Pottery, tourist tat and rain

This weekend was rather exciting (by my somewhat lowered standards anyway) - my roommate from training, Kim, came up for the weekend. I haven't seen her for a while, because she works in Chang Hua, which is a couple of hours south. Saturday night was fun - we met in Taipei and ate a huge shabu shabu. Shabu shabu is one of my favourite things about Taiwan - a load of veggies and stuff that you cook in your own soup pot in your table. It's so, so much fun! We mosied around the night markets - truly a sight to see. Alleyways lined with stalls selling literally anything you could want - shoes, clothes, music, dvds, tea sets, bags, home junk, and countless food vendors. They're pretty chaotic places! I'll try to get some photos of one soon.

01 - Shan Jia Temple

Sunday was a proper tourist day - Kim and I hauled ourselves to Yingge, a small town near Taoyuan that's famous for making ceramics and pottery. Tea pots and cups mainly, this being Taiwan. There's a couple of "old" streets lined with shops selling various bits and bobs. "Old" is a bit of a misnomer - The streets were built for tourists fairly recently, but they look pretty anyway. It was nice wandering looking at all the things - there's hugely expensive, beautiful pieces, but mass produced junk too. It was absolutely tipping it down though, which put a bit of a dampener on things (hahaha, i'm a comic genius). The most interesting bit was walking through an old tunnel kiln - basically what it says it is. Instead of different kilns, the pots rolled through the tunnel to preheat, bake and cool. It was rather eerie - very long and very narrow, with lots of tiny alcoves everywhere. And obviously, it emerged into a shop!

02 - Kim in Yingge's old street

The shops was especially tatty - most of the stuff wasn't even pottery (Tasteful bead covers for your bed or couch anyone?), but we can forgive them that, because we got to make a pot ourselves! It was so much fun - gloriously messy! It felt so nice and squishy, it was such a temptation just to sit there and squash it again and again for the nice squelchy feeling. I'm not sure if Kim would have appreciated me sitting next to her if I did that though! It ended up looking OK - I get to go pick them up in a week or so.

It was really good to see Kim again. I've been feeling a bit lonely recently - all my friends are working in the evenings, and I work in the mornings when they're free, so there's not much going on usually. It was nice to have a friendly face around again, it reminded me that there are good things to this island. We went a stop too far on the train and ended up in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere - just a couple of streets at the bottom of the mountain, but it was so beautiful. Living in the city -  a huge sprawling mass of people and pollution, I'd forgotten that Taiwan is such a beautiful place. The mountains were such a lush green, with two huge temples in the side not far from town. It was even pretty in the rain!