Yehliu + Northern Taiwan with The Faz & Rachel

On Saturday, Damien invited friends to check out Yehliu with him and his visiting parents from California.  I didn't have any plans on the weekend and Yehliu is somewhere I'd been keen on visiting every since my first visit here back in 2010.

Rachel picked me up from my house at 6:40am and after swinging by Damien's for an omlette and to pick everyone up, we arrived in Yehliu around.. 8am.  Yehliu is on the northern coast of Taiwan.

Despite arriving early, there were still many tourist buses already there.

Damien's folks bought us all tickets ($1.50) and we entered into the park for a picnic

Rachel had arranged most of the food.  There's camembert cheese, homemade bread with berries and nuts inside, plus Taiwanese style popcorn, and sliced meats, coconut juice and tomato juice. 

The view from our picnic spot

Many of the passing tourists would blatantly stare at us while we were having our picnic.  I think this type of picnic isn't common here (according to Rachel) and also we're a bunch of foreigners.  Many Chinese tourists from China don't see foreigners all that often so it's an exhibit in itself.

Left to right: Damien, Sandy (Damien's dad), Anita (Damien's mom), and me

these are the unique rock formations.  I was surprised that they are not blocked off from people walking around and touching them.  They look fragile.  The rock looks quite strong but still after years of touching, they will start to wear away.  Honestly I have no idea what these formations actually are or what their deal is.

I think my only photo in this area without a tourist in it!

self portrait

take note of the people and kids swimming in this area (will be relevant later in my pics)

the peninsula of this park stretches very thing but very long into the ocean.  That large hill you see is sort of the end of the landscaped portion of the area.

the whole right hand side of this peninsula features large rocks slanting up and out of the water.  Almost like 2 tech-tonic plates colliding and one side jutted up and out of the water.

neat circular erosion

paparazi photo

this is the end of the official path, but you can see a walking path along the left hand side there. exploration time!

some pretty large caves on this portion of the park

we could have walked much farther but I wanted to come back here again with Johan and Eliza so I thought I'd leave some of the place unexplored for next time and we turned back here.

photo shoot

there's also stairs going up to the top of that hill.  didn't make it up there this time

the "queens head" behind my right shoulder is the main attraction.  There was a large line up of people to take a photo of it (just off camera right).  I didn't really understand the big deal because it looked like all the other formations.

Petrified sand-dollar?  It felt like rock to the touch.  Very cool.

As this picture was being taken, a security guard was rushing up behind Rachel to tell me that swimming is illegal here.  Now if you'll remember back to my picture earlier, you can see that there were SO many people wading in this little inlet!  And there's absolutely no signage saying you can't go in the water.  I think the security guard was just on a power trip.  Also, they stop people from wading in this water, yet they let people climb all over the rock formations (instead of protecting them).  I think their priorities are mixed up a bit.

That big crowd of people is the line-up for the queens head

time to go to the next place.  grimace observes Damien and Rachel fighting to pay for the parking.

We left to head for Jiufen, a place made famous by Miyazaki - Spirited Away.  Lots of delicious food vendors line the packed streets

honestly there haven't  been enough grimace pics in this blog so far (pic of mochi.  some really yummy flavours: green matcha with cream and red bean, peach, strawberry, sesame, peanut)

It was so crowded here and Damien's mom had an injured knee so we decided to head out shortly after we'd arrived

fat little dog

We made our way north west along the coast to this steak house

12oz sirloin plus soup, salad, bun, and drink was $13.  Steak was nice and tender!

Group photo before we head home!

Thanks for driving Rachel and thank you to the Faz family for paying for my meal and giving us the reason to be tourists!

Cockroach Disruption

I've been sitting here at my desk watching Johan, Stanley, and Joe tear apart Johan's file cabinet for the past 20 minutes.

Johan came into the office this morning and opened his desk filing cabinet and then jumped back in terror because a cockroach was in there and started scurrying around.  None of us have seen it but Johan claims it to be medium sized.

Now everything is out on the floor and spread out.  Everyone has tried banging on the metal cabinet and many of the girls are freaked out.  It appears to have disappeared.  The one gross thing is that after tearing apart the cabinet, Johan found a whole bunch of little black cockroach eggs at the bottom.  The cabinet has been quarantined.

Amazing how 1 little bug can cause such a disruption!

Tune Up

Since I was going on that monster bike ride last week, before I left I had to get my bike tuned up because neither brakes worked and the gears were pretty stiff.  Anne found me a place by Qizhang (my apartment) so I headed over there last Friday during lunch.

After a few frustrations with blocked roads that showed as through roads on Google maps, I found sort of where I was supposed to go.  A lot of the alleys in Taiwan are not on Google Street View so Anne wasn't able to pin-point the place for me.

It was quite difficult for me to find the place because I was looking for address 3 on lane 8 off of road 302.  After circling around I found this door which I thought was the right place.

Actually it was this door below. (to the left of the door above)

There you can see I'm pointing to it.  I tried the buzzer but no one answered.  Also tried knocking but no one answered.  After a while I ended up calling the guy (even though he spoke no english).  He popped his head out of a nearby door and let me into his bike shop.  I was thinking it would be an actual shop that I could see from the road but no, it was in his house.

He spoke about as much English as I speak Chinese but I was prepared.  Anne had written on a piece of paper everything I needed to have tuned up:

1. Neither front or back brakes work
2. Can't shift into 3rd front gear
3. Seat is far too short for my height
4. Back tyre kept going sideways

He started working on it and his wife came home who spoke English so her and I chatted for the whole time.

She told me that her husband is a big cyclist and him and a team of other cyclists can go on trips for 100-300 km!  By the way his name is Bruce Li.  Easy to remember!

She also showed me some bikes they had in the back that were for sale.  There's this nice GIANT bike that I was eyeballing.  Bruce Li said it would be pretty difficult to find a seat that was taller unless I bought a different style bike.  My bike I bought from Carrefour only cost $60, and he figured I might end up spending that much just finding a replacement seat for the fitting on my bike.  A new nice bike is around $200 so he recommended if I was going to replace the seat, I should probably just get a new bike.  The seat wasn't the only reason to get a new bike.  Also the front gear can't go into 3rd and that's unfixable unless I spend at least $30.  And also, the front brake is really weak and that's also not fixable unless I spend $30.

So it's looking like I may be getting a new bike shortly.  I'll decide when Eliza gets here.  If she wants to do some cycling but not too strenuous, I'll see if my current bike can fit her needs.  If so then I'll buy myself a different bike; one that fits my height properly.

After an hour or so he said he had done all he could.  It was supposed to cost $6 but he only would accept $3 because he said he felt bad that he couldn't fix half of my requests.  Either way, great service and if I look at purchasing another bike, their little shop will probably be one of the first places I look!