Trains

Always an adventure in Taiwan.  Today I spent the day in the office, and witnessed a traffic accident.  If Tara hadn't stopped to talk to the English guy, we could have been right in the middle of it.  Long story.

Anyway, I wanted to do a post about the trains.  I spent 27 years in Orrville, and trains are not a big deal.  Except now, I ride one at least once a week.  There are advantages and disadvantages.  It's cheap and reliable, and a good way to see the rest of the country.  The only downside is that during rush hour, they're usually delayed, and since it's my only form of transportation, I have to plan around the train schedules.

There are three types of trains:  Ordinary, Express, and High Speed Rail.   Express trains are slightly more expensive, but if you get them early enough, you get an "assigned seat."  I've only ridden the HSR once, but it was pretty nice.

Tongxiao train platform.

Sometimes they come through to check tickets, sometimes they don't.  In the larger stations, you have to run your ticket through the machine before you can get to the platform, and again when you get off the train.  You have to keep the tickets for the entire journey, otherwise you get charged the price of the ticket, plus a fee.  Unless you can't find the ticket at your destination.  and you wait for the conductor to leave the post and slip through the gate.  True story.

Commuter train ticket on the left, express ticket on the right.

View from the Coast Line

The timetable at the Zhunan train station.  All the Chinese words I know how to read, I've learned at the train station.  I've gotten pretty good at figuring out the schedules, and I don't have to ask before I get on a train anymore.  I've figured out what the right stops are, whatever direction I'm going, but there's still that uneasiness until I know for sure that I'm on the right train, headed in the right direction.  I've only gotten on the wrong train once, and hopefully, that'll be the only time.

Sun Moon Lake

Had a great weekend, the only downside being that I aged while I was there, ha ha.

Friday was a holiday, the commemoration of the "228 incident." Which, if you know the address of the house I grew up in, is kind of odd.

Anyway, I got the train to Xinwuri Friday morning and met up with James, Thomas, and Linda.  We rode along with James's friend Jeff and his family, and they were kind enough to show us around Puli, then took us to the hotel at Sun Moon Lake.

Bee hives and a stand selling honey vinegar

Inside the Paper Museum

Calligraphy

We watched them make paper by hand

Starts with pulp

The pulp is mixed

Screens

This was the coolest part.  The pulp is watered down and poured onto these screens.  If you look carefully, the worker puts a string across the screen to separate the sheets, then peels the whole sheet off onto the stack.

Then they're put on heated tables to be separated and dried.

After lunch, we stopped for Gelato at 18C, a famous chocolate/ice cream place in Puli.  

Our next stop was the Paper Church, constructed after the Kobe earthquake to replace a destroyed Catholic church, and given to Taiwan as a symbol of the friendship between Japan and Taiwan.  The exterior is steel and glass, the seats and the decor inside are made of paper.

The flowers in Nantou are gorgeous.

After a stop at a famous temple, we reached Sun Moon Lake

We had dinner, and then took a moonlight stroll around the lake.

Saturday was just as busy, after breakfast we boarded a ferry and made a stop at the old street, and  another temple before taking the gondola to the aboriginal park.

Bamboo

Watched some traditional tribal  dances.

Paiwan tribal home

We took the gondola back down

They were doing some kind of promotion, there was a stuffed bear in each car.

The ferry took us back to the dock, and we hiked along the shoreline to get back to the hotel.

Chang Kai Shek memorial pavilion

At 9:30, the front desk called our room, and brought a birthday cake!

 The next morning, Linda and I took a bike ride around the lake before breakfast.

After we packed up, we took a shuttle van, then a bus, then the train back home.  All in all, a very enjoyable weekend :)