Mountain Paths and Missionaries

At 6 AM yesterday morning we woke up to take the bus into Alishan.  Despite this early hour Chiayi was as busy as it had been when we arrived at 2 in the afternoon the previous day.  There were a lot of people waiting to catch the bus, not just to Alishan, but to school and work apprently.  McDonalds was also open and we enjoyed our first (and last) McDonalds breakfast in Taiwan on the bus .  The bus ride took an hour and a half.  It went from Chiayi to the rolling(ish) countryside and into the mountains.  In the mountains it weaved its way up narrow mountain road, turing right almost 180, then left, then right again in rapid succession.  This was alright, if not overly pleasant, but when it did so rapidly beside narrow barriers overlooking sheer drops which got higher and higher the further we travelled, it became a bit less pleasant.  But we survived and arrived in good spirits.  The bus driver, afterall, had to make this trip 4 times daily, probably 6 days a week.  I imagine we were in good hands.

Where we arrived was not Alishan National Park itself but a small and scenic town slightly off the regular road to the park, called Fenchihu.  The mountain air was incredibly refreshing compared to the smog of Chiayi and we spent several moments just breathing it in.  Then we went to the bathroom.  We had originally intended to walk to Fenchihu from Rueli, another town from off the regular Alishan route but decided against it upon waking up and remembering just how heavy our backpacks actually were.  So Fenchihu for the day it was.  The Lonely Planet told us there was one really cheap place to spend the night in Fenchihu and that was... The Catholic Mission, which had a hostel.  Unfortunately The Lonely Planet was a little vague on how to find the place and we walked around the town of Fenchihu once entirely, before turning on a road we had neglected to go down previously which led right to it.

The Catholic Hostel was 500NT (about $15 CND) a night for two beds in a dorm (there were private double bedrooms for the same price, but they were not offered to us...).  We were greeted by a pleasant Swiss Nun who passed us off to the happy/grumpy Polish priest, who told us to call him Vlad after we butchered his name on the first attempt at saying it.  Besides  showing us our room (we were the only ones staying there so we had a dorm room to ourselves) I never saw him leave the small room at the back of the church.  He was pleasant enough, he had been in Taiwan for 15 years, the last 7 of which he had spent in Fenchihu, though he encouraged us not to ask him about what he thought about Taiwan or its food or its people, which made our conversations pretty short.  Just before we left to explore the trails of Fenchihu, he told us to watch out for snakes along the paths.  Or just about anywhere in the town.  He explained that he had been bitten by a snake just about where we were standing and spent 3 weeks in the hospital.  We were extra sensitive to any sounds at ankle level for the rest of our stay in Fenchihu.

Before we wandered the paths, Nancy made friends with a strange bird in a cage near the old streets of Fenchihu.  I'm certain it said "Nihao" (hello in Chinese as I'm sure everyone knows).  It also could make a strange alarm clock like sound.  It always fluffed up its feathers before "speaking" to us.  We named it Scrumps.

The paths themselves were in nice dense bamboo forests, with some great views down the mountain.  There was a Japanese shrine (ruined) in the area and a small Doaist temple of the (an, never exactly sure on that note) Earth God at the end of the path, with a small sign on it that announced the Taiwanese Government offered free Wifi here.  I guess the/an Earth God wants the internet too.  We saw almost no wildlife on our walk (squirles don't really count), but we heard a lot of birds and I almost stepped on a frog (which gave me and Nancy quite the start, though the frog seemed unfazed).  No snakes fortunately.  There was also a grove of square bamboo, which is exactly what it sounds like.  The bamboo shoots were actually square. 

As the day came to a close we wandered back to the Catholic Hostel and sat at their picnic tables to do some reading and writing.  A mist began to roll in as we sat there and looking out over the mountain and town that we could see I was reminded of my favorite form of Chinese landscape painting.  The mist covered most of the town, but the mountains themselves loomed above like barely seen giants.  It was a lovely seen to behold in the last light of day.  After day turned to night in what can actually be termed a sleepy mountain town in Taiwan, we asked the Sister where we could get food.  She suggested... 7/11.

7/11 kind of killed the idyllic romance of the town, but it also had food we could order without lots of crazy gestures and irritation.  A microwaved rice curry is not exactly the pinnicle of health, but we enjoyed it and it filled us up. We did not awake hungry in the middle of the night.

To say that we had beds is a little misleading as what actually had at the Catholic Hostel was a miniture mattress, a pillow and a blanket on the floor.  But we weren't complaining for 500NT a night.  We slept quite well.

This morning we got the best sung swa dan bing (loosely onion cake with egg) we've had in Taiwan from a guy by the bus station, who did not seem all there.  He mubled to himself in Chinese as he fried the food and did not seem entirely sure how much we owed him for the food.  But he sure knew how to make a sung swa.  We had coffee from 7/11  We decided that going into Alishan itself would be a waste of money as the main reason we were there was the train that went to the summit of Ali mountain and whether it would be running was unknown.  The bus ride into the park, the train and then the ride back to Chiayi would not only be rather expensive, we would also have to do all our activities there before 3 which was (ridiculously) when the last bus left from the park.  It was a little dissapointing to have to leave without riding the train up the mountain, but we decided that it would be best to come when the status of the train was more certain.

We are now in Taichung, which is also kind of disapointing.