I had a much better night last night. I decided to stay in Fulong for another night and asked about that at the hotel. My room, however, had been rented out already. I figured that would be the case, and I hadn’t gotten my hopes up. Luckily, they had other rooms that were still available and luckier still, they were free right now and in an act unheard of in the history of hotel rooms, I was allowed to simply pack up and move out of my current room and move into my new empty one at eight in the morning. The hotel owner/manager was very apologetic about this new room. It was in the basement and didn’t have a window. It was NT$800 instead of NT$1,000. I didn’t mind in the slightest. My window offered far more trouble in the way of traffic noise than it did any advantage in view. My new room was one of several down a long narrow hallway. Being escorted there had the feeling of being imprisoned in a dungeon. But, as any dungeon dweller will tell you, dungeons have their advantages – they’re dark and quiet. Down there, the trucks were barely audible. I could occasionally feel the building tremble with their passage but I almost never heard a noise. And my mattress was a slight improvement. Call it plywood as opposed to concrete. And that extra bit of “softness” helped me sleep a bit better. I wouldn’t say well. I’m not the world’s great sleeper by any means – a huge problem in my life. My definition of a good night’s sleep is if in the morning I am not more exhausted than when I went to bed. So I got a good night’s rest, but that was by no means an uninterrupted night. I’d like to train a camera on me one night to capture the antics. I’d guess that I flip over and change positions twenty times an hour. It feels that way anyway.

After I made the move into my new room, I slathered on a bunch of sunscreen – being careful to cover all the areas I’d missed the day before. The view in the mirror, I have to say, was not pleasant. I know I’m a white guy and after a long winter of indoor activities, I have palish skin, but you need a bit of contrast to fully appreciate the pasty hue in all its glory. In the mirror, I was presented with some bright red patches, some slightly dark patches, and then a viciously white torso. I looked awful, like a garden slug you’d just dug out from under a wet rock. I looked like someone who should be hospitalized instead of setting off for a day’s adventures.

My first goal for the day was to get up high and get a view of my surroundings. While walking around, I’d seen a temple high on a nearby mountain, and I turned my scooter in that direction. It was just outside of Fulong, and I was soon winding my way up the steep access road. I was soon rewarded with wonderful views of Fulong, the river, the beach, and the surrounding mountains. I could finally get a good sense of the layout of the place, and I could appreciate the unique nature of the beach. It was far longer than I expected and being one side of a river, it had a very interesting geography. It’s really quite a unique place, and seeing it from the temple made up my mind to go down there and explore the beach before I went anywhere else.

[slickr-flickr tag=”TCC Fulong Overview” border=”on” flickr_link=”on”]

 

I drove back to the hotel and changed into beach shorts and adjusted my sunscreen accordingly. I knew the drill this time, and I walked directly to the Visitor Information Center area where the entrance to the beach is located. Being early in the day, the entrance fee was now NT$100. I paid that, got my ticket, and went through the turnstile. A new experience in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever had to go through a turnstile to get to a beach before. It felt pretty weird.

From the turnstile, you walk down a pleasant sidewalk with a big luxury hotel on the left. A brand new – immense looking – luxury hotel is being constructed on the right. By the time it is done, the beach will feel like a closed-off playground for the rich. We poor people will have to walk between two luxury resorts we can’t afford in order to get to the beach. It’s a pretty nice set-up though. I wonder what kind of deals had to be struck for the owners of that hotel to build there. From the photographs on the walls, it looks like it is being built by the same people who built that huge hotel at Danshui. I’m not sure who owns the beach. I assume it is a government-owned operation. If so, there had to be some wheeling and dealing for the hotel to be built. The location right beside a beach like that would be worth a massive amount of money to them. Some of that money would have to go to whoever controls the beach.

At the end of the walkway, you reach the Rainbow Bridge, which crosses over the river and brings you to the beach. On the right is a small shop where you can buy water and cold drinks and other beach-related stuff. I was surprised, as I always am, at the lack of commercialism at these places in Taiwan. It certainly keeps the charm of these places intact, so that’s a good thing. Yet, it seems odd. The setting was spectacular, and it just cried out for a series of quaint little cafes and restaurants. There was only this one charmless place, and it was completely empty. There were eight or nine tables sitting outside and there wasn’t a single person occupying any of them. It’s a puzzle. I know from experience that restaurants are generally jammed with people in Taiwan. Tables are in short supply everywhere in the cities. Yet, whenever I go off on weekend trips to these incredible and beautiful areas, I find almost nothing on offer. And those few places that do exist, such as this shop at the Rainbow Bridge, are completely empty. To me, it’s a no-brainer. You just spent two or three hours in the hot sun down at the beach and there’s a perfectly placed spot to grab a cold drink on your way out? Well, you take advantage of it. I’m not complaining. I was very happy that the place was empty and I could sit down in comfort with a cold drink. I was just surprised. There’s something going on here that I don’t understand.

Anyway, the Rainbow Bridge is a great thing. It gives a very dramatic approach to the beach and offers wonderful views of the area. I snapped quite a few pictures on my way across and stopped to take it all in. It’s very hard to describe. The beach sits between the Shuanxi River and the ocean. One side is a sandy beach open to the waves (quite large waves!) of the ocean. the other side is a slightly less sandy riverbank. You could almost think of it as a giant sandbank more than a beach. The river is quite slowmoving, and this essentially creates a large paddling pool for all kinds of supervised water activities. You can pay a fee (I didn’t find out how much) to rent kayaks, paddle boats, and wind surfing gear. I’ve always wanted to try wind surfing, but I’m saving that experience for the Philippines. I don’t think I could get past all the rules and safety procedures that are surely in place in Taiwan. It looks like everyone is required to wear lifejackets, and call me weird, but I really don’t want to wear a lifejacket while wind surfing.

The beach itself is far larger than I expected. The sandbank portion is very wide and it stretches along the coast for a long distance. The brochure says it is 60 meters wide and 3 kilometers long. That sounds about right, though I had the impression that it was even longer than that. Only a small (very small) portion of that is open for swimming, though. This is the area immediately on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge. There is a long series of canopy structures set up in a rigid row. I believe these are free to use and you simply set up your towels and beach stuff underneath these to shelter from the sun. Most people had crowded under these as the sun was extremely strong. Immediately in front of these, there is a rectangular area in the water set off with buoys connected by rope. This is the designated swimming area, and it really is far too small. It felt quite crowded to me, and I wasn’t even going to go in. However, I couldn’t resist and I eventually went in for a stroll. I can’t say that I went in for a swim because swimming literally isn’t possible. I went all the way out to the far edge of the roped buoys and the water only came up to my knees. I’m not joking. The best I could manage was to sit in the water. It was too shallow to allow for any actual swimming. Strange but true.

[slickr-flickr tag=”TCC Fulong Beach” border=”on” flickr_link=”on”]

 

I can, though, see some reason for these restrictions. To be honest, from the action I saw around me, I don’t think it was a problem for the Taiwanese. I didn’t see anyone that looked like they were yearning for a good swim. Everyone was content to just jump around in the waves in the knee-deep water. And my sense is that swimming is not a hugely popular activity. I’m guessing that a large percentage of the people there didn’t actually know how to swim, so this tiny closed-off area made sense.

The force of the waves is another reason I can see these restrictions making sense. It has been windy the last couple of days, and the waves were very high. And the ocean floor here was so shallow that the waves carried a lot of force with them onto the beach. Vast quantities of water poured up the beach and then were sucked back out into the ocean. I don’t know if there really any rip tides here, but certainly the force of this retreating water was no joke. I could see an inexperienced swimmer getting into trouble very easily with the force of that water flow. Even standing, it had the force to suck you right off your feet. Perhaps beyond the rope barrier there was a strong tide that would just pull you out to sea.

Before I went for my swim, I went for a walk along the beach to explore and take some pictures. I had no idea if it was allowed to stray from the patrolled area, but I figured I would try. If someone blew their whistle at me, I’d turn around. As it turned out, I was allowed to stray down the beach, but I had to have my own personal minder. It was quite funny. There was an official lifeguard patrolling around the edges of the main area. I thought he would turn me back, but he let me pass and then he turned to go with me. I guess I looked like one of those deviants who was actually going to try to go into the water outside the restricted area. The temptation was certainly there. I was walking along literally kilometers of empty and beautiful beach. There was nobody there aside from one lone nudist (not sure what was going on there) and a couple of elderly fishermen. I was clearly just taking pictures, but my protector was not going to let me out of his sight and he stayed with me on my entire walk. I took a couple of pictures of him – just a single dot on this vast empty beach. I had just recently watched a couple of documentaries on North Korea, and this fellow reminded me strongly of the “guides” who follow tourists in North Korea everywhere and control everything they do. It also reminded me of the people in stores in Taiwan who follow you everywhere you go. I recently had that experience in a local sports store in Taipei, and I teased the poor girl a little bit by jumping quickly from lane to lane. She’d lose track of me and then have to scramble to find me and watch me again.

The skies were very dramatic, and I had a great time composing shots of sand, water, and sky. They look great on my camera’s little LCD screen. It remains to be seen how they will look on my computer. I did, unfortunately, have some trouble with my camera – my brand new camera. The LCD screen wouldn’t turn on. Sometimes it would turn on but it would be very dark and then would shut off again. This was happening on my dolphin-watching tour as well. I’ll have to get the camera checked out. Unfortunately, this seems like one of those problems that will only happen to me and then it won’t happen in the camera store, so no one will believe me that it is happening.

There were quite a few foreigners on the beach. They were mostly women, but they didn’t look like typical groups of English teachers. I have no idea who they were. They also seemed uncomfortable with the amount of attention they were getting from the Taiwanese. The Taiwanese – large groups of friends and classmates – were just being friendly and shouting “Hello!” and things like that. But these women didn’t seem to be used to it and they looked somewhat affronted. It could have been the bikini effect. These women were all strolling around together in the tiniest of bikinis, and it was a very unusual sight to say the least. I was sitting at the café enjoying my cold drink when a group of six of these bikini-clad women came strolling across the bridge. I watched their progress from one end to the other and enjoyed the stunned reactions of the people who spotted them. They got a lot of “Hello! Hello!” shouted at them but they didn’t respond with a smile. They kept their eyes averted and walked stiffly along.

[slickr-flickr tag=”TCC Longdong 2012″ border=”on” flickr_link=”on”]

 

After my visit to Fulong Beach, I hopped back on my scooter for a trip up the coast. The weather was perfect, and I drove along stopping at any point that looked interesting. I investigated all the little fishing harbors along the way and explored all the interesting rock formations. The east coast of Taiwan has a lot of interesting geological areas and it’s great to walk around them and take pictures of the rocks and the waves. You occasionally see fishermen on the rocks alongside large signs warning them that they really should be wearing lifevests. Occasionally, I got the point of those warnings. I was filming some waves washing over some rocks at one point and a rogue wave came along that could have swept the unwary right out to sea. Good swimmer or not, I don’t think too many people would have a chance of making it back to shore in some of these areas. The surging ocean wouldn’t allow you to get much of a purchase on those rocks to climb back out.

My main goal for this little trip was to head for my “secret” swimming hole at the Longdong rock climbing area. This area is the best rock climbing area in northern Taiwan and it’s a great place to go exploring. The last time I went there, I walked a long ways along the coast thinking I could continue all the way to the other side. Turns out, that was impossible and I nearly got myself stuck and unable to turn around and go back. This time, I didn’t have plans to go quite as far, and I clambered over the rocks only until I reached the area with my swimming hole. On the way, I passed a much larger swimming area that, to my surprise, had a hundred or so swimmers in it. Some were just friends out for fun, but others seemed to be part of large organized groups. They had similar clothing on and were all wearing the same life vests and that sort of thing. I continued on past this area to another area. There were no rock climbers that deep into that area. The only person there was a woman digging in the rocks with long sharp piece of steel – looking for some kind of edible sea creature, I guessed. I stripped down and went for a delicious swim in the water there. It wasn’t easy getting in and out – the rocks are very slippery and steep but once you’re in, it’s a wonderful spot and a great place to cool down. The tide seemed to be coming back in, and huge waves would surge over the nearby rock barriers and fill the swimming pool. These pools are also full of crabs, and that can make things interesting. They’re not dangerous, of course. They’re quite shy creatures and skitter away and hide at the smallest movement. However, there can be hundreds of them around and you do think that one of them might be surprised to taking a nip at your toes or fingers if you aren’t careful.

It was getting late in the day by this point, and I carefully made my way out of the rock climbing area and back onto the scooter for the hair raising drive back to Fulong. Weekend traffic and gravel trucks were out in full force, and I had to be on my toes.

 

Tags: Fulong, Fulong Beach, Longdong, Longdong Rock Climbing, Northern Coast 3-Day Trip, Rainbow Bridge, scooter, Taiwan, Visitor Information Center