Days 7 & 8: Eternal Spring Shrine of the Spotless Mind

DANSHUI

After hotpot on Tuesday night, Winston and I bumped into a British acquaintance of his, Phil, who recommended that I visit Danshui, a coastal town north-west of Taipei, where the Taipei Strait feeds into the Danshui River. He said he had been there with friends on the weekend and watched an amazing sunset. With no plan in mind for Wednesday, it seemed like a good and cheap (NT$50 – about AU$1.75) idea.

On the train, an old, partially toothless guy in a dirty polyester suit seemed to take an interest in me and started asking me questions. By the kind translation of the lady sitting next to me, he managed to recommend that I visit a coffee shop in Danshui which has a marvellous view over the bay. I would never have picked him for a café-dweller but I’m glad he was.

After a walk along Danshui’s charming waterfront promenade, replete with carts and stores selling extra-tall soft-serve ice creams, I reached what I assumed the old man had been speaking of, and was only mildly disheartened to realise that it was, of course, a Starbucks. I ordered a latte and a blueberry muffin and took them up to the first-floor outdoor balcony, which looked directly over the water towards Bali on the other side of the river mouth.

Why there were seats available on this balcony, while people sat inside typing on their laptops, remains a mystery to me. Rarely have I experienced a moment of such bliss, where every element is just right: the cool, salty breeze rolling off the water; the warm muffin and sweet coffee; the jazz standards playing over the speakers (including excellent sax renditions of ‘In the Wee, Small Hours of the Morning’, ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’ and ‘Misty’); the blanket of mist making Bali a Brigadoon. Just one of those simple, sweet moments life offers us every now and then. I was very grateful for the toothless train guy.

I spent an hour or so wandering around Danshui, admiring its old streets and trendy, wacky souvenir stores aimed at the weekend getaway set.  I also stumbled through its crowded street market, which duck and wove through back alleyways, offering all manner of curious fruit and vegetables, and any cut of meat you could imagine, including the local specialty: wild boar.

Despite Danshui’s charm, I happened to know that hot springs were not far away and had been intrigued to visit them for some time. A key part of Taiwan’s tourism industry, hot springs bubble up all over the northern half of the island, but the epicentre is Xinbeitou, north of Taipei and on the way back from Danshui.

XINBEITOU

A notable calm rests over Xinbeitou, along with a subtle hint of sulphur. Despite this, my first vision of the city was of a woman lying umoving in the middle of an intersection, her scooter lying scratched-up beside her and ambulance workers fussing over her. It seemed unfair that this oasis of calm was the only place I should see the damage wrought by Taiwan’s mercenary driving habits, when thousands of similar incidents must surely occur daily in the big smoke.

Still, unable to offer any more assistance than was already being plied, I carried on towards the hot springs of Guangming Road. With no particular destination in mind, I soon came across one I had read about in the tourist guide, called Long Nice Hot Springs. The first bathhouse built in Beitou, Emperor Hirohito visited on his grand Taiwan tour, and it was initially used for wounded Japanese soldiers. During the Japanese occupation it was nicknamed ‘House of Three Cents’, but for me it was the House of the Still-Reasonable Sum of NT$90.

The man at the door seemed keen to make clear to me that it was a ‘public bath.’ When I squinted at him, he used the word: nekkid. Ah! I see. Yes, one of those. But we cut a deal and he said I could wear as many clothes as I wished.*

Inside, the bathing room was much smaller than I expected, and quite busy. Still, the sound of running water and the steam rising from the small pools maintained the aura of tranquillity. I first tried to shower, as I had read was customary, but was stopped by a naked man who directed me straight to the pools. Not in a position to argue (never do so with a naked man), I zipped over to the pool and sat on the edge, just warming up my feet. Once they had adjusted to the considerable heat of the water (around 42 degrees), I sat on the first step, heating up to my waist, then a few minutes later went in up to the neck.

My first thought: anyone who argues that it is humane to kill a lobster by throwing it into boiling water is either lying or deeply misguided. There is a reason the hot spring guidebooks throw around terms like ‘cerebral ischemia’, ‘cerebral haemorrhage’ and ‘cornea damage.’ They are hot springs, designed to cure all manner of ills, but it’s certainly a case of no pain, no gain.

I repeated this process twice, never remaining fully submerged for more than four or five minutes, and soon began to feel deeply peaceful. I sat on a wooden bench to dry off (the towel I was given was the size of a regular handtowel and as thick as a dishrag), letting the breeze cool me down. As I did, the calm really set in. To experience such calm on a daily basis, as many hot springs visitors must, would surely do wonders for the health. On the train ride home, I nearly fell asleep, so soothing was the hot spring’s effect.

A brief nap back at the hotel restored my energy and I headed out in search of dinner. The Taiwanese certainly have their favourite haunts: some places had queues along the street while others remained relatively unpatronised. I stumbled across a quiet place enticingly named ‘I like food and coffee’ and somehow knew it was the place for me. I took my seat for one and a chubby little girl (presumably the owner’s daughter) sat diagonally opposite from me, playing with a bead puzzle and singing sweetly. A local couple brought in their poodle, which sat up at the table while they read their newspapers.

I pointed to my dish of choice on the menu (ever careful to choose places with illustrated menus) and stumbled through a request in Mandarin for a bottle of beer. The waitress wandered off and returned with a number of different beers for me to choose from. Victory was mine! If I could order beer in Mandarin, I felt, I could do anything! Elated, I ate the delicious bowl of crumbed pork (with an egg cooked over the top) and drank my bottle of Taiwan Beer. And, as the restaurant’s name would suggest, a cup of excellent coffee followed the meal. So satisfying.

I headed home for an early night, knowing that the next day was going to be a big one.

*This is a lie.

HUALIEN, TAROKO GORGE and TAROKO

After an early start, I headed out to meet Winston at Zhongshan Station for our 8:15 train ride to Hualien (via Taipei Main Station), near the coast south-east of Taipei. He had, in his way, been quite adamant that I must not leave Taiwan without seeing Taroko Gorge, Taiwan’s most prominent natural landmark, and I had been surprised by his assertiveness on the matter, but soon began to see that he had an unspoken stake of his own in the trip. His concern on the train platform at Zhongshan that we stand at the right doorway for the train resulted in maniacal pacing for something close to two minutes, calculating the relative distance between the doors and the escalators at Taipei Main Station, to ensure, apparently, that we would not have to walk three steps more than were absolutely necessary.

When we found our Traditional train (V-Line equivalent for friends back home) at Taipei Main Station, he ushered me into the nearest carriage then disappeared to the front of the train. I stood waiting for him for a while and eventually saw him bustling towards me down the aisle of the next carriage, pencil and notepad in hand. He signalled (using words as infrequently as possible) for me to follow him into the next carriage and proceeded to scan the ceiling for the carriage’s serial number. He noted it down and moved on to the next one, repeating this for twelve carriage-lengths.

When the train finally pulled away, he noted the time in a spreadsheet he had carefully drawn up in one of his notebooks and did the same every time we passed a station, rigorously cross-checking with the official timetable issued by the train company. If we passed a station a minute late or a minute early, I could be sure of an up-to-the-minute report.

I asked him if perhaps the train trip itself was part of his reason for wanting to take me to Taroko Gorge and he admitted guiltily that, yes, it was part of the reason. I told him it was fine, but that he could have been more explicit about his obsession with trains, rather than attempting to hide it from me like a dirty little secret. It is not in his nature, however, to communicate so directly.

I spent most of the two-and-three-quarter hour trip trying to relax despite his constant time-checking, note-taking and seat-hopping. More than once I felt like a parent with a needy, difficult child. Thankfully, there was enough visual splendour outside to keep me interested, and my mp3 player was a godsend. I listened mostly to music by Alberto Iglesias, which lends itself beautifully to world travel.

No sooner could we disembark at Hualien than Winston had raced up the platform to the front of the train to watch the engine changeover and document it step-by-step on his camera phone. We waited an hour or so for the bus to Taroko Gorge and, when it arrived, I was careful to take the front seat, aware of Winston’s tendency to motion sickness. On the bus, a baby started crying, deeply disturbing Winston’s peace of mind. Initially he just groaned and rolled his eyes, but when another infant began screaming, he became so disgruntled that he turned around to look at the mother and let out a loud ‘Sheeeeesh!’ I’ve never felt so patient and tolerant. I asked him, ‘What are you going to do? Throw it out the window?’ then carefully backtracked to reassure him that I did not intend it as a recommendation.

After an hour on the bus, we arrived at Taroko Gorge. It was hard not to be struck by its natural beauty, but we were only at the entrance. The gorge is much bigger and more splendrous than can be witnessed in a single afternoon, especially on foot. I followed Winston towards a road tunnel that led under a mountain. I don’t know, reader, if you’ve ever walked through a tunnel under a mountain before, but it’s an eerie experience. The echo when a car or bus roars through is quite deafening, and in the silence there’s an unmistakable air of anticipation, waiting for the next vehicle to howl past.

When we reached the end of the tunnel, Winston proceeded to walk along the narrow edge of a road that appeared to wind around the base of the gorge. Naturally, I asked him where the walking track was. He informed me that this was the walking track. Despite my wimpy protestations that a 10-20 centimetre gap on the side of a road leading directly beneath unstable marble rockfaces did not constitute a walking track, I followed him.

What I saw of the gorge was predictably breathtaking: a striking red suspension bridge, small Buddhist shrines carved into the landscape, big brown wasps’ nests perched high in the branches of dying trees, and, of course, a string of overwhelming views of the mountains rising over a kilometre into the air.

I couldn’t help feeling a little horrified, though, by the café and tourist shop that had been set-up directly opposite the Eternal Spring Shrine, one of the most serene places imaginable. Built in 1958 to honour the 212 people who lost their lives in the construction of the Central Cross Island Highway, the shrine has been destroyed twice by natural disasters. The huge landslide that scars the mountainside directly above it seems to suggest it will never be entirely safe, and that maybe nature (which made the construction of the highway so difficult in the first place) likes it that way.

A Stand By Me moment followed when we were walking through yet another tunnel, this one the most narrow, and a tour bus roared up behind us. A woman walking a few metres behind uttered what must have been a Mandarin expletive, while Winston and I clung to the dusty rock walls for dear life. We got out of there as quick as we could.

We eventually got back to Taroko, the village at the entrance to the gorge, and had a couple of hours to spare before we could leave. Winston seemed to blame me for this, though I was not to know our walk would be over so quickly. We grabbed a drink at a 7-11 to kill some time, then walked towards Taroko train station, passing on the way a local karaoke bar, the likes of which I would have expected from eastern Europe, not eastern Taiwan. An old drunk woman was howling into the microphone while a batch of drunk gents swayed along to her unconscionable wails. The ‘music’ echoed down the street. It was 4:30 in the afternoon.

 

It was quite a walk to the station, and Winston was not going to let it dirty his shoes. He leapt over even slightly damp ground in order to keep his soles clean.

We sat for a moment in what was called the Asian Cement Garden, but was actually a spot designed to attract butterflies. We spotted some beauties, but they didn’t want to land. We had to make do with watching their bright red and yellow bellies swirling through the air.

We caught a train back to Hualien and I enjoyed a bowl of dumplings in a very tasty beef broth, along with some fried tofu. We stopped by a sweet shop and I purchased a local specialty (apparently a remnant of Japanese occupation) called mochi, a variant on the classic jam donut. Mine was made from a red bean dough wrapped around a ripe strawberry and dipped in icing sugar. It was good and sticky, but fairly bland. I imagine it’s the kind of thing locals might eat as comfort food.

Winston slept (mercifully) all the way home, while I listened to music, mostly Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark. ‘Just Like This Train’ sounds better when you’re actually on a train.  

Slept at least nine hours after 36,658 steps for the last two days.