All Albums Taiwan

With going to Taiwan in late summer (end of September), we hoped for it to be nice weather and not so hot anymore. It did not quite work out like this, since it was typhoon season then. So the weather was not too great in the beginning, cloudy. From Taipeh we had planned to go up to Yangmingshan for some hiking, but we only watched the pouring rain from the bus and returned down to Taipeh, where it was actually dry, and went to the palace museum instead. It stayed mostly cloudy with a bit of sun for the first week, but in the end, this wasn't so bad, because when the clouds lifted, it became a bit too hot when we were in Kaohsiung in the south. From there we went up into the mountains, where it was a nice climate again. The typhoon Krathon was supposed to enter from Kaohsiung and make its way north past Taipeh within a couple of days, but it slowed, weakened, only went around Kaohsiung and left again southwards. Lucky for us, lucky for Taiwan. When we walked through Kaohsiung, many trees were blown over, some destroying cars, but no major damage beyond the trees really. We spend one more day in Taichung in the middle, waiting for Krathon to leave, so one delay is all, not too bad. That day was nicely spend just walking around Taichung. Starting in Taipeh, we of course went up on the Taipeh 101 tower. The Raohe street with an lively temple and a night market with delicous food was the highlight. Then we went for one day up to Jiufen and Shifen. Jiufen is known for its tea houses, so we had a kind of a tea ceremony, which was nice, then also went to an impressively huge temple. In Shifen we let a sky lantern go into the sky, with some wishes we wrote on the four sides for health, money, career, and happiness. We had to let it start in some rain at sunset, but it sill went up nicely, well visible for long in the darkening sky, amongst other lanterns. By high speed rail we arrived in Taichung, where a very impressive landmark was the National Taichung Theater by a Japanese architect and opened in 2016. There wasn't any interesting show while we were there, unfortunately, but they do mostly music and theater on three different stages in the same building. In Tainan, the hightlights were the Tainan Art Museum, a great building, opened in 2019 with 19 galleries named by letters, giving a well structured space for exhibitions. Also the Anping tree house was nice, where Banyan trees have taken over a historic warehouse buiding from the times where this was an early port for colonial trade. Tainan altogehter is a very welcoming, lively city with a great atmosphere, parks, markets. Kaohsiung is more trying to impress by status symbols of a metropolis. It works in a way, but appears a bit more anonymous. The new National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts was impressive in size, housing a modern opera stage, a philharmonic, and a theater. Nicer really was the park around it, unfortunately badly affected by the typhoon, so the independent art center lost a lot of the open air exhibits. For the remaing six days and the way back throught the mountainous center of Taiwan, we got a car. On the way into the mountains we stopped at the biggest temple I have ever seen, Fo Guang Shan, due to time restrictions even missing out on the even bigger temple site right next to it. Arriving in the Alishan area, we managed to do the Eryanping trail before nightfall, or just in time to see the sunset at the top. Next morning we got up at 3:15 to start the 1 hr drive up to Alishan visitor center, take the train at 5:00 up to the moutain, and watch sunrise from the top at around 2500m, with clear blue sky. While I was on the Tashan trail, the clouds built up again. We were trying for another sunset from Eryanping, but this time it was all rain. Next day we spend the day driving into the mountains and slowly making our way to Sun-Moon Lake, with many stops here and there, for views, photos, but then also for inspecting a farming landscape, where I discovered my favorite fruit, the Maracuya. At Sun-Moon-Lake we still managed to do a boat trip around the lake before sunset. Next day, we rented bikes and cycled around a lake, a 35 km route with many stops at various temples, lookouts, cozy spots on the lake side. In the evening we drove on to Dahu, next to the Manabang Shan, where we hiked the next day, then drove on to Taoyuang, to sleep near the airport. On the last day, we went to the Chian-Kai-Shek park where all his statues are displayed that were not wanted across the country anymore, somewhere between amusing and frightening. His actual body is also still here, protected by guards, as he his still waiting for the Kuomintang to take over China mainland again so he could get buried near his mother's grave. We then stopped in Daxi old town for a visit of the (busy) old shopping street, then briefly in an art center in Taoyuan, to take our flight back in the evening.

Sri Lanka