November 7, 2009

I am in Wulai. I had plans to go much further than this. Wulai is so close that it hardly counts as leaving Taipei. However, things seem different when you are on a bicycle, and I do feel like I have gone on a trip. Had I come here by city bus or something, it might not feel like that.

My original plan was to go to a small fishing village called Nanfangao. It is about 100 kilometers away, a distance that I could cover in a day on my bicycle. I don’t think it would be an easy day, but it could be done. I stayed in Nanfangao once before, and I liked the place. There were lots of interesting fishing boats in the harbor, and there is a large fish market – all good things for a guy who likes to take pictures. And, best of all, there is a basic hotel right in the middle of the village. That’s a rare thing in Taiwan in my experience, and that made Nanfangao a good destination.

I was up fairly early, and as I had already packed everything two days before, I was on the road by seven-thirty. I didn’t enjoy getting out of Taipei at all. My idea was to take the road that goes through Wulai. I’ve never followed it all the way, but according to a couple of my maps, this road goes all the way to the coast near Ilan. The road to Wulai leaves from Xindian, and I’d forgotten that it is a good 12 kilometers from where I live. And that is 12 kilometers along busy, noisy, crazy Chungshan and Roosevelt (or whatever that road is called). Not only is it busy (and loud!), there are dozens and dozens of intersections with traffic lights. It took me over an hour just to get to Xindian, and by then my nerves were frazzled. It was a relief to get past Xindian and turn onto the Wulai road. There was still traffic on that road (more than one would expect at that time of the morning on a weekday), but it was nothing like being in Taipei.

I enjoy cycling as a way of traveling, but as I rode along, I found that I was a bit bored. That rarely happens to me. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been on that road many times already. There was nothing new to be seen. In any event, by the time I got to Wulai, I was reconsidering my plans. It was clear that to get to Nanfangao would take me the rest of the day, and it would be hard, hot riding. Then it would take me all of Sunday (starting early in the morning) to get back to Taipei. Somehow the thought of two entire days of just sitting on a bike and pedaling did not appeal to me. And when I got to Wulai, I found the place quite interesting. I’ve passed through Wulai a few times, but I’ve never spent any time here. I was up on the road above Wulai looking down on the place, and it occurred to me that I could really enjoy a couple of days there.

So, on impulse, I turned my bike around and raced back into the town and started checking out hotels. There, I didn’t have much luck. Most of the places in Wulai are hot spring spas, and as such are wildly overpriced and overly fancy for me. I just wanted a basic hotel with no luxuries. I went into a few places that looked like total dumps, yet they also billed themselves as hot spring hotels and charged accordingly. I only found one hotel that was just a basic hotel. I got very good vibes from the place. The guy who greeted me was a friendly young man. The room he showed me was not far off a prison cell, but it had a big balcony that looked right over the river. For what you got, the NT$1,600/night asking price was very high, but it was still half of what the other places were charging. I thought I had found my home, but they didn’t have a room for two nights. I could stay for Friday night, but they were full on Saturday night. That turned out to be the story everywhere. I could get a room Friday night, but not for Saturday. My options got narrower and narrower until I found the Full Moon Spa. That I am staying at the Full Moon Spa is quite amusing. It is as far from my normal style as possible. It also costs NT$2,700/night. In real world terms, that price is probably quite good. It’s $90 Canadian a night, and that includes a very good breakfast and dinner. The room is also fully equipped and has its own giant hot tub for the spring water. Still, for two nights here, I am paying nearly half of the rent I pay for my apartment for a whole month.

I do like the funky aspects though. For one thing, it has double elevators! The hotel rises up for five or six floors in a strange way – it isn’t just a square block, but a jumble of towers and glass structures. One elevator starts far below in an alley and only goes up one floor. Then you leave that elevator and find yourself at the main entrance where there is another elevator to take you the rest of the way. These elevators are encased in glass tubes, so you can see around you as you go up. It’s also handy for me, because I can take my bicycle up in the elevators all the way from street level. My room is actually a bit small to contain my bicycle, but the guy who brought me to my room, opened up a separate spa room and said that I could leave my bicycle there. Where else but in Taiwan would you get an entire spa room for your bicycle?

I suppose that since I have hot spring water available in my room, I will take advantage of it and take a hot spring bath. Normally, I don’t get too excited about such things. I don’t go out of my way to soak in hot water. But it’s there, and I might as well. The one catch is that you somehow need front desk assistance to get the real hot water. One can’t do it oneself. I have to dial 9 to order the hot water.

The bed is comfortable, but, as with many of these hotels in Taiwan, it doesn’t have sheets. It only has a big comforter of some kind. The comforter is nice, but my feet end up sticking out the end. The room also lacks many of the things that were standard in all my NT$1,000/night places in and around Tainan. For example, there is no toothpaste and no blow dryer. I don’t need either, but it seems odd that I’m paying nearly three times as much and getting less. I guess it is all about the hot spring water.

The room is also oddly designed (in my opinion) for couples. I remember staying in similar rooms elsewhere in Taiwan wondering why they designed them this way. I’m thinking in particular of the clear glass wall that separates the bed area from the bathroom. The bottom half of the glass wall is frosted, but it is still quite open and less than private. I prefer a nice enclosed room for the toilet. Call me old-fashioned…

My time in Wulai got off to a pretty odd start once I had gotten settled in my room. On previous trips along this road (on my bicycle and my scooter), I noticed the cable car that goes up above the waterfalls. I had no idea what was up there, but I thought that I would check it out. I hopped on my bike and rode over there and bought my NT$220 ticket.

I imagined that the cable car went up several stages, but to my surprise, it only went up to the next station that I could see and stopped there. The only other people in the cable car with me were couples, and I soon realized that this cable car ride and the park above it was one of those attractions designed for couples – people that really can’t think of anything else to do with their time. I suppose a better way of looking at it is that it is for couples because these couples really just want to spend time together and don’t really care where they go or what they do. It’s an excuse for an outing. So you pay your NT$220, hold hands as you ride up the cable car and then hold hands as you stroll around the park. The more adventurous would rent a paddle boat and paddle around the lake.

In the end, I enjoyed it very much. It was much, much cooler up there, and it was pleasant to stroll around in the thick jungle. I bought NT$10 worth of fish food and fed the goldfish. I took pictures of all the funny signs in English. I marvelled at all the strange exercise equipment. I guess there is a kind of hotel/resort up there, and groups can rent the place for activities. Scattered about were these bizarre attractions – some of them working and some of them not. Right at the beginning was a haunted house! A bored old man sat in the ticket window and waited for any customers that wanted to climb aboard his 100-year-old train. Around the corner were some unappealing karaoke rooms. They reminded me of the torture rooms that I saw at the prison in Cambodia. I felt the most sorry for this young man who was sitting inside the little booth where you rented boats. I tried to imagine him waking up in the morning somewhere and heading off to his job in this little booth in this surreal park. I felt that I should rent a boat from him just to break up his day and give him a story to tell, but I didn’t.

All in all, strange as it was, I enjoyed that excursion. It satisfied my sense of the bizarre. I even put NT$10 into this little machine that, I believe, gave you fortunes. A small puppet woman in Chinese dress turned around when you fed in your coin. She disappeared inside a little room and then reemerged with a pink tube in her arms. She moved to the front of the room and then dumped the tube into the slot. I haven’t opened it yet. I’ll have to get someone to translate it for me.

The more I think about it, the more interesting that little trip was. There were no end of little touches that made me think “Only in Taiwan.” For one thing, a man was actually working on top of the cable car as it moved up and down. He was sitting on top of a big V-shaped ladder and painting the mechanism that attached the car to the cable. Below him on the roof of the cable car was a drop cloth covered in open paint cans and that sort of thing. In Canada, the safety-types wouldn’t let anything like that happen. It was just so funny to see this guy zooming up and down on the cable car all day just painting and painting. I also enjoyed these three old ladies who practically passed out with delight when they had the chance to have their picture taken with me at the goldfish pond. I saw some obviously overseas-Chinese couples visiting Taiwan for perhaps the first time. They stood out because they looked so provincial. The men were generally very old and dressed in stiff suits from thirty years ago. The women on their arms were decades younger and decked out in bizarre yellow and red gowns. I also enjoyed being able to buy an ice-cold Taiwan beer and drink it while strolling around taking pictures of the odd statues of the aboriginals. But perhaps my favorite thing was the small white Buddha statue. Someone had put a half-smoked cigarette into the Buddha’s mouth. I wanted to get a close-up picture of that, but I felt it would be disrespectful.

My evening was fairly uneventful. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before this big adventure, and I was too tired to go out and explore Wulai nightlife. The big event was dinner. At the Full Moon Spa, you get a large book of coupons when you register. The coupons are for breakfast and dinner as well as for use of the indoor and outdoor pools. I doubt I will make use of the pool coupons. When they told me about them, they made it clear that for the indoor pool, clothes were not allowed. And for the outdoor pool, you had to wear Speedos and a haircap. I remember this rule from the hotel in Hualien where LiveABC took us on my first company trip. There seems to be a horror of any kind of hair escaping from the human body and floating free. These hygienic concerns always strike me as odd especially when contrasted with the mountains of garbage that I’ve come across in Wulai – down by the river and everywhere else.

I did, however, make use of the dinner coupon. The Full Moon Spa has a very pleasant restaurant on the fifth floor (really the fourth). It has a large outdoor balcony with a nice view of the mountains. There is even a wide water channel running along the railing all the way around the balcony. The channel is about two feet wide and serves as a reflecting pool.

I had no idea what I would get for my coupon, but I took a seat and handed it over. In a few minutes, a woman brought out a complete hotpot meal. I have to say that I wasn’t too thrilled. I like simple meals, and I’ve never seen the great appeal of going to a restaurant and then having to cook your own food. If I wanted to cook my own food, I’d have stayed home. Still, I enjoyed it. I hadn’t had a meal like that in a long time, and it was fun to dump everything in there and see what happened. I had no idea what half of the stuff was that I put in there. I’m sure there were dozens of rules for how long this or that should be cooked, and if I were eating with any Taiwanese, they’d tell me how it should be done. But since I was on my own, I just dumped everything in and let it cook. I don’t mind soggy vegetables, so I didn’t mind if things got overcooked. It seemed like a lot of work for dinner, but with two bowls of rice, it felt like a meal, and I walked away thinking it had been a pretty interesting day all in all.

I read for a while in my room, and then, planning to get up early and walk around town in the dawn light, I turned off the light and went to bed. I woke up very refreshed, and I grabbed my digital camera and was out walking around Wulai before the sun had come up over the mountains. I had brought my film cameras with me, but I just haven’t been in the mood for that kind of photography. I’m enjoying just snapping pictures “from the hip” with my little digital camera. If I continue taking pictures like that, I can see buying a better compact point-and-shoot camera, but I don’t mind the images I’m getting from this little one. I’m just putting them on Facebook, so they’re good enough.

I was looking forward to seeing how Wulai changed throughout the day. I’ve seen Wulai on Saturdays in the past, so I knew that it was going to get very crowded and very crazy later on. It was interesting to be on the streets before anyone else had arrived and even before the local people had opened their stores and stalls. Only one or two places were open and the people were busy cooking and preparing the meals that they were going to sell to the throngs that they knew were coming. It’s interesting to think of a place like Wulai from the point of view of the people who live here and the point of view of the people who visit. A visitor sees it as static – full and open and busy, and they might imagine it is always that way. But for a local, they see the ebb and flow of the crowds – the trickle throughout the week, and then the huge tide that arrives on Saturday and then flows out again at night. That’s one of the reasons I like staying overnight in a place like this, even if it is so close to Taipei. I remember enjoying Jioufen from that same angle. I was practically overwhelmed with the crowds during the day. But at night and early in the morning, I felt I had the whole town to myself.

My morning stroll in Wulai ended up being very rewarding. I had noticed the previous day, a bunch of people actually swimming and bathing in the river just a short distance down from the main bridge. I wondered why they were there and I reflected on how the Taiwanese do like to do things that everyone else does. There were lots of places to swim, but everyone swam right there at the same spot. I wondered if that was just herd-thinking or whether there was something special about that spot. This morning, I noticed that there was a large crowd of bathers and swimmers there despite the early hour, and I decided to walk down the steps to the river and see what was going on. I was very glad I made that impulse decision because I discovered that that whole area was actually a semi-developed and free hot spring. I guess hot spring water bubbles up out of the ground right there, and a crazy kind of spring had sprung up. I say crazy, because it had developed organically and the people behaved in such odd ways. I had that same “only in Taiwan” feeling. I can’t even begin to list all the strange things I witnessed – strange from a Canadian point of view, I guess. Some of the strange things were good things. For example, almost all of the people there were senior citizens, and there were a couple of hundred of them. There they were swinging their arms and bending their backs and swimming upriver and doing all those crazy things that counts as exercise here. Yet, odd as it seems to me, at least they were doing something. Here were a couple of hundred people in their sixties and seventies who had gotten up before dawn to go to a river, strip down to a bathing suit and swim and exercise. It was a crazy scene. If this happened in Canada, it would make the front page of newspapers across the country – “Senior Citizens Lose Their Minds.”

I don’t know how many of them will turn out, but I took a lot of pictures using my “from the hip” style. I’m not sure if I got any pictures of them, but there were a number of women there in complete dry suits. I’m not sure why you would go to a hot spring beside a river for a swim and then put on a full dry suit (with a black floaty inner tube on each arm), but there they were.

I’m at a loss to describe the scene, to be honest. There were a number of concrete pools scattered here and there. Hot spring water flowed into them, and people were lounging in them, standing occasionally to swing their arms or clap their hands or do the dozen other things that count as exercise. Around these pools were dozens of electric water pumps with huge tangles of pipes going in all directions up the cliffs – pumping, I presume, hot water to all the homes and hotels up there.

I particularly liked the makeshift change rooms, shower rooms, and baggage storage areas. I know I could take some pictures of those areas and if I told people these were taken at a desperately poor refugee camp, they’d believe me. I stayed quite a while as the sun slowly came over the mountains and started to pour light onto this area. That’s one angle to valley towns like Wulai. The sun doesn’t reach the town until quite late in the morning as it has to get over the mountains first. And dusk seems to come early as well. The sun feels like it goes down at 3 or 4 o’clock.

After I left the spring refugee camp, I made my way to my favorite place – 7-11 – for a cappuccino. By then, the first of the cyclists had started to arrive. Being a cyclist myself, you’d think I’d feel a kinship with them, but I really don’t. These are the true cyclists. Looking at them, I’d swear it takes them three hours just to get ready for a bike ride. Their gear is so complex, you’d imagine they had just finished the tour de France as opposed to just riding to Wulai. I tried to start up a conversation with a number of these guys, but none of them spoke enough English to chat. In fact, I’m finding almost no English at all here in Wulai. The one person I’ve managed to talk to is a young woman from Indonesia who works at the Full Moon Spa. She is a maid here, but when I showed up to inquire about a room, they went and got her to do the translating honors. I chatted with her over breakfast and enjoyed it very much. It’s interesting that she is also Asian, but she is so different from the Taiwanese. From my point of view, she is much friendlier and much more approachable. The Taiwanese are friendly, of course, but it is a different kind of thing. This woman was charming and warm and energetic in a nice way. It makes me interested in spending some time in other places in Asia. I certainly have reflected in the past on how much warmer the people in the Philippines and Thailand seem when compared to the Taiwanese.

I’m pretty sure this woman had ulterior motives in spending so much time with me. She made it clear early on that it has long been her dream to live/work in Canada. This was after she learned that I was Canadian. It was hard to follow her story, but it sounds like she has been living and working overseas for quite a few years. She was in Singapore for several years, for example. And she has been in Taiwan for over two years. Her first two years, she was looking after “a grandpa” in Taipei. This grandpa passed away, and she got this job at the Full Moon Spa. She’s been here for three months.

Afternoon:

It’s later in the day now. I’ve gone walking around Wulai in the full light of day and explored a bunch of areas. The hordes of people have arrived, though it isn’t as crazy as I expected it to be. I had half-formed plans to hike along one of the forest trails, but, despite there being signs everywhere pointing the way to these trails, I can’t find them.

 

Tags: Cycling, NT, Taiwan, Wulai Trip