Wal and I attended the Thanksgiving turkey feast provided by school on Wednesday afternoon, although Cassy decided to give it a miss. I question my attendance each time: after catching up with a few people we rarely see, it becomes a bit boring, especially when the queue for the food stretches from the courtyard back into the building! The beers, while good quality, seemed to be designed to run out earlier and earlier each year and while the wine flows, it isn't top notch by any stretch of the imagination. As the beers dwindled and a questionably talented 'flash mob" did a dance, it was time for us to exit stage left! We had a much better time at some of our usual haunts later into the evening.
While many of our colleagues were flying off for quick jaunts in nearby Asian countries, or within Taiwan itself, we'd decided to settle in at home and have a very easy break: why, we're off to Europe in three weeks time and I reckon we can wait that long, don't you? We waited till 1Bite2Go opened on Thursday mid-morning before scootering over to enjoy a stacked breakfast in their cavernous space which we had all to ourselves: fun!
The first day/night cricket test from Adelaide with the new pink ball promised some entertainment and it didn't disappoint. We spent lots of time in the next few days catching sessions of the cricket and it was very exciting. We struggled out to the shops and restaurants again on Friday night and wandered the streets down near FuGuo Road to try out a newly spied (by Cass on a bus!) Japanese curry restaurant, Sukiya. When we got down there, a blustery breeze bustling and hurrying us along the road, we discovered a line out the front and a packed house. It was worse than the catering line at school! Promising to re-visit when the novelty has worn off somewhat, we instead backtracked to one of our favourite Thai restaurants on the top floor of the Sogo building. We were lucky to sneak in without a booking and it was as tasty and as fresh as usual.
The expressway beckoned us on Saturday and I packed up the car with gear and surfboards in anticipation of a few waves out on the northernmost tip of the island at Fulong. We tracked a similar path as we'd taken to the cat village last month, but kept on driving all the way to the coast where we motored round the seaside highway among the most spectacular scenic vistas. We often forget what jaw-dropping scenery is on this island until we venture back to places we haven't visited for a while. The mountains do vertical leaps from the ocean, all vertiginous slabs of granite and igneous rock, the road slicing a ruler edge through the middle of the cliffs. The highway monkey-grips the stone walls and curves and folds round the mountain edges, sometimes dipping under cavernous landslide tunnels and sometimes skipping out beyond the cliffs as if suspended in space momentarily before clawing back to grasp the side of the towering slopes.
Past the "Hope" (!) Nuclear power plant number 2 and very soon we were sliding past Cassy's dreaded nemesis, The Longmen Camping Ground, which of course is the site for the dreaded Grade 8 camp each year! Not to worry , we were searching further on and were surprised at the huge queue to get in to the brand new hotel's car-park. Seems like it's the weekend for queuing! We ducked through the railway underpass, parked on grounds of the local community hall, (who were quite enterprisingly charging a premium for the close parks!) and wandered through the hotel grounds to the "combed" beach. A small entrance fee secured us entry to the big bridge and the beach and river entrance beyond, yet I was unable to go back and get the board due to really blown out conditions. We had a bit of fun on the way back when we discovered some really weird advertising hoardings where we hammed it up for the camera, then stopped at the 7/11 for a quick lunch and coffee after the other restaurants in town seemed a little less than salubrious ( see "No. 1 Lunch Box" above!)
We discovered great swathes of the hinterland that we'd never laid eyes on before as we drove along a newly renovated road from the tip before getting lost halfway back. Despite the tiny, country, winding road we got stuck on, which took us miles out of our way, we decided that we had no pressing engagement so we'd just "go with the flow"! We drove through the mountain hamlet of Pingxi, which is famous for its drift lanterns, and we saw a few of the same wafting through and above the village as we drove on by. Eventually arriving back on a link road to the expressway, we got ourselves back home to enjoy a lazy night and then, an even lazier Sunday. What a blissful cameo of a holiday this turned out to be!
Photos: fish on parade, empty 1Bite2Go, Christmas lights at SOGO, Fulong fun and with a final temple finial, do you think this guy could fit anything else on this motorbike?!