Banping and Teapot mountain, adventurous trekking near Taipei

Jiufen and Jinguasha are favourite weekend getaways for Taipeians. Fresh air, great scenes, history and Jiufen's old street offers a huge variety of snacks to sate the almost endless Taiwanese appetite. These obvious draws hide an even better reason to visit, the hills around these towns provide adventure and spectacular views of North and Northeast Taiwan.

There are numerous options for treks. There's the short, sharp trek up Keelung Mountain, a couple of routes to Houtong, a route all the way to Longdong on the Northeast coast and a circular route around the hills of Jinguasha. There's most probably many more routes to be discovered too.

Today, we'll focus on the circular route around Jinguasha. This trek offers a tunnel to crawl through, a rope climb up a short cliff, spectacular views over North Taiwan and a long walk to exercise those muscles of yours. It's adventurous and a great break from city life, though, if you have children, it's probably best to leave them at home.

The route starts from the parking area by Cyuanji Temple. Go through the walk tunnel, walk about 50m and the path towards Teapot Mountain starts. It's a windy path that passes some old entrances to the gold mines and provides some great views of Keelung Mountain, Jinguasha and the Pacific. It's steep but the paths are well laid out. It takes about 30 minutes to get to Teapot Mountain, an amalgamation of rocks that actually looks like a handleless teapot.

Here, the route disappears into the rocks. It confused us at first, ropes supports lead into the cave and were attached to the top. We climbed to the top of the rocks only to see people walking on the other side but no save way down. How?

tb continued

Guang Du Temple

The oldest temple in Taiwan, according to the Lonely Planet. They date its start as 1619 or something like that. It certainly doesn't look that old but that's like many things Chinese. They seem to have a different approach to old buildings. They constantly maintain these old temples so that most of them don't look that old.

Anyway, it's a huge place. It has tunnels, praying areas, many storeys and loads of things to look at. The photo is of some spinning yellow 'rubic' cubes. I haven't seen them in other temples.

Guang temple is definitely worth a visit. It covers a huge site. The front of the temple faces the Jilong river, whilst the back has a completely different view, one looking out to Danshui and Bali.

From the top fall of the temple you get an idea of the extend of the wetlands that host the Guang Du Nature reserve and some mangrove forest.

Review

Gods
Originally uploaded by orange tuesday

The original aim of Taipei Gulag was to breakout of the Expat mode and experience a fuller, richer, Taipei life. I've found myself anglo-ising my experience and not really being adventurous.

Have I change? Not really, I'm still flow within small circles but I'm eating more adverturously. I go the market much more often, I've tried many different things and have found out about many new restaurants. The amazing thing about Taipei is there's always a restaurant close by. The choice of food is amazing, especially when I think back to the UK. In my home town there many be 20 restaurants but you get that on a block here (at least), even in London, you usually have to make a journary to go to a good restaurant.

Here's to being more adventurous! The good thing about winter is that you can walk a lot more. The heat is bearable , even now and with the food changes with the seasons here.

Cheers

Nurses promote music

Nurses
Originally uploaded by orange tuesday

Here are the playboy girls rivals. I think the playboy girls won as the nurses went over to have their photos taken with them.

At least the nurses were promoting something related to their costumes. Well, kinda. They're promoting DS Music Restaurant, which from the flyer, looks like a live music venue. Also from the flyer, the restaurant's table are styled on hospital beds, with a dip attached to the end and the chairs are hard plastic hospital chairs. The food doesn't look that bad, hot pots, beef, prawns and a fancy looking seafood rice pie bordered with aloe vera leaves.

If you want to see more photos of girls in nurses uniform.

http://www.drs.com.tw/image.asp

Unfortunately, the site is in Chinese. These pictures are more interesting - activities - you can take shots by syringes

http://www.drs.com.tw/activity.asp

Taipei's restaurant

Xin Sheng north road, section 3, no. 7 --0 2 2587-3226

There's also a restaurant in Xinbei, nr Xinju.

All n all it looks great fun. Perhaps, a chance to see the wilder side of Taipei-ians. Girls in uniform, mmm, there's also something on the flyer 'show girl', which is probably some tame dance by a girl dressed up a nurse. The shot from a syringe has to be tried.

Playboy Girls

playboy girls pink sketch
Originally uploaded by orange tuesday

These girls were outside Zhongshan MRT last Sunday. Despite their bunny outfits, they were stuff like CDs, cough sweets, toilet paper and perfumes for shops at the nearly underground mall.

I guess that Taiwan. Next to them were some nurses, well at least girls dressed up as nurses, who were promoting the hospital bar/restaurant. They have a girl show too, apparently.

flower powered city1

flower powered city1
Originally uploaded by orange tuesday

This is just messing around with maps. This is a transit map at Xinpu MRT. I didn't realise how useful they were, until I used this one at Xinpu. From the map, I was able to get a bus to Sansia - it was great!

Longshan Temple

Saturday 11th, there was a lot of activity in front of Longshan temple. Many shrines had been erected, there were fortune tellers, lots of people sat in groups and making paper offerings, herbal tea on offer but the thing that stuck out most, was the public displays of religion.

I feel that the Taiwaneses are quite private about their religion. They have a shrine at home and sometimes go to the temple but it's very different to how Christains do things. Public 'services' at temples are fairly rare. Most people go, do their thing, maybe asks the gods a questions and throw moon stones, and then go.

Anyway, it was different that day. There was healing, chanting and dancing. In the group photo, a lively group kept going for several hours, dancing around some symbols on the floor. Later that evening, a disabled boy was wheeled around with the people clapping, dancing and chanting. I'm not sure who they were but I'm guessing that they might be the Falun Dada (Gong).