Thanksgiving is a strange holiday concept for us, but one which we’ve embraced wholeheartedly as it gives us a very relaxing 4 day weekend after what has been an extremely enervating first semester. We had a few plans of attack for the break, but nothing solidly booked in, rather just sit back, relax and see what came up.I went to the huge Thanksgiving turkey feast at school then proceeded to miss every exit strategy placed before me to get home, finding myself out way too late and “enjoying” way too many drinks. It was an interesting crew at school and a chance to catch up with people known and liked for ages, but whom we don’t often see. Cassy eschewed the various delights at school to spend a bit of quality time at home relaxing with the thought of days stretching out before her with precious little to do after a very hard recent bout of grading.
We’d been planning to explore the northern tip of the island, right out beyond the cape and around from the Green Bay tunnel. Little Yeliou is a moderate tourist attraction but we’ve been discouraged from visiting on many past occasions because of the phalanx of huge tourist busses that pulls up with great regularity at the car park, disgorging all manner of tourists, most of them Asian, but with suspiciously mainland accents, as well as Koreans and Japanese. The attraction is a whole set of curiously weathered rocks which have been named (some highly imaginatively!) after various objects, people etc. The big symbol of the place is the Queens Head, and it does indeed bear a striking resemblance to an ancient Egyptian queen. We enjoyed viewing the weathered rocks, but took more pleasure in hiking up and up, outwards to the tip of the cape. On the way, we encountered a coterie of hushed ornithologists from Japan, who whispered to us as we rudely interrupted their reverie that they were laying in wait for a visiting Japanese shore bird. Their camera equipment with gaping lenses covered in camouflage material was a sight to behold. The tip of the cape allowed a 360 degree view of the northern coast, a beautiful spot and one we were stoked to finally visit sans the overwhelming crowds. Having worked up an appetite through our climbing it was back to the row of fish restaurants, touts extolling the virtues of each on the road outside. The fish tanks adorning the outside were chock full of plump sea life, so we knew that at least the food would be fresh! We were ushered inside one and proceeded to order from the “ a le Certe” menu a delicious whole sweet and sour fresh fish, some green vegetable, fried rice etc, all imbued with the most amazing servings of garlic: lucky we both had it! It was a real feast and a real little gem: who’d have thought it? Our trip out and back via expressways and back roads is always an adventure of itself and so it proved again. We had a great day!
Saturday dawned to an electronic dancing beat coming from my mobile. Dan was ready for action, so I headed off to a rendezvous at school in record time. He drove us up over the mountain to Pointies, our self proclaimed spot at Jinshan. As we arrived, Tobes and Gary were just getting out and we’d missed the best of the conditions, even though it was still yawn inducingly early. We checked out another couple of spots before drifting back, only to spend the next few hours, much to our surprise, enjoying a pretty interesting little left hander that dropped down onto a fast breaking bank. Dan and I had a good chat and a catch up on the way over and back so it was a pretty successful and entertaining trip all round.
Cass and I had resolved to climb the steps before breakfast on Sunday morning, so we duly roused ourselves, convinced ourselves that it was a good idea to head off on a freezing early morning on the scooter rather than heading back to bed, and off we sped. The steps, according to my new “buddy”, the octogenarian Mr. Lai who climbs the steps each afternoon (very slowly!), actually consist of 1400 steps at irregular intervals covering a distance of 1.2 km. The distance feels like it is a vertical distance at some points as you rise further and further up into the low reaches of the mist on Yangminshan. I raced off to meet my times then waited at the top for Cassy’s arrival. After a quick breather at the top we headed back down, but not before witnessing a great gathering of oldies who were gathered at the top ready to move on down the monkey trail. The aforementioned Mr. Lai had told me of a mysterious temple on an offshoot path about halfway down the mountain which I investigated last week and promised to share with Cass. We got halfway down, took the poorly signposted path and after about 10 minutes arrived at a most bizarre and wondrous site. More than 200 life size stone sculptures of monks were lined up on different levels in and around the temple! The monks are all unique, their facial expressions, body positions and emotions all mixed and varied. We wandered around for ages marveling at the craftsmanship, as each monk has been carved from a massive block of stone to the most intricate design imaginable. It was quite surreal to be perched on the side of a steep mountain amongst these silent sentinels. The irony was that the temple itself was little more than a large glorified tin shed: they’d obviously decided to use whatever resources they had in pursuit of stone sculpture quantity and quality: Mr. Lai said that they’re not finished yet, but plan to carve more than 400!
Later that morning we scootered across to the Neihu Miramar precinct. I’d booked some tickets online to the big IMAX theatre out there to see a movie called Eagle Eye. While not meant to be any cinematic gem, it was filled with action scenes, car chases, lots of explosions and generally all sorts of good stuff for a 20 metre wide 8 stories high screen! Prior to having our retinas burnt out in there, we went off to TGI Friday’s a Tex Mex family style restaurant that we’ve enjoyed eating at before. The fare was still good, and I tried valiantly to catch a shot of one of the waiters peak caps which read in big bold black on white letters, “We fuck the fakeshit!”. The poor guy was probably wondering why I kept pointing the camera in his direction, but he wouldn’t keep still! We just laughed and laughed as he served family groups, little kiddies, oldies etc with no-one blinking an eye!
The movie turned out to be fantastic, way low on believability but way high on thrills and spills and on the way out we even paused to try on a little bit of product as I am searching for a warm, yet compact jacket to wear to Italy later in the month.
All in all, a fantastic break, much needed, much appreciated and quite rapidly fading into a beautiful memory as school ramps up again this week!