Location: Taipei
Weather: 23C, light rain
Another month just flew by and I've officially been in Asia for over half a year! Since coming back to Taiwan, it's been super busy with starting a new job, moving into a new place, figuring out things like paying for bills and buying stuff I didn't have to worry about the first three months I was in Taiwan. I've settled into nice routines, from exercise to meal planning, and once again weekends have become very precious, not in the sense that I only live for the weekends as I try to make everyday extraordinary, but with a fixed work schedule Monday to Friday, weekends are definitely when more can be done! I've been thinking lately about this fixed work schedule vs. variable work debate, and even though I still think I would prefer the latter, I can see how it might be easier to achieve a work-life balance with the former just from a time perspective. I used to believe that once I found my ideal job, my work would be my life and vice versa because I would love it so much, and this balance issue wouldn't exist. Turns out these are idealistic beliefs instilled when you come out of school that slowly get morphed by the realities of life. And not that I've stopped trying to get closer to that ideal job, but I've realized that it might take a very long time, maybe even never, to find a job which you love 100% (big kudos to you if you've found that), and that's okay because as long as you enjoy perhaps 70% of what you do or at the very least don't hate your job, it will make the other parts of your life even more colourful.
Anyways, enough big ideas for this post, here's what I've been up to!
The first weekend back in Taipei, I went to the Taipei International Bike Show where a friend I met biking in January was helping out. It was like a kid being in a candy store and of course I wanted to buy everything. There were demo carbon bikes selling for $20000NTD! That afternoon I went to a short easy Meetup hike in Neihu, passing through Bishan Temple, Yuanjue Waterfall, Baishihhu Suspension and Dragon Boat Rock.
I met more hiking friends and we made plans to do extended hikes, one of which is Jiaming Lake over the Labour Day weekend very soon that I can't wait for!
That Sunday I met up with VOC friends Jens and Ru who I haven't seen in awhile and just happened to be in Taipei! They are sort of travelling around the world with their newborn son, coolest parents ever! We did another easy hike up Guanyinshan. I have looked up it so many times from Danshui so it was cool finally being on the top of the other side! Afterwards we hung out in Bali and Danshui, places I can say I know like the back of my hand.
The next two weeks it pretty much rained nonstop, but I still managed to bike or walk the 4-5km to work everyday. I love my Helly Hansen rain jacket but I'm learning from the Taiwanese that a plastic poncho is really the best thing. I spent Saturday March 12th having a wonderful catch up lunch with former coworkers Jenny and Irene at the Taipei City Hakka Cultural Park, which was really nice but sadly desolated even on a weekend.
In between I caught up with a friend and former fellow UBC Kinner Dr. Frances for dinner at the famous Yongkang Street (where we had the mango shaved ice), and got to learn all about the medical field in Taiwan!
Thanks to another former coworker Jonathon, I also got to attend a great walking tour at Dadaocheng and some traditional puppet theatre performance the next Saturday March 19th. Dihua Street is an area I've been to many times before for dried goods but it's the first time actually having a guide explain what I was looking at and I learned to look deeper than these shops.
I even squeezed in two more hikes during this rainy period, one with Meetup along Taoyuan Historic Trail, which if you remember I went a bit along on when I did the spectacular Caoling Historic Trail, and a quick jaunt up Tianmu Historic Trail to the boundaries of Yangmingshan. Tianmu is a bit of an isolated neighbourhood full of expats in the Beitou District, and actually really reminds me of Kits with the numerous Western styled cafes and boutiques.
Easter weekend, which isn't a holiday here, I did something on that Saturday I've been wanting to ever since Jeweanne showed it to me back in November. I volunteered to be a guide cyclist for blind people, and it was absolutely one of the most meaningful things I have ever done. That day we rode from Beitou MRT to Tianyuan Temple in Danshui, built very much like the Summer Palace in Beijing which I didn't go this time in February but visited back in summer 2011. We had a guided tour of the temple, and even though the blind people couldn't see the beautiful cherry blossoms that were outside, we did our best to bring the experience to them through their other senses.
I learned so much about using verbal and manual cues, but what I took away the most were appreciation and gratification. Being able to spread the joys of cycling and playing in the outdoors that I get to others who have difficulties experiencing it by themselves was rewarding beyond words, and I plan to continue volunteering with this incredible organization, like I just did this past weekend again (more details below). So many simple daily things like eating and going to the bathroom that we don't even think twice about become challenges when you don't have the help of vision, and yet it's incredible how well these people adapt and what they are capable of doing, for example, some of them have biked around Taiwan just like how I did in January and are training to do it again next year.
On Easter Sunday, I went to Wulai with my new friend Michelle, another place which has been on my to-do list for the longest time especially since it was damaged badly by the typhoon in August last year. We had wanted to do a hike but that trail was still closed when we got there so we just went down the river and sat by there for a while. Running back to the Old Street, we had a delicious lunch at an Aboriginal restaurant where I got to taste for the first time some of Taiwan's mountain grown vegetables, including betel nut flower! Afterwards, I finally had the opportunity to experience a real hotspring, not just a feet soaking pool, down by the river in Wulai. I don't have the biggest obsession with hot springs, as many do when they go to Taiwan or Japan, and especially don't like the pool ones in hotels, but this one qualified as semi-wild (even if there was a lot of concrete structures built around). We went to check out the waterfall before taking the bus back, and on the way home I stopped by Jingmei Night market which was recommended by another friend. I will admit that after going through all of the well-known night markets in Taipei a few times, they actually become kind of old, although I am constantly trying to find lesser well-known hidden ones to explore. I didn't find anything extraordinary at Jingmei but it was nice seeing no tourists and having a very local feel.
Whirlwind to the end of March and my first month back in Taiwan, it was a 4 day weekend thanks to a Children's Day and Tomb Sweeping Festival, which for those of you who don't know, is a traditional Chinese holiday where families visit and clean the graves of their deceased ancestors. My legs were itching for some long distance riding so I recruited 4 of newly met friends for a bike tour of the North across Highway. Off we went towards Daxi in Taoyuan County on the Saturday, a place I had been wanting to visit for a while and surely didn't disappoint.
Despite drastically different bikes (ranging from my fully loaded rental mountain bike with suspensions to my friend Nicole's road bike with no bags) and skill levels, we made it up and down the hills of some extremely picturesque roads, including even Lalashan, which even for me was a bit of type 2 fun.
Special thanks to Nicole's boyfriend Kiwi who joined in last minute as the support vehicle driver, although I'm proud to say I carried my stuff by myself the whole way. The highlights were definitely finding the best off-the-radar wild hotspring and eating chicken from Lalashan on the side of a cliff in the pitch darkness while going down towards if.
On the last night, I went to visit Jenny who happened to be in Yilan and had the best karaoke and tomato-picking session to prep for the longest last day up Beiyi Road and then from Xindian to Danshui along the riverside path. 120km on a mountain bike definitely takes more toll on your body, and big kudos to Johannes for joining me the whole way!
And as for last weekend, I went on a special two-day event as a volunteer guide with the same blind cycling organization I helped out with two weeks ago. We stayed overnight at Jiaobanshan, which was also the area we camped around on our first night of the bike trip. On Saturday I got to experience a Taiwanese BBQ, where I was so impressed by how you can just order a ready-made BBQ package here with all the food and tools. That afternoon we did what they call "mountain training", which for us involved things like rappelling, rock climbing, tight rope walking and zip lining (my first time zip lining actually and loved it!). Some of these were challenging enough and even a bit scary for a non-climber like me, and it was super inspiring seeing the blind people successfully complete the tasks one after another.
After a night of singing and dancing to some very interesting music, we got up bright and early on Sunday for a cycling expedition along Luoma Highway, a branch off of the North Cross Highway and supposedly on every Taiwanese cyclist's , eventually finishing the memorable weekend at a DIY tomato farm in Guanxi. For many, the hills along that road proved to be challenging, but everybody did amazingly well. Special thanks to my partner whose iron legs fueled my competitive spirit and had us at the front of the pack pretty much the whole time!
This weekend I'm going to Taichung to watch the annual Mazu Pilgrimmage in Dajia, details all in the next post!
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