On Top of The World

After the absolutely idyllic days I spent in Taiwan it was time to return, briefly, to the considerably less idyllic mainland. Just kidding, I love it here as well, but it's true without a doubt that people in general are less friendly and everything's just a smidge dirtier. Also, there are noticeably more uniformed policemen around, something that I noticed as soon as I arrived at Kunming airport. I only spent one night there so I sadly didn't have enough time to actually see the city. It's definitely on my list of places to visit though.

I arrived at Kathmandu airport on the 6th February. It's the cutest airport I've ever been to, the border officers were all standing off to the side in a little group drinking tea and they just sent two guys to deal with everyone who had been on my plane. I then had my first encounter with Nepalese traffic, which left me in a state of mild shock. First of all, they surprisingly drive on the left side of the road (you can tell I did a great deal of planning on this trip) and also they seem to not really care about things like lanes or traffic lights. Add to that the fact that the roads are sometimes just dirt and always full of potholes and you can imagine my reaction. I got to the hostel safely, if a little shaken up, had my first of many delicious meals and went to bed.

The only decent plane picture I have.

My friend and classmate Fede who travelled through Nepal with me was meant to arrive at noon the following day. Timetable changes and flight delays however led to his arrival being moved to 10 in the evening. So since I had an entire day to spend on my own, I decided to join two German travellers staying in the hostel on a walking tour through Kathmandu. We saw a lot of small temples and shrines and I slowly started getting used to the crazy traffic. The tour ultimately brought us to Durbar square, the plaza in front of the old royal palace. It was really fun walking through the alleys of Kathmandu. A lot of them are filled with small shops selling cloth or spices, the atmosphere is incredibly vibrant and alive. In the evening I went to get a Nepalese SIM card. You'd think that getting a phone card would be pretty easy but nope, think again! In Nepal, you need to give the phone company a passport-sized picture of yourself, your thumb prints (?) and also your grandfather's name (???). It was all very mysterious but the important thing is that I did get my SIM card in the end. After returning back to the hostel, I stayed up waiting for Fede who finally arrived around midnight. He was welcomed with a bottle of delicious Gorkha beer, in my opinion the best beer in Nepal :) maybe even the best beer in Asia.

Random chickens everywhere.

Also pigeons.

I love these little old balconies.

Durbar square. With pigeons.

On the next day we had our first experience with taking public transport in Nepal. We had to take a "micro-bus" to a suburb of Kathmandu because we wanted to meet up with Bharat, one of the friends I made while studying the IB in Hastings. So what exactly is a micro-bus, you might ask. Well, it's essentially a van with space enough for seven people to sit. These drive along fixed routes through the city and can pick up passengers anywhere. To get onto the bus, you just wave at it to stop it and then hope you can still cram in. They usually get very crowded, but at least they always have music playing to make the ride more enjoyable. The most unfortunate person in all of this surely is the ticket boy. He hangs out the door, shouting the destination of the bus at potential passengers. Once a person gets onto the bus, he collects money from them and then returns to his precarious position. I hope that using that description you can envision what a bus ride in Nepal is like, at least a little bit. To me it was kind of fun once you got onto the bus, the problem was finding the correct one. With no knowledge of the language, our only chance was to ask strangers on the street and hope that they would point us to the right bus. For your information by the way, we somehow managed to not get onto a wrong bus during our two weeks in Nepal. Now, back to the show. We met up with Bharat in Kirtipur, the district of Kathmandu where he currently lives and first were treated to a delicious lunch at his home. The traditional food of Nepal is called Dal Bhat, and because I'm too lazy to explain what it consists of right now, you're welcome to read this. It's great food and I really miss it. After lunch, we walked to the Chovar gorge through which the Kathmandu valley's water drains. According to legend, a Bodhisattva whose name I don't remember (don't judge me) divided the rock with his sword to drain the lake that was covering the valley. From there we took a bus to Swayambhunath (a name I miraculously do remember), more simply called the monkey temple. It's a temple complex built on a hill overlooking Kathmandu and it has both Buddhist and Hinduist buildings, the main building though is a big Buddhist stupa. The place is also called monkey temple because, as you might guess, there are monkeys everywhere. They hang around waiting for people to feed them which they do, because apparently it's good karma. The place was beautiful and I'm so thankful for Bharat for showing us around :)

The gorge.

View from Swayambhunath.

The stupa itself.

Sexy group picture. Lesson of the day: Don't ask random Nepalese people to take a picture of you.

The next day we spent at Bodhnath visiting one of the largest stupas in the world. After circling it about five times (always in clockwise direction), we decided to walk to Kopan monastery, located on a mountain with a very nice view. To get back to our hostel we had to catch one last micro-bus and after a very bumpy ride we were back in the relative safety of Kathmandu. We spent the night playing poker with a few people also staying in our hostel. Sadly, it ended in food poisoning for me. Apparently it's just a thing that happens to you in Nepal.

The watchful eyes of Buddha.

Pretty, right?

View from the monastery.

So that were my first few days in Nepal. Next stop - Pokhara!

Nepali Word of the Day: नमस्ते namaste, Hello! Also apparently it means goodbye.

I've Had the Time of My Life

Hey guys! This will be the last post about my travels through Taiwan. What a ride it's been, right?

Before I boarded my plane to Nepal, I had two days left to spend in Taipei. On the first day I decided to take the Maokong 猫空 gondola up a mountain which has a lot of tea plantations. The ride up there takes about 30 minutes and it's really beautiful. You can see a lot of Taipei and its surrounding mountains from the gondola. Also, every gondola has a picture of Hello Kitty on it, making my inner child very happy. Once I arrived at the top, I spent some time exploring the area and enjoying the view. Afterwards I walked for about an hour to arrive at the Zhinan 指南 Temple just in time to see the sun setting over Taipei.

One of the small tea plantations.

The path to the temple.

The last sunset picture, I promise.

Proof of the whole Hello Kitty thing.

On the next day me and Caro (the friend I was visiting there) took the bus to Yehliu 野柳 Geopark, a stretch of the shore that has been eroded to form bizarre rock formations. It was a lot of fun walking around the park trying to find formations such as Cute Princess or Queen's Head. Afterwards we boarded another bus to the small village Jiufen 九份. In the early 20th century, there were busy gold mines close to the village. Nowadays, its narrow alleys are filled with uncountable teahouses and restaurants. It also has a great view of the ocean. We walked around for about 2 hours and then waited for the bus back to Taipei for another hour. Over the course of the day we read almost half a book on my friend's Kindle. Well, mostly I read and she listened :)

Cute Princess.

Two cute princesses.

The cutest princess.

I don't know if this one even has a name.

Queen's Head.

The view from Jiufen.

Alley filled with teahouses.

And that was it, the next day had me saying bye-bye to Taiwan and hello again to mainland China. In closing I'd like to say that Taiwan has been one of my favourite places to travel in. The people there were always helpful, public transport works really well and there's cheap and good food everywhere. If you want to travel to the Chinese speaking world, Taiwan is probably a good place to start. You get the language with less chaos.

So thank you Taiwan and thank you Caro! I had a great time with you! This has probably been the best January of my life so far.

Chinese Word of the Day: 开学 kaixue, start of the semester. :'(

City by the Lake

Congratulations! You've almost made your way around the whole island with me! The last stop before our glorious return to Taipei: Taichung 台中.

Side note: You might have noticed that an awful lot of place names start with the syllable Tai-. This is because apparently Taiwanese people had no creativity whatsoever when naming their cities. Literally, Taipei means Taiwan North, Taitung means Taiwan East, Tainan means Taiwan South and Taichung means Taiwan Middle. At least it makes thing easy, after all in China, Beijing also literally means North capital and Nanjing means South capital. /end side note.

First, some friendly advice to any of you who plan to someday visit Taichung: Definitely get a public transport card! I should have gotten one on my first day in Taiwan, it's so convenient! You get one card that you can top up and then use in almost every city in Taiwan. Now you might say "no it's alright, I'll just use cash." Which is valid, I did fine with that, at least until I got to Taichung. This city is downright discriminatory towards people without a card :D They have a rapid bus system which you can only access with a card. Also, if you take the normal bus, you have to get a disposable plastic card from the driver every time. You swipe it once when you get on the bus and then again when you get off. Then you need to frantically search for correct change because everybody is just waiting for that stupid foreigner to get off the bus. The best thing? If you have a public transport card, any bus you take is free for the first 8 kilometres. And 8 kilometres is far! If only I had had a card, I wouldn't have paid anything for getting around Taichung. So much for that anyway.

On my first day there, I visited the Museum for Natural Sciences, more specifically the museum's botanical garden. I'm a sucker for botanical gardens, and this one was especially beautiful. They created a "fake" tropical rainforest inside a greenhouse and around the greenhouse, there is a park that introduces the different vegetation zones of Taiwan. After walking around there for a while, I decided to go to the Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. To connect the two museums the city constructed a green corridor, 3km long, called the Calligraphy Greenway. It's an amazing experience walking through it, there are street artists everywhere. I heard a lot of good music and saw a lot of great dancers. I also stumbled across a small outdoor museum called CMP Block Museum of Arts. At the time they were organizing a public arts project. Every visitor was given a glass to decorate. At night they put candles in the glasses to light up an entire meadow. It was really beautiful, and of course I also decorated a glass. Although it was already quite late when I made it to the Museum of Fine Arts, I still decided to go in and have a look around. What a great decision that was, because for the first time in my life (probably) I got to see modern art by Asian artists. Very cool, seeing works by artists whose names I've never heard before. I'll talk about one of them briefly here, because I really liked his paintings. The artist's name is Sun Yinglun 孫英倫, he paints images of nature, sometimes realistic sometimes abstracted. He uses both Western and Chinese painting techniques in his works. I was really fascinated by his works, they seem to capture ephemeral moments perfectly. Sadly I didn't find any of his paintings online and I also didn't take any pictures inside the museum, but I still have the exhibition leaflet :D If any of you want to know more about him, Skype? Anyway, it was a great day. I feel like I picked good museums to visit, even though I did only visit two during my time in Taiwan. (Don't judge me, mum and dad.)

Inside the greenhouse.

Outside the greenhouse.

This is how they arranged the glasses.

Now please enjoy my amazing work of art from all possible angles :D

I guess for those of you that don't speak German or Chinese, I should translate it into English as well. The first bird thinks "Pasta", the next one tells him ”It will be ready in no time" and the last one asks "And what about me?"

A part of the green corridor.

On my second day in Taichung I took a little bus trip to the place that was the actual reason for me visiting the city: The Sun-Moon-Lake 日月潭. Its name stems from the fact that one half of the lake looks like the sun and the other half looks like the moon. First I took a boat across the lake and walked up to the Xuanguang 玄光 temple. From there one can overlook much of the lake and the surrounding mountains. From there I took another boat to Ita Thao, where I visited a so-called butterfly garden which contained a grand total of two butterflies. I then rode the bus to the Wenwu temple where students come to pray for good exam results. Luckily, I didn't have any exams that needed praying at the time, so I proceeded to walk down the Steps of the Year (365 steps, each one engraved with celebrities born on the particular day) and then along the lakeside to get back to my starting point. On the way I walked past quite a few terrifyingly large spider webs but luckily also past breathtaking views to make up for it. All in all, a great day with great weather.

The view upon arrival.

A picture with this stone is apparently the only valid proof that you were really there...

...which is why...

...everyone was queuing up for it.

The view from the temple.

Butterfly #1.

#2.

At Wenwu temple.

The Steps of the Year.

Walking along the lakeside.

One last picture before I leave.

And that was it, 4 hours later I was back in Taipei. Fear not though, there will be one more post detailing my last days there. For now I leave you with a kiss and a hug :*

Oh also, this is probably only of interest to the Germans among you: On one of the busses I took, they were showing a Til Schweiger movie. Kokowääh 2 if I'm not mistaken. Here's the picture to prove it.

There was no escape.

Chinese Word of the Day: 烟花 yanhua, fireworks. There's been a lot of those lately, new year and all. Luckily I can sleep through almost anything.

Old Town

On with the show! In this post I will tell you about the day I spent in Tainan 台南, the city where Dutch people first landed when they came to Taiwan. They established a fort on the coast to defend their trading post and called it Fort Zeelandia. Later when Taiwan was ruled by China during the Qing dynasty and Japan in the early 20th century, these countries left their traces in the city as well. I rented a bicycle and rode around the city, looking for these buildings which tell Taiwan's story.

I started my exploration in Tainan's city centre, where the Qing dynasty left its traces. There are a lot (!) of temples dotted around the city, it felt like every 10 metres there was a new one. There is also a fort which was built by the Dutch and later used as the seat of government by Taiwanese rulers. Best of all, there are little stalls selling food everywhere :)

Chinese roof design Dutchified.

Inside the temple for a deity of studying.

The Dutch fort.

Chinese roof design - traditional.

After walking around the centre for about three hours, I rode my bicycle to Anping 安平, the district of Tainan with the most traces of Dutch rule. There are trader's mansions, even  one built by a German trader. One of these mansions is particularly interesting, because as it fell into disrepair, trees started growing in and around the house. Now, the trees have started to assume the shape of the house, while the house is slowly disintegrating. It's a hauntingly beautiful place. Of course I visited the old Dutch castle, which was pretty surreal. You just don't really expect to see European architecture in Asia.

The "Tree House".

Dutch trader.

German trader.

The Dutch castle.

Of course, there are temples sprinkled between the European mansions.

My last stop of the day was the Taijiang 台江 National Park. I didn't really know what expected me there, since I only went because my host had recommended it to me. What I found surprised me to no end. Turns out Tainan has a mangrove forest. The shores of the Taijiang river are brimming with mangrove trees that have grown to form a natural green tunnel. Boats take visitors through the tunnel, a great experience. I think that anyone who comes to Taiwan should definitely go there, even if it's probably not in travel guide books.

I saw this sunset by chance, my boat tour finished just as the sun began to set.

A shame that I only spent one day in Tainan, it was a very nice city. The only disadvantage it has is that there are too many scooters on the streets for my taste. Riding around with a bicycle is pretty stressful, since these motorbikes go past on your left and your right and you just have to trust them to not murder you. If I go there again, I'll probably rent a scooter myself :D Next: Taichung.

Chinese Word of the Day: 日落 riluo, sunset. I figure since I'm showing you so many sunsets, you should know the word for it as well.