Alishan!

Alishan (shan means mountain in Chinese) is one of the most well-known tourist destinations in Taiwan. According to Patty, going to Alishan is a must-do for foreign tourists. Since I have a year in Taiwan, I felt I would be remiss if I did not get to Alishan at some point. That point was last weekend, which also happened to be during Alishan's high season, when its famous cherry trees are blooming.

I woke up at an unnaturally early hour on Friday, but still managed to be late enough that we just barely caught the 7 am train out of Kaohsiung to Chiayi. Since we were going during the busy season, all of the hotel rooms in Alishan proper were booked up, so our destination was a small town called Rueili, still in the Alishan National Scenic Area, but not so close to Alishan itself. I had intended to take a bus to Rueili, but the lady at the Chiayi bus station informed me that I could not do this because the road to Rueili was under construction and the bus couldn't go through. Super. I called our hotel and tried to convince them to pick us up at the next nearest bus station, but that turned out to be too far away. The hotel advised us to take the Alishan Forest Railway, but the tickets were sold out, and standing room on a little train for two hours didn't sound that great. Resourceful adventurers that we are, we opted for a third option: hire a van.

Now, my van-hiring experiences in mainland China were fairly lackluster, but at least if we had a van we could sit down, right? It turned out that the van we hired was actually the nicest van-for-hire that I have ever experienced in Asia, not that that's saying much, mainly that the seats were not falling off and I could still feel all of my appendages at the end of the ride. So off we went in our van, up and up and up on the road to Rueili. Chiayi and Alishan are at tremendously different altitudes, so the roads are all of the steep, winding mountain road variety. As if this weren't exciting enough, we had the added excitement of taking all kinds of extra random shortcuts (presumably to avoid the construction, but maybe just for fun). On the bright side, we got there about an hour faster than if we had taken the train. Neato!

When we arrived at the hotel in Rueili, I approached the desk, assuming that I should do the talking since I had made the reservation. Instead, the staff focused their attention on Vicky, the only Asian-American in our posse. Helloooo, racial profiling! Later I talked to the guy and told him that I was the one who he talked to on the phone, and he was like, no way! I am fairly sure that they thought Vicky was me. Ooch.

Our rooms were Japanese style, aka no beds, but we did have a little balcony where we chilled and ate lunch. After lunch, we wanted to go hiking, so the hotel boss-man offered to drive us to a place where we could hike. I thought this was a little bit funny (couldn't we just walk there, since that's the goal?), but it turned out to be a good call, since the roads were all extra-mountainous. Even without the walk there, the hike that we went on was extremely rigorous, with all kinds of steps going down the mountain and back up again. The trail was purported to have a bat cave and a waterfall, but the bat cave was really just a little overhang, and the waterfall was just a trickle. We were feeling kind of pooped, but Gered was convinced that there was a real waterfall somewhere up the trail, so he ventured on up quite a ways until he found it, then came back down, and then we all climbed up together until we were feeling REALLY pooped. But we saw some good waterfalls!



Craziest part of the hike: I went off the trail a little bit and climbed a stalk of bamboo, and out of nowhere there was an explosion! At first I thought I was getting shot at, but later we hypothesized that maybe someone had booby-trapped their bamboo. (there was some sort of no trespassing sign that I didn't notice until afterwards) WEIRD.

When we finally made it home, we enjoyed some dinner, followed by a hotel-run firefly tour, in which a large horde of people with flashlights trooped off to look for fireflies. After fireflies, there was tea, sweet potatoes, and a 9:30 bedtime. Tired day!!

One of the things that you just *have* to do in Alishan is get up early and see the sunrise from Jhushan. However, there were no hotels available anywhere near there, so we settled for getting up early to see the sunrise from wherever we could see it near our hotel. Unsurprisingly, the best place to see the sunrise is up the mountain, so it was a very uphill walk, taking us through some rather lovely tea plantations. We got confused and failed to find the spot where you are supposed to go to see the sunrise, but it was nice anyway.

Tea is grown on mountain slopes, so the best way to cultivate it is in little rows following the contour of the land:


This tea has people growing in it!


We got back to the hotel for a Chinese-style breakfast, of which we ate everything except the plate of pickled radishes, which we tried a little bit and found to be weird and not particularly breakfasty. Consequently, the owner of the hotel stopped by our table to tell us all about the pickled radishes and why it was a specialty of the region, made with local vinegar, yada yada yada, and we should not scorn them merely because they are "not like [our] hamburgers." Because of course in America, we traditionally eat hamburgers for breakfast, and we are unwilling to eat anything less American than that!

Hired another van to get to Alishan, which conveniently passed through Fencihu on the way, where our hotel was. We wanted to drop off some luggage, but unfortunately, Gered hadn't brought his travel guide with the hotel name in it, and I didn't actually remember which hotel it was. After a confused phone call to a likely-looking number in Gered's phone, it turned out that we were basically right outside the hotel. Cool.

Since it was cherry blossom season, Alishan was unsurprisingly jam-packed with tourists, although surprisingly lacking in actual cherry blossoms. Huh. There were a lot of very old and very tall trees, and overpriced, non-delicious lunch. Fortunately Alishan has both Starbucks AND 7-11, so we were able to get ice cream, yay! Bought some of Alishan's specialty items, including tea and peanuts covered with Alishan wasabi. Any wasabi peas you find in America are shamefully wimpy in comparison...these guys might make you cry a little bit, but they will clear your sinuses right up! I brought a bag back and have yet to find anyone except me who will eat them. Alishan also featured a posse of unhappy-looking aboriginal people doing traditional dances in traditional clothing (which for the men is rather scanty) in the chilly weather. Also apparently they could not round enough enough women to be in the dance group, because there was one dancer in female costume who was DEFINITELY a dude (and a truly unfortunate-looking lady), but at least appeared to be pretty happy about the dancing.

Alishan has a number of specialties: cherry blossoms, wasabi, tea, the Fencihu lunchbox, the sunrise on the mountain, the mist (yes, mist is a specialty in Taiwan), but most of all the Alishan Forest Railway. I caught my first glimpse of the Alishan Forest Railway in the video they showed on the plane as we made our descent into Taiwan, and the Taipei airport even had a small model Alishan Forest Railway that you could take a picture with. I decided right away that riding the Alishan Forest Railway was a must-do for my stay in Taiwan.

And here comes the train! Through the mist! Next to the blossoming trees! Three kinds of specialty in one picture!


I was sooo sleepy on the train (remember waking up at 5:30?), but Gered poked me and reminded me that I ought to stay awake after having looked forward to this for so long, so I held my eyelids open for the switchbacks down the mountain. It was pretty neat.

Fencihu was a chill little town...we got some dinner and ice cream spring rolls made by a cute little girl and went to ask around about buses back to Chiayi the next day. In the process, I accidentally made friends with a table of random dudes, who invite us to share some kaoliang (local Taiwanese liquor) with them. Dan and Vicky and I have little paper cups of kaoliang with these guys, and it turns out they are from Kaohsiung too! They are pretty funny, but they are chewing betel nut, which is gross, and one of them annoyingly refuses to believe that Vicky is really an American.

Back at the hotel, it turns out that we only have hand towels. Makes showering fun! Oh well, at least we can entertain ourselves with the giant karaoke screen!

On Sunday, we got a little breakfast and left early in the morning without ever having tried the famous Fencihu lunchbox (it has rice and vegetables and an egg and a chicken leg...I am not sure why it is so special). OH NO. We make mental notes not to ever tell any Taiwanese people that we went to Alishan without eating the Fencihu lunchbox, and happily groove back to Kaohsiung to go to Bagel Bagel instead.