day12: alishan, taichung

wednesday, 4/9/08:

after going to bed at 10pm the night before, i woke up (not)bright and early at 3am (pretty good, i still got 5 hours of sleep!) to take a shower before meeting the sunrise tour in front of the hotel at 4am. i had signed up for this tour, 300NT (~$10), with my hotel the day before. the tour was a caravan of vans that picked up at many hotels and then started on the way to yushan national park. on the way there, when it was still very dark, we stopped at a clearing and the tour guide (the driver of the van at the front of the caravan) pointed out a lot of constellations to us. then we were back in the vans and on to yushan. this young girl (maybe middle school?) threw up the whole way, i guess because it was really early in the morning and the trip was quite winding. finally we got to the spot, and by now, it was already pretty bright out. i always thought that it would be really dark before seeing the sunrise, but i guess it's light spreads out to us way before it peaks out from the mountaintops. we all lined up, basically at the side of the road, and the tour guide started talking, and told us not to worry, he would tell us when to watch out for the sunrise when the time came. the tour guide taught us how to take pictures of the sunrise (which would have come in handy the night before at the sunset...) and then took out some postcards to show as examples of what he meant, and then was like, "and you can talk to the photographer of the postcards if you want!", and then he's like, "it's me!", and then he sold us the postcards (tricky!!) for 100NT (~$3) for 16 postcards. before the sunrise the sky was really beautiful, kind of like the sunset, with the multicolored clouds, but i didn't get many pictures of that because the tour guide telling us not to take pictures yet because it was not the sunrise yet. finally it was the sunrise and the sun popped out from behind the mountains (picture), and that was that. and then after a very short while, went into some clouds.

AFTER i had seen the sunrise, i realized it was not necessarily that easy to see it! right after we saw the sunrise, this woman asked me, "is this your first time to alishan?" i'm like, "yes." she's like, "my friend came to alishan 5 times and didn't see the sunrise 5 times! you are so lucky!" i'm like, "huh?" i had never thought that i would have gotten up at 3am to NOT see the sunrise... the tour guide had explained to us earlier that the chance of seeing the sunrise that day was 70%, and that as we got closer to yushan, he would decide a place to watch (he has a few that he regularly takes people) that would give us the best chance. in fact, the day before, the people did not see the sunrise. if there are clouds blocking then there is no sunrise. we were fortunate that there was a distance between the top of the mountain and where the clouds started, so that we could see the sun pop up before it traveled into clouds.

ALSO, later i was randomly watching tv in taiwan and there was a commercial for 7-eleven that's theme is the alishan 7-eleven (yeah, there's a 7 in the shopping/restaurant area of alishan and the moment i saw that i was like, "omg that 7 must make so much money!). anyway the commercial features all these random people that work on alishan (for example a train driver) and shows how long they have been there, implying that they are reliable...like 7-eleven, ha! anyway, the tour guide for my sunrise tour was one of the people featured in the commercial! he was a pretty good tour guide, good knowledge, enough humor without being annoying.

after actually seeing the sunrise, i felt the whole group sigh with relief. it was before 7am and we had all accomplished the primary goal of our day, hehe. on the way back to alishan, we stopped at a few yushan national park sights. one was these two, dead, large trees... on another stop, we looked out onto beautiful rolling mountains and also a rolling sea of clouds! the "cloud sea" was way more beautiful than the sunrise, i thought! but, i'm not sure that my pictures did it justice. we also stopped at a spot where we had to take a million, really steep and scary, no handrail stairs to the base of another giant tree...and then take all those stairs back up. the stairs and altitude made me panty, hehe. then it was finally back to alishan.

when the tour dropped us off back at the hotel it was just before 8am. i got my stuff together and checked out of the hotel and then went to the 7-eleven, where the city bus tickets are sold. i bought a ticket for the 9am bus back to chiayi, it was 214NT (~$7). then went to the restaurant where i could use my breakfast voucher from the hotel. i got the breakfast to go and then went back to wait for the bus. as i wound down the mountain, i decided i would go to jiji the next day and then head back to taipei in the evening. the trip down the mountain by city bus only took about 2 hours. at the chiayi train station, i bought the next ticket to taichung. then at the chiayi train station, i ate my breakfast for lunch: daikon patties, half a salted egg, a mantou, some stir-fried cabbage. there, i also went to the info center to inquire about my trip to jiji for the next day. i didn't get much information, but did get a handy backpackers guide to traveling taiwan by rail, which i got for free, but i think it's supposed to cost money.

when i got to taichung, i decided to check out stockyard 20, which is an art gallery in an abandoned warehouse next to the taichung train station, before calling my uncle. i had read about it in my little taiwan by rail guide on my way to taichung, but the gallery was overrated. i guess i mainly didn't like it because there was only one artist on display, and i really did not enjoy his art: part psychedelic, part gross. he was actually there talking about his painting and people (normal looking but probably in their midlife crisis and wanting to feel open and cultured) were asking all these questions and taking pictures of him.

my uncle picked me up from the train station, and brought me to what he thought was the best place to get bawan, this meatball that is ground pork with a thick stick clear skin that is fried and then steamed (or something like that). i had a bawan and a bowl of cellophane noodle soup. the bawan was pretty good, even though i thought i didn't like bawans. changhua, a city close to taichung, is actually famous for their bawans, but i guess taichung thinks it's got some pretty good ones too.

i had told my uncle my plans for the next day, and before he had insisted that i take the high speed rail back to taipei, so we decided to go to the high speed rail station and check it out and buy my ticket ahead of time. the station is slightly outside of taichung, but still not too far by car. we bought a ticket for the 9:58pm train from taichung to taipei. there were assigned seats tickets (which is what i bought) and free seating tickets (which you are not guaranteed a seat, but may have to stand, but is discounted), but then there was also some discount because it was going to be a thursday. the ticket turned out to be something like 560NT (~$19).

then we went back home, ate dinner with the family, and then i went out to shop jing ming first street, which is really close to my grandma's apartment. there were some nice things on the street, i liked the earrings there on the whole, but didn't end up seeing anything that i liked exactly, sos didn't buying any earrings. then i came across a sanrio store and ended up buying the cutest sanrio calculator!

and then it was back home by 10pm. i was SO TIRED, and then i realized i had gotten up at 3am...so i was immediately to sleep! (and my plan was to get up at 4:30am again to begin my adventures the next day!)

WORTH SEEING: yushan sunrise, yushan cloud sea

full set of pictures at picasa!