriginal fighters were able to hold off for a good while their better-equipped, numerically superior foes in the Imperial Japanese Army.

Progress reached with its asphalt fingers into such country through a minor engineering miracle, with roads that hugged tightly any level hillside space and bridges spanning the yawning chasms which opened in between. Sometimes Nature would reassert its sovereignty with occasional rumbles and rockslides. And this, depending of the strength of its riposte, literally closed the road to Progress.

Below: if roads were the asphalt fingers of Progress, then bridges were its steel joints.

We had thought that we would see a lot less tourists along the narrow roads leading to this lesser-known locale (no public transportation too). But we underestimated the signature lure of the locally-grown 水蜜桃 (the honey peach) and the supple dexterity of the coach drivers. Not without reason is the county known as Taoyuan (桃园), peach garden. A profusion of roadside stalls littered the way to Shangbaling, to which these tourists flocked like bees. We only tried the fabled peaches in its iced blended form - and trusted that its delightful sweetness was natural.

Shangbaling was a string of houses built along a ridge at nearly 1,200 metres above sea level. The sun was still shining when we arrived shortly before lunch, but the surrounding mountain tops were already laurelled with the first silvery wisps of afternoon mist. With time and visibility both running out, we decided to skip the tree-hugging at the Forest Reserve and lap up the sumptous valley views. True enough, we had no sooner set up the tripod and taken a couple of shots than the valley below us vanished into the gathering mist.

Below: Shangbaling, sitting prettily atop a ridge like a Tibetan village; could at a very quick glance be Shangri-la.

Below: valley views all around, in descending order of visibility; observe how quickly the clouds moved in.

We returned by the same way, as the hypnotism of a slow, winding descent lulled us into heavy torpor. This lifted a little as we drew closer to Xiaowulai Falls (小乌来瀑布). Visitors could admire the falls from three different levels - from a nearby platform looking down onto it, then a sky-walk built just above the drop and finally by many steps to a wetter close-up at the foot of the falls. By then a drizzle had started, and this got steadily heavier. However, rainy days are amongst the better times to see waterfalls. These guarantee a torrent of water and a trickle of visitors, and not the reverse on pleasanter, dryer days. Once again, I very hurriedly stole another forty minutes and laboured down to the foot of the falls. The distant panorama of the falls previously belies the number of steps that led higgledy-piggledy - now neat wooden steps built on packed earth, now rattling metal steps, now half-broken planks and shaky stone - down to the bottom of the wooded ravine. That bracing close-up was worth the rest of the day I spent shivering.

Below: Xiaowulai Falls, the beautiful and the bracing. I should have wiped my glasses.

Our last stop was the restored shopping street in the old suburb of Sanxia (三峽老街), just a short way off Highway 3. Once a trading hub in the northern Taiwan until before the Second World War, industrialization and modernization have since shifted the economic centre of gravity further northwards to the parent metropolis of Taipei. The elegant red-bricked arches with their familiar five-foot ways on both sides of the shopping street housed a motley collection of shops selling everything from cheap toys to ornate ceramics. Again, the persistent rain and our late afternoon arrival made for a less crowded experience.

Below: Sanxia Old Street - Chinese shops, Japanese simplicity, Baroque trimmings, and one very colourful umbrella.

It was a good weekend with a bit of everything - the sun (just enough for a tan, but not for perfect blue sky) and rain (mercifully light, on the whole), the sea, shopping, mountains, waterfalls and good food. Northern Taiwan and Taipei are diverse like that - the aforementioned attractions do not seem to necessitate more than a hop and a skip beyond its municipal boundaries. With the exception of Shangbaling, all the places we visited in Days 2 and 3 were easily accessible from Taipei by public buses. That many travelers base themselves in Taipei means that the expanding city today is almost synonymous with the its northern Taiwanese hinterland.

And so it was that we returned to Taipei for the last, city leg of our short trip.

Taiwan Rocks

Taiwan, laying astride the Eurasian and Philippines Plates, boasts some stunning scenery of both volcanic and tectonic origins. The moving earth has also yielded up some of its mineral riches. Our trip to the north coast on Day 2 was intended to explore both Taiwan's natural wonders and what people have done with this inheritance.

Before our trip, we looked up the Taipei weather forecast for the duration of our visit. It made for some grim reading. There was almost always a line of five grey clouds - yellow circles peered out from behind some, yellow zigzags issued from others. Their only common mark were the blue droplets that flowed from beneath them. Every other day, we would check it again, switching from one website to another in the hope of getting a more favourable forecast. We made an art of clutching at straws. Day 2 would have been one of those predicted grey days. We were never happier to be disappointed. The only way to learn that 'weather forecast' is an oxymoron would be to actually check them.

We met Mr L, our driver for Days 2 and 3, at eight in the morning. The cheerful, avuncular Mr L hailed from Taichung, and confessed that he hasn't been to Taipei and its environs for nearly twenty years. He  then confidently produced his GPS, and announced that he had, however, done his homework the previous evening.

We spent the next forty minutes going around in circles.

Nearly two hours after leaving our hotel, we arrived at Yehliu Geopark (野柳地質公園). Here wind, water and the weekend have all combined to bring together a collection of fantastically-shaped rocks and an unceasing stream of visitors. We don't recall seeing this many tour buses (two full carpark-loads) gathered together at a single place. Many came to see the Queen's Head, a particular formation that resembles, well, a queen's head. Nefertiti's, to be more exact.

Yehliu Geopark reached into the East China Sea on a narrow, rocky cape which rose at its northern extremity to a turtle-shaped headland. A lighthouse stood atop this headland, but most visitors don't make it so far. Many are content to jostle for photo-spots within the two clusters of formations closer to the entrance. A thin red line ran along the seaward perimeter of these two clusters, beyond which visitors are not allowed to venture. These precautionary measures were policed, literally, by whistle-blowers - park staff in yellow vests who used their whistles liberally to alert any transgressors. It gave the area the atmosphere of what amounted to a cross between a training ground and a riot scene.

Below: Yehliu rocks, honeycombed rocks, crowded rocks, over-rated rocks. Can you spot the Queen's Head? No, that's not a pub.

When we had our fill of sun, sea and swarm, we headed for the old mining townships of Jiufen and Jinguashi. Jiufen was strung out along a single winding road which switchbacked its way up a steep hillside - great news for coastal vistas, bad news for knees. Settled in the early Qing period, the village was named after the number of portions needed, whenever supplies arrived, to sustain the original nine families who dwelled in the village. It played host to an influx of prospectors from 1893 when gold was discovered the area, and developed into a prosperous little town under Japanese supervision. As with nearly all Japanese-influenced economic activities, the mining industry declined after the Pacific War. The kiss of life which resuscitated the flagging economic fortunes of the area was subsequently provided by a late 1980s film shot in the vicinity.

We thought we had left most of the tour buses behind when we left Yehliu. Little did we expect to wade right into yet another metal morass, this time comprised mostly of cars and taxis. After lunch, Mary and her mother went off to explore the Old Street, while I set out to tackle the pyramidal 588-metre Mount Keelung. A half-hour slog up the extinct volcano was rewarded with sweeping 360-degree panoramas - northwards, the confluence of sea and sky; both eastwards and westwards, the craggy northern Taiwan coastline; and finally southwards, rows of serrated blue shadows which represented distant mountainous ridges. Most of those who attempted the stiff climb were locals, of whom a surprising number looked middle-aged and above.

Below: atop Mount Keelung, even the seven dwarves were blown away by the views.

Once I rejoined Mary and her mother, we proceeded eastwards to Jinguashi, the heart of the gold mining industry up to the 1940s. A quick walk around the Gold Ecological Park took us through the impressively spruced up mining village, complete with the former Japanese residences, the chalet of the Japanese Crown Prince, abandoned rail tracks and one restored tunnel. There also stood the customary neo-classical, left-leaning miners monument - showing three muscular miners helping up their stricken counterpart - which commemorated their (read: socialist) solidarity in the face of toil (read: capitalist-imperialist exploitation).

Below: Going for gold in Jinguashi.

Jinguashi's chief draw for us (definitely for me) was Golden Falls (黄金瀑布), so named for the appearance of the riverbed beneath the falls. However, it is the more unremarkable iron hydroxide in the soil and not gold which gave rise to such colouration. The same river stains the bay into which it empties a pale yellow. The contrast with the deep blue of the surrounding sea begets the name Yinyang Sea. It was easier to see the phenomenon from further up in the hills than from the seaside promenade, where it took on a more diluted aspect.

Below: the grim, Dickensian charm of an abandoned copper smelting facility near the Jinguashi coast.

Daylight ran out by the time we were done with Jinguashi, and we returned to Taipei. It was a good first day trip. We never doubted Mr L's sincerity, his local knowledge notwithstanding. That is one thing which has always impressed us about Taiwan. Step into any shop or restaurant, and you'll invariably be greeted with a 欢迎光临 (welcome) that seems more often sung than said. Smiles do not turn into scowls when you walk out not buying anything. But we were concerned for our next day trip on the following day, which would take us south into the mountains - we only hoped to get out of Taipei at the first attempt.

Taiwan - Eats Shoots & Leaves

Half the world seems to be in Taiwan this month. (We reckon the other half is in Brazil.) Mary counts at least three groups of friends on her side in Taiwan at the same time as us. I count four groups, including Ronald and WZ who were seated right in front of us on our flight to Taipei.

It was our first time on Scoot. We didn't know Scoot planes were refurbished ex-SQ models. That meant, crucially, decent leg room. We got through customs, collected our baggage and got into a waiting taxi. The trip to Hansome Business Hotel (endorsed enthusiastically by a colleague who enjoyed his stay there just last month) just minutes from the Ximen shopping district set us back by NT$1,100. No rooms were available at half past six in the morning. We left our baggage in the hotel, refueled at MacDonald's and set off for Maokong, a scenic area on the southeastern outskirts of Taipei.

Mary and her mother loved the gondola ride up to Maokong Station, a journey which took us through a succession of crests and valleys which took us from 24 metres above sea level to a modest 300 metres. The glass bottom injected a tiny dose of faux thrill, although Mary prefers nerve-jangling feet-dangling without the glass. However, the adrenaline leveled off into a slow and steady tedium after the first crest.

Below: through the looking glass, commercially milking the cat dry in Maokong and a panoramic view of comparative popular densities.

The name Maokong literally translated from Mandarin into "no cats", but the origins of this name goes beyond the lack of a feline presence here. The name is actually a Mandarin homonym for a Taiwanese word describing the many spring-scoured potholes in the area. Maokong is known for its tea houses, most of which are ranged along a winding hillside left and right of the gondola station. Many of these offer expansive views back towards downtown Taipei. The cultivation of tea in the area began in the Qing period, and was intensified during the Japanese occupation. Popular recreation entered the picture gradually when the tea industry was revived after a brief hiatus caused by wartime exigencies in the Pacific War.

We turned left upon exiting Maokong Station and made our way towards the Big Teapot (大茶壺), one of the tea-houses feted for its views. It was a pleasant ten-minute stroll, punctuated by the sights and sounds of the abundant suburban wildlife in the vicinity. There weren't a lot of people around at ten in the morning, and even the little food stalls along the way were only just starting the day's business.

At the Big Teapot, the tea we chose arrived in a golden bag of dark dried leaves. We were subsequently treated, on our sheepish request, to a demonstration by a staff member of how to make tea from these crumbly black bits. Growing up with tea-bags makes you forget they contain tea leaves.

I then left to take the short walk to Silver Stream Falls (银河瀑布), a reported two-hour return journey from Maokong Station. (At the junction upon exiting the station, walk straight until you see the sign for Zhanghu Trail branching off to the left; follow this uphill and you will arrive at yet another crossroad, take the left, which is signposted, towards the Falls.) The trail led mostly downhill, and the final bit just before the waterfall led down an almost vertical flight of slippery, moss-covered steps hewn from the rock. Thankfully railings have also been installed.

The falls tumbled down a cliff, right next to a cave temple built right into the rock. I had been lucky, as rain from the previous day ensured that the waterfall hadn't thinned out to a wispy oblivion (usual on the dryer days). There was nothing fancy about the cave temple though, only plain functional concrete. I ventured into the bare interior of the temple and behind the falls. Where it hit the ground a faint rainbow gleamed hesitantly.

I read that the vicinity was actually used as a weapons store by anti-Japanese fighters from a little over a century ago, when the area was crawling with these guerrillas. They chose the right place. Dense forest cover and a profusion of steep-sided valleys conspired to make this the perfect guerrilla base. In fact, had not the trail to the falls been so cleanly laid and signposted, it would seem to end abruptly on the edge of a precipice.

So it was back to the Big Teapot where Mary and her mother waited patiently for me. Our lunch of tea-flavoured braised beancurd, fried pumpkin with salted egg, stir-fried sweet potato leaves and four seasons bean with peanuts and soy sauce combined two frequently opposed adjectives - sumptuous and healthy. We returned to Ximen to check in, and only reluctantly roused ourselves from a comfortable lethargy a couple of hours after.

That evening we looked for dinner in the Ximen district. We stumbled on it at Hot-star, where we purchased two large slices of chicken schnitzels. It was more fried skin and dough than meat, and the junk food alarm set in after a few greasy bites. Desserts, which we again stumbled across, was an equally sinful affair - snow ice with cut fruits and ice-cream, doused in a generous serving of condensed milk.

We were delighted to be back in the Taiwan most familiar to outside eyes - a traveler's haven of milk and honey, both literally and figuratively. If you ever doubt that, just count the number of bubble tea outlets within the Ximen square mile.