An all-day tour with the whole family (in Taiwan)
On Thursday, Jerry's aunt rented a van and took us around northern Taiwan (photos here):
We spent a fair amount of time in this van
We began with a gold mining town up in the mountains. Much of the mining operation was run when the Japanese controlled Taiwan, so there were some old Japanese-style homes preserved there. Also, the audio guide (for us English speakers) was a cute ipod nano-sized thing with some proximity device. We had to hold it up to little wood signs along the way and it would automatically play the right description. Unfortunately, the voice for the information was slow. Inhumanly slow. We couldn't get through half a description before we'd be at the next wooden sign. And, when I tried to return the instructions (a bulky laminated sheet of paper), we were informed we had to keep it with us until we returned the audio guides. Oh well, when it started raining, the instructions made for a very small umbrella.
Gold! (Insert the little prospector doing a jig here.)
We went to the nearby town on the hillside, Jiufen. It did not look like much from the road that passed through, but it had a crazypants street full of small shops. We had lunch among a couple of these shops. Some really tasty noodles and sausage and stuff. One thing we had was called a "Taiwanese Meatball", but it really wasn't a meatball, to my definition. The center consists of barbecue pork (the sweet, red-colored kind) and bamboo shoots. But, they are encased in some form of clear tapioca. It was very gummy, but mostly flavorless. Interesting to try.
the cilantro on top makes it fancy (in its paper bowl)
After our quality time in the alleyways of Jiufen (and climbing down a lot of stairs), we headed off to the coast, to an area called Yehliu, where some crazy rock formations are on the coast. In a bizarre web 2.0 twist, I'll quote Jerry's response to Alan from the buzz about the photos:
The rocks were part of the Yehliu Geopark.
I remember visiting it 20 years ago during my last visit to Taiwan. It's changed so much since then due to the Chinese tourism boom. Back then, we could walk up to any of the rocks, and very few people were there. This time, there were hoards of tourists, security guards yelling at people to stop touching the rocks, and various 'keep out' signs. It's for the best though because the most famous rock there, titled the Queen's Head Rock because it looks like a queen's head, has been so destroyed (mainly due to humans) that it no longer looks like anything recognizable.
not the queen's head
We went on to a town that's supposed to be famous for local ceramics (I forgot the name). We ended up taking a surprise hour-long pottery class. It turns out I'm terrible with clay, and Jerry is ridiculously good with it. To be fair, he apparently had a ceramics class in high school, though they never used the wheel.
me with Jerry and a couple aunts learning how to shape clay
I was really impressed with Jerry's final products. I made a reasonable-looking salad bowl, one of the easiest things to make, and on my second lump of clay, I destroyed it. I literally pulled most of the clay off the wheel while spinning it. Oh well. Unfortunately, they take a while to fire the pieces, so Jerry's aunt will have to go back later and hold on to them until either she comes to the US or we go back there.
Finally, we headed back into Taipei to have dinner and sing Karaoke. So, the first problem we had is that I am allergic to shellfish. I mostly ate vegetables and the cooked chicken that night. Thankfully, there was a lot of chicken. Just to ensure we got our whole chicken's worth, they even threw in the head.
We sang karaoke along with dinner. Private setup in our big dining room. By "we", I mostly mean Jerry's aunts and one of the uncles. Jerry and I enjoy singing, but the 3-page english song selection seemed to only contain songs from the 60s. We knew a couple Beatles songs, but I'm no Sinatra expert and the rest was a complete unknown to me. I attempted to sing "House of the Rising Sun", which both seemed a bit offensive (what with us being in asia) and had some bad typos in the transcription.
Americans tend to treat Karaoke as more of a campy, silly thing to do. However, it is taken more seriously in Taiwan, even including clapping after long, impressive notes and at the end of songs. We did our best to follow the example of the others.
All in all, it was a good, but tiring day.