Next section - the Southern Cross Highway (No.20)
Trip Start
Nov 06, 2006
1
56
99
Trip End
Dec 31, 2008
Bulao,
Taiwan
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Total Distance: 0 km
Altitude: 0m
A new start, this time the Southern Cross Highway No 20. The main reason is that the temperature in the mountain should be cooler. The humid summer temperature in the southern low lands has been the reason why I gave up my walk in Kenting at beginning of summer.
This time Tasai Chin will accompany me for the cross island walk. At 7:00am we meet at the train station and at 7:30 am we are on our way. The train only stops twice, in Taichung and Changhua, so we are in Tainan at 11:10 am. It just begins to rain when we arrive.We have two hours to spend before the bus goes towards road No
Temple in Tainan
. 20. Beside eating lunch we visit two temples, a Guan Yin temple from about 1650 and a temple belonging to a family Wu. Tainan, the old capital, has a lot to offer, such as old temples and a fort. It's worth to stay longer than we do now, but we can't be side-tracked every time.The small bus shall take us to Laonung ( 217 NTD ) - bus station near train station, on left when you get out. We pass through many villages and by the time is gets more hilly. As the bus driver once stops to check for a strange sound ( he can't find the problem and by this not the solution). I only hope the sound has nothing to do with the brakes because we will definitely need them. We pass through a village Yutchin famous for mangoes and Dcha-Chien for taro ( like a potato, just different ) - we buy and enjoy taro ice cream - and bamboo. As we have no clue where we are we ask a man where to get off and he says he will tell us. He then presses the button and off we are in pouring rain. A police car is parked beside the bus station and a moment later a police man exits a shop. We ask him the way to Bulao or Baulai villages, the way we want to walk originally. He offers to bring us there in his SUV police car, which we accept in the the never ending rain. On the way we tell him what we intend to do and he warns us not to go if the rain continues. Even now it is quite dangerous as the week-long rain has saturated the earth on the slopes and land- and rock slides are frequent
Temple in Tainan.
. We promise to take his advise and hope for the best in weather. After about 8 km we are in Bulao. This small village has some hot spring hotels and homestays. The policeman recommends to us one place with small huts and a hot spring pool area and tells the lao ban ( boss ) " Pien Yi " or cheap. So we get a hut with bath and TV and free use of hot spring pool and spa for 1000 a night. We thell them that we just arrived and wanted a look around the village first. We see a very cute restaurant which has won prices for it's creative cooking ( see photo of garden ). Other places are more expensive and it is now raining cats and dogs with the water running across the street in small streams, so we decide to take the first offer. After a rest we enjoy soaking in the hot spring pool and get tickled and pounded by the spa facilities. Dinner is in a small place where we eat rice mixed with cabbage and Yang Rou ( lamb meet ).That's pretty much the first day - weather can only get better from here on. Let's hope. The weather makes a bit depressed as we do not know what to expect.
