Saturday April 3, 2010

So far, I couldn’t ask for a better birthday. The magic is still in the air. It is still cloudy and a bit rainy, but it adds a bit of drama to the scenery. I’m sure it would be much better if it were sunny, but the extreme weather, occasional high winds and dark clouds makes it all pretty interesting if a bit wet.

My plan this morning was to drive the scooter up to a weather observatory at the top of the nearest mountain. It’s a very steep road and I got spectacular views all the way to the top. On the road, I met an interesting Taiwanese woman named Pearl. She told me that she was staying in a little village called I-valino. I’d passed by the place on my drive yesterday. It has a fantastic setting on the other side of the island from where I was staying. It still has a lot of traditional houses and that sort of thing. The people here used to live in semi-underground houses. Only a few of the elderly still do, but some of the houses are still intact.

Pearl told me that she was staying in a homestay/hostel type of place, but she paid to have a tour of one of these underground houses. We went to the beach and hung out for a bit just taking in the scenery. Then we walked up to her hostel/homestay and the end result is that I got to rent and stay in this underground house. It is beyond cool. I went there with Pearl just to look at the area and take pictures, and the owner of the place asked if I wanted to stay there. It only costs NT$400 a night. I don’t really have the words to describe it. Only pictures will do it justice. The opportunity to stay in this house is the best birthday present I could hope for.

The house is wooden for the most part and has sliding wooden doors. Each door is just a small square hole in the wall. The house itself is sunk into a hillside so that it sits inside a big square hole. The walls all around are built up with stone. You get down to the house by some narrow stone steps. There is a wooden verandah at the front where the people would hang out and smoke and chat. Then you push aside a sliding door to reveal one of these square holes and you crawl inside. The first long room is the sleeping area. It has a wooden floor and I’ll be sleeping on a tatami mat. One end has a functioning fireplace where they still do the cooking. The ceiling is almost completely covered in animal antlers and other bones. Through another set of square openings there is a much larger area. This is a storage area and where they smoke their fish. The family plans to smoke some fish this afternoon, so I’ll be able to see that. Part of the deal of my staying in the house is that they can still come in and cook and/or smoke fish. They will also want to show some visitors the house during the day. That’s fine with me.

Sunday April 4, 2010

This will be a short update since this isn’t the most comfortable place in the world to sit. I’m at a roadside grocery store sitting outside on a bench made out of giant pieces of driftwood with the NEO on my knee. It’s only 10:15 in the morning, but it feels much later, since I got up fairly early and have been out exploring for a good four hours already.

Moving into my underground house was as easy as can be. It felt very strange, though. The house is in a big stone-lined hole on a hillside of other houses in stone-lined holes. I parked my scooter on the street, shouldered my backpack and then walked up some stone steps onto the hillside and then down some stone steps into my new home. It feels particularly strange because a fair number of tourists walk around this area taking pictures of the houses. It’s quite a surprise for them to see me come out of one of the houses. And I feel a bit like the Yami must feel to be the center of so much attention.

Shortly after I moved in, the owner of the house decided to smoke some fish. He built a fire in the back room, in the storage area, and hung the fish above the fire. I wondered how he managed to build such a small and neat fire. Then I saw the technique. He cheated. He used a blowtorch. The old meets the new.

One thing has always puzzled me about these traditional houses wherever I’ve seen them around the world. They’ve never bothered with the simple technology of the chimney. Is there something technically challenging about just putting a hole in the roof for the smoke to exit? Other than covering the hole with something to keep the rain out, I don’t see a big problem or challenge. A year or two, a decade or two, or a century or two of sitting inside choking on heavy smoke would probably lead someone to try to figure out how to get the smoke out of the house.

In any event, these houses don’t have chimneys, and I couldn’t stay inside for very long. Pearl was there to watch the fish-smoking as well, and the two of us then left to walk around the traditional part of the town and then do some exploring. We were a good partnership because I had the scooter and had already done a lot of exploring and knew where to go. She could speak Chinese and get things figured out.

The best place we visited by far was a peninsula of rugged volcanic cliffs. It was very other-worldly. Fifty goats had made one mound of rocks home and they were very photogenic. The ocean waves had carved a big stone archway (called Lover’s Cave for some reason). The ocean surged through this archway and then roared up a narrow gorge. It was very dramatic. We also went through a real cave, where I bashed my head and cut it. I had blood all through my hair for a while. We climbed up to a lookout point, and went to some other places. It was a pretty good day.

Around six, we went back to our separate places to take a shower. My house doesn’t have a bathroom, so I had to walk through the village to get to the owner’s hostel to take a shower there. It was no problem. It felt like I was camping. Dinner was a bit of an issue, as there aren’t nearly as many places to eat in these little villages. The one place that was still open had actually run out of food. On my own, I would have driven to Hongtou and gotten a meal there, but Pearl managed to talk them into giving us a plate of fried rice. That was all they could scrounge up, but it was fine with me.

I passed the night in the underground house very well. I slept like a stone, and I was very glad to see the sun when I got up. I knew that the sun wouldn’t last long and with the instincts of a photographer, I leapt out of bed and quickly took a shower and then hopped on the scooter. It turns out the light wasn’t that great for photography. It was still quite hazy.

I drove back up to the weather observatory to take some pictures. Then I drove across the island to the harbor to get some gas. It looked about time to top up. Then I found an unmarked road leading high up into the mountains to a lighthouse. There were incredible views from there. Then I continued up the coast and took pictures of all the various rock formations on the north coast.

Monday April 5, 7:30 a.m.

Ivalino, Lanyu

I can’t believe it’s time to leave. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this place. I’ve spent so much time driving around and looking at the incredible scenery that I haven’t spent much time just hanging out in the village where I’m staying. I could have hung out at night more, but I was always pretty tired, and I went to sleep quite early. Besides, I’ve always been a morning person. I could use at least two more days here – today just to hang out in this village, and tomorrow to do some more exploring.

I think I mentioned that the sun came out yesterday morning. It was nice to get the contrast. The thing about rain is that it isn’t nearly as bad as you think it is going to be. In fact, it often isn’t bad at all. The rain kept things cool. It kept things interesting. It made the skies dramatic. Once the sun comes out and the temperature starts to rise, you immediately miss the rain. Still, I guess having both is the best.

I was extremely busy yesterday being the tourist with the camera. I started at the observatory, and then I drove up to the lighthouse. I stopped at every corner of the switchbacks to take yet another picture. Then I continued around the coast and stopped at every crazy rock formation. I parked the scooter and walked up to every one of them and walked around them and over them and through them, taking pictures from every angle. There were no end to these formations, and they weren’t nearly as boring as one might think. I thought they were very dramatic and interesting. I had to walk over a half a kilometer of hardened lava flow to get to one of them, and then I climbed up into it and to the other side to get a fantastic view of the ocean crashing against it.

I have no idea if the pictures will turn out. For some reason, I haven’t had nearly as much confidence in taking pictures since I stopped using my old Contax 139Q. The RX and the Aria seem somewhat alien to me, and I don’t know what they’re doing most of the time. There’s also something about the viewfinder of the Aria. It is supposed to have one of the best viewfinders ever made, but I don’t find the image to be that sharp and clear. Perhaps my focusing screen is an odd one. If I keep using the Aria, perhaps I should look into getting a new screen. I don’t know about the RX. I’ll have to get it repaired if I want to keep using it. Not sure how to do that.

Update: 6:00 p.m.

Room 701 at the hotel in Taitung

The magic just keeps going and going, and I had a very easy and interesting departure from Lanyu. I wrote a little bit from this little breakfast place in my village of I-valino. Now that I’m here in the city again, I really miss that village. I wish I could have stayed longer. The breakfast place was called Sunrise Breakfast. When I walked in, an elderly aboriginal man was sitting at a table drinking an iced coffee. He didn’t speak English, but he told me good morning in Mandarin and then shook my hand in a dignified way.

I was pretty tired last night after I drove Pearl back to Langdao. After all of our touring around the island, Pearl and I had dinner together in Langdao. The first restaurant we went to was completely booked. They had a big group of students coming and the whole place was reserved. I thought our search for dinner was going to be problem, but there was another restaurant right behind that one. It was nothing special, but they had nice tables and chairs and an open kind of room. In the bathroom, they actually had water in the tap in the sink. You hardly ever get hot water in bathrooms here other than bathrooms in your apartment. Even office buildings don’t have hot water. So I was very surprised that this place had hot water.

I didn’t have a very good meal there – just fried rice. But we ordered a couple of large bottles of beer. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Pearl drank beer. I wanted to order beer, but I thought she might disapprove, so I didn’t. Then she suggested it. She had a fish dinner – flying fish is a local specialty. They seem to think that flying fish are unique to Lanyu. I’ve seen them everywhere, so I don’t know why they think they are so special.

In the morning, I grabbed my towel and toiletries kit and walked through the streets to Mr. Shih’s place to take a shower. When I came out of the shower, Mr. Shih was cleaning some fish in a plastic container of water on the ground. This led to some funny activity as both a local pig and a dog tried to steal the fish. Mr. Shih was talking to me, and a dog snuck in behind him and stole a fish. The dog ran with the fish, but he was so scared and startled with his success that he dropped the fish. I pointed out the fish to Mr. Shih, who hadn’t noticed it. But when Mr. Shih went to get it, the pig snuck in behind him, too, snagged a fish and ran. Mr. Shih ran the pig down and got the fish back, but in the meantime, the dog came back and got another fish and ran. Mr. Shih chased the dog, and the pig came back for another try. Some people on the roof were watching and laughing this whole time. Then I asked Mr. Shih for a business card. He went inside to get one and the pig quickly moved in for another try at the fish. This time, I stepped in and kept the pig away.

I wasn’t sure how to return the scooter and pay for it, but that turned out very well. I had heard that it was normal for people to return rented scooters at the harbor. I hardly dared believe that because it made way too much sense. After all, if I returned the scooter to his shop in Hongtou, I would have no way of getting to the harbor. This way, I could just drive to the harbor and drop it off on my way out. Great customer service. I paid the guy what I owed him, and he said that I should just keep the scooter until the last minute. The boat wasn’t going to arrive for thirty or forty minutes. I thought this was great customer service, but really it was also because I had overpaid him. I wasn’t worried about the money so I hadn’t argued about what made up a full day or part day. I figured a day was a day no matter how long it was. So even though I picked up the scooter at 1:00 p.m. on the first day and returned it at 10:00 a.m. on the last day, I still counted it as four full days. I’d much rather pay for the whole day and have total control over what I do instead of having to bargain by the hour and not have the scooter the whole time.

I found out later, though, that it is quite common here to bargain and pay only for the time you have a scooter and not worry about calendar days. But more about that in a minute.

Since I had the scooter for a while, I called Pearl to see if she needed a ride to the harbor. I was pretty sure she didn’t, but I wouldn’t have minded driving to Langdao and picking her up. It would give me a last drive down one of the most beautiful stretches of coastal road you can imagine.

She didn’t need a ride, so I spent a few minutes buying souvenirs for my coworkers and then I hopped on the scooter for a last bit of exploring. I went back to the northern coast and climbed around the shore and hung out with the goats. While I was there, I saw one of the big ferries coming across the ocean. I jumped back on the scooter and drove down the coast keeping pace with the boat on the ocean and we arrived at the harbor at the same time.

This ferry was about twice the size of the one that I had taken out to the island. It also had much more space on deck for passengers. As soon as I got on board, I went to the top deck. Lots of Taiwanese came out there to pose for pictures. I took some pictures of the coast and the harbor.

I had heard from some people that they wouldn’t let us stay out there when we were moving. I REALLY hoped that wasn’t true, and it wasn’t, and I got to spend the entire trip out there. I only went inside at the very end when we docked at Taitung, and found it to be so cold! I don’t think I could have survived in there in that cold.

Sitting outside on this trip was fantastic. I got to tick another thing off my list of “things to do before I die.” I saw dolphins! I know I’m being very ordinary in my account of my time on Lanyu and I’m using all kinds of clichéd adjectives, but I can’t help it. It was just that kind of trip. The dolphins were simply spectacular. I can’t even describe what it felt like to see them. I first saw about six or seven of them to the right of the boat. They were leaping in and out of the water and moving at incredible speed. Then I heard someone shout. Then I heard a lot more shouts. I looked to the left of the boat and there was a huge school of dolphins keeping pace with the boat. Going in and out of the water the way they do, I can’t say how many there were, but my best guess would be about 150 of them. They filled the ocean in that direction. It was extraordinary. That was the only school that I saw, but it was enough.

I mentioned that this ferry was bigger. It was also much more powerful and faster than the other one. We flew through the water. I couldn’t believe the wake that we left behind us. There was a lot of power in those engines. The trip out took 3 hours, but going back only took 2 hours.

Pearl was out on deck with me for a little, but she didn’t want to be out in the sun for that long and she went inside to sit in one of the chairs and nap. I found myself a comfortable place to sit on the deck, leaning against the railing and watched the ocean and the other passengers. There were some very pretty women on deck and it was a pleasure to just watch their hair blowing in the high wind while their sun dresses billowed around them.

I took Dramamine for seasickness again, but I don’t think I needed it. Before I knew it, we were docking in Taitung. My plans from that point were only half-formed. My flight isn’t until tomorrow night, so I had a day and a half. My plan was simply to go back to the hotel in Taitung, drop off my backpack, and then rent a scooter to go driving in the mountains. However, as I was sitting at 7-11 having a carton of milk and looking at maps, it occurred to me that there was no need to stay in Taitung if I didn’t want to. If I was going to rent a scooter anyway, then I could drive anywhere I wanted and spend the night there. Then I’d have the entire next day to explore and drive back. It surprised me that I hadn’t thought of that before.

So I walked down to an area where I had seen some scooter shops. I didn’t know for sure that they rented them, but it was a good bet. I rented a scooter from the very first place I saw. I had heard that in Taitung they won’t rent to you if you don’t have a Taiwanese driver’s license. And that is true. At first, they refused to rent me a scooter. They didn’t speak English, so I didn’t know what they were saying. They were just making all kinds of “no no no” gestures. I guessed what was going on, and with great, great, great, pleasure I produced my Taiwanese driver’s license. They nearly fell over with surprise. What’s this? A foreigner with a Taiwanese driver’s license! How can this be? Anyway, they had no choice now but to rent me a scooter.

It was all very simple and easy after that. I paid NT$500 for a day and a half, grabbed a helmet and the keys and I was off. I thought I might even go as far as Kenting at the southern tip of Taiwan. The problem was the weather. It started to rain. I stuck it out as long as I could. I drove into the mountains and had a great time. I even saw a troop of monkeys crossing the road. But I soon realized I didn’t want to spend a day and a half out there driving in the rain. So I turned around and came back to Taitung. I went back to the same hotel. The same gorgeous woman was at the receptionist desk, and I got a better room this time.

Not sure what I’m going to do tomorrow. If the weather is nice, I guess I’ll go exploring. It all depends on the weather. I am in SUCH a GREAT mood, I can’t tell you. There is nothing like a trip like this when you’re supposed to be working.

Tags: customer service, fire, Ivalino, Lanyu Trip, Orchid Island, scooter, Taitung, Taiwan, Underground house, Yami