CNY Roadtrip to a Land of Mystery

  Down the West coast and back, Taiwan
Sunday, February 25, 2007

Shin Dien Quai Ler! Or, to those who don't speak crappy Chinese, Happy New Year! CNY hasn't been as crazy as I was led to believe it would be - a lot of shops shut, and lots of firecrackers and fireworks, but not a great deal else. But, it was a free week off work, so can't complain.

I really, really, needed a holiday. Things have been starting to get to me a bit - my job, my lack of social life, not understanding the culture... So, I trundled down the coast to visit a friend from training, Iani (sounds like ya-NEE). Iani lives in the lovely city of Taichong - it's a couple of hours down the coast from here, it doesn't rain, and there's so many people. It has a completely different feel to Taipei, and is a world apart from Taoyuan. My manager said that it doesn't really feel like Taiwan - to be honest, I think this is the basis of the appeal! It's a lot easier to do 'familiar' things here - hang  out in a proper pub, go to a nice restaurant, sit in the park, go to museums, just normal things - so the huge mountain of bewildering things doesn't seem such an obstacle. We had a few fun days forgetting we were in Taiwan - a little bit of drinking, lots of movie watching, then headed off on our CNY Expedition to Mystery Land.

Early early one morning (so early it was almost really late late one night) Iani and I, with her

01 - Corel, Iani and meeeeeee!

housemates Wes and Corel, bundled ourselves onto a train bound for the southern city of Kaoshuing (sounds like Gow-shung). Kaoshuing is the second biggest city in Taiwan, but it really didn't seem like it. It kind of had a dusty wild west feel to it - everything was pretty empty and deserted because of New Year, so it felt rather eerie wandering through the streets, just a bunch of sweaty foreigners clutching backpacks and sleeping bags.

02 - Kaoshuing

 Kaoshuing really isn't too exciting - we had a walk down the river, watched a crappy movie just for something to do, had a coffee, looked around a temple or two, then shimmied even further down the coast, to the small town of Fangliao. When you leave Kaoshiung on the train, the buildings fall away almost straight away, leaving endless farmland - lush palm groves, fruit trees, pools that we think are shrimp farms (definitely something yuccky anyway), houses that look like they're floating away on the water, and to one side huge craggy mountains rising up. Fangliao is the furthest south the train goes before swinging east across the island - but this doesn't mean that it's a big place!

03 - Ocean

However, I did have a couple of 'travel firsts' there - first time crossing the Tropic of Cancer (well, technically i snored my way over it on the way to Kaoshuing) so it's the furthest south I've been so far, and first proper sight of the Taiwan Strait. Admittedly, that one isn't exactly the most exciting thing...

"Hmm", I hear you ask, "what the hell were you doing in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere?" Or maybe not, this isn't too riveting a read... Our trip down into uncharted territory was to pay a visit to the wonderfully named Mystery Land - a mini music festival being held at an aboriginal village up the mountains that rise behind the town. We stumbled out of the train to the bar across the road owned by the festival organiser - supposedly shuttle buses up the mountain were starting at 4. Three hours, a few beers, a sunset, a walk to the sea, and a lot of chatting to random people later, we crammed in people, dogs, backpacks and guitars into the bus for the ride up the mountain. The first night at the festival was fantastic - there were only about 30 or 40 people there by then, the stars were out, the air was clean, and the fire was toasty warm. We spent the night chatting and  listening to people play acoustic guitar and bongos before crawling into our huuuuge tent that we rented space in. We didn't even have to put it up ourselves, wonderful!

The next day was beautiful - we woke up (silly silly early) to the most amazing view over the mountains and all the way down to the see. It had been too dark the night before to see just how close to the edge of the cliff we were perched - quite scary considering how many drunkards were stumbling around. Lots more people started turning up, bringing more sun with them.

11 - Mountains

Really, it was scarily hot - it's only February, and everyone spent most of the day hiding from the baking sun under make shift gazebos (sounds far more elegant than what the were - sheets of tarp tied to the fence and propped up with sticks). I thought I was actually going to melt into a soggy little puddle, it was awful! This summer's going to be a scorcher by the looks of things, eek. I may even get some sort of tan, heaven forbid! Maybe I'll go local and parade around permanently under an umbrella.

The rest of the festival wasn't too eventful - a lot of reading, playing card games, wandering around the village, hiding from the sun, eating many many ice lollies and veggie burgers, and a little bit of dancing before collapsing into bed. Most of the music wasn't too good - a lot of foreigner bands, and a few local ones. There was a pair of guys doing live breaks - that was a lot of fun, drunkenly bouncing up and down pretending I was back in Bristol, even though I think Iani and I were one of the very few to enjoy them. There was an American band called Shambala - they did a lot of talking and not a lot of playing music, and a Ghanaian band that did a lot of drumming. I was still hiding under the 'gazebo' though, too much sun around for me.

Something very very odd happened on the second night that made up for the lack of musical amusement - for your enjoyment and wonder, I present to you the Tale of the Random Russian:
After dancing my tired little feet off to the guys playing breaks, Iani and I stumble back to the tent to discover a random guy snoozing away, surrounded by a veritable mountain of bags. That's ok - there's space for 6, we were only 4 - but he'd moved all of our stuff around all over the place. Not surprisingly, he woke up while we were trying to find our sleeping bags that he'd thrown into a heap - he's all surprised that there's other people sleeping there (but all the stuff gave that away quite clearly...) 

04 - Mystery Land Festival

and demands to see our tickets for the tent! There are no tickets, we tell him, then he starts ranting that his 4 friends will be coming, we have to move! Um, nooo..... Then, and this is where is gets really freaky, he starts mumbling to himself in Russian. A load of Russians!! Up a mountain in Taiwan!! (not sure why that's weirder than a load of other random foreigners up a mountain in Taiwan...) He's moaning about fitting US in HIS tent, so I turn around and tell him in my terrible, neglected, drunken Russian that we were here already, there's 4 of us, and that 2 of his friends can sleep in the tent next door. You should have seen the look on his face - he went from confused to completely, utterly befuddled in about two seconds! I have the power!! Anyway, we just gave up and left him to it, but poor Corel came in to find out the Random Russian was sleeping under his sleeping bag! So, Corel rightfully demanded he move, when the Random Russian jumped up in a huff screaming about these crazy foreigners, came back with some friends that grabbed a load of stuff (nearly setting fire to the tent with their lighters in the process) and scampered off, never to be seen again. They

05 - Terracotta Army Exhibit

disappeared in the morning before anyone saw them. We woke up to find it had all been a dream!  What a fitting ending to the tale that would be - but alas, it turned out that a couple of other people had heard them storming around too. Good on the lack of hallucination front though.

Not a lot else happened - we went back to Taichong, did mediocre in a pub quiz, saw some dinosaurs and the terracotta warriors at teh science museum, which was pretty cool, then I reluctantly dragged myself back up to dreary Neili to jump straight back into the slog of work. So, as I've run out of things to say, I'll say Zaijian till the next 'exciting' installment of my explorations.