King Boat Festival (王船節) - First Weekend

So the first weekend of Donggang's triennial King Boat Festival was last weekend (the boat burning, by the way, is this Friday so if you are in the area, you should stop by. The processional with the boat starts Friday afternoon and the burning is at night. Late. Like 1am).

I'll edit and add captions later - for now, it's late so sit back and enjoy some photographs. More to come - I took over 700 pictures in 2 days! Stop by later if you want notes on what these things actually are.

Elephant Mountain

View of 101 from Thumb Mountain

Last Saturday we took a hike up Elephant Mountain in Xinyi District, right about the time Ma Ying-Jiu was in the area (we think his motorcade went by and it was in the paper the next day that he was in the hills around there pretending to do something but really just posing for the cameras in a baseball cap).

It's an easy "hike", very good for someone not quite fit or excited enough to mosey out of town, but who wants some wind-in-the-bamboo and a nice view. Also a fine choice for tourists in town for a limited time and not sure where to get the most bang for their hours nearby.

But I hesitate to say it's really a hike because the trails are so maintained that it's really just a series of hilly sidewalks. Only around Thumb Mountain does it start to feel like real hiking.

The hike is accessible from many points in Xinyi - Songren Rd. (the lanes leading to it anyway) south of Zhongxiao, or Songshan Rd. far past the schools, where it's quiet and residential are two - and if you want to really make a day of it, Muzha and Nangang as well. That whole stretch of hills is connected by some nice trails with fantastic views of the city.

Some photos:

Views of Yangmingshan are also abundant on the way up.

After Elephant Mountain, we detoured down a trail to Thumb Mountain, which has a more rustic path part of the way, and several old tombs and shrines.

The mountains from a vantage point on the way to Thumb Mountain

The late afternoon light was quite lovely. We reached Thumb Mountain at sunset (see first picture).

Back to the famous vantage point at Elephant Mountain, which crowds up with lovers & photographers.

Taipei 101 from a narrow view between two towering apartment buildings - reminded us all of Hong Kong.

Stop...Venue Time!

Finally. Sure took us long enough. It's a unique challenge: being from/getting married in the Hudson Valley (a gorgeous area that is sometimes a destination wedding region, and is correspondingly expensive compared to what people who live there actually make on average) but being on a budget, and having a huge family and wanting to throw a nice party, who can't possibly fit in your backyard or conceivably be OK with a 1:100 ratio of bathrooms to people - the other is under renovation - and yet at the heart of it being 'backyard wedding' sort of people.

But after looking, and my parents admitting they were willing to help pay to throw that nice party because they want it as badly or more badly than we do - we settled on Locust Grove.

We've been looking at it from the beginning, but discounted it due to the rather high cost and the fact that nothing can take place until 5pm. One of my grandparents goes to bed around that time. But - when you factor in how we won't have to rent anything or get any other vendors involved except for food, the price is actually pretty good...and we'll get Grandma a hotel room so she can rest before and after as she sees fit.

We're pretty stoked - it's the former home of Samuel F.B. Morse. Hopefully you've taken Middle School History class and know who he is, but just in case you didn't, he invented the telegraph. Which people no longer use, but that's beside the point. It was a turning point in long-distance communication. Brendan and I are history buffs of a sort (it was his major in college and I would have ended up with a minor in it if I hadn't studied abroad in India) so we're pretty stoked.

Without further ado, our venue, booked and signed:

The main house - an Italianate villa (which sounds so pretentious)

The reception hall from outside

The reception hall from inside

The outdoor area

I'm not really a Big White Dress kind of person. I probably won't even wear white. Or a white-like color (I like blue and copper). But aside from the fact that I definitely won't look like that girl *or* spend as much money as she probably spent on that dress, here's one angle of the ceremony location.

Xiao Wulai

We went to Xiao Wulai (小烏來) on Sunday for a fun, somewhat exhausting trip. Xiao Wulai is one of many waterfalls in Taiwan but is often said to be the most beautiful, as unlike the others it can be viewed from a distance.

A trip to Xiao Wulai starts in Daxi (大溪) in Taoyuan county. Daxi is famous for dried tofu and a few old streets where much of the original colonial architecture is preserved.

Daxi also has a dog who apparently loves getting hit on the butt. Seriously, the dog went up to her owner and begged - begged - to be punched in the bum before presenting herself thusly.

I dunno.

I wonder where Kodos lives. (Google Kang and Kodos if you don't get the joke).

Taoyuan Bus Company (桃園客運）runs buses from Daxi to Xiao Wulai several times a day - but the information they give on the phone is worse than bad. I called the morning of our trip and was assured that there were irregular buses until about 3pm, and if we were willing to walk back to the intersection with the main road, a bus would come by to return to Daxi at 7pm. At 1:30 as we waited for a bus from Daxi, we called again. The guy I talked to assured me that the first guy doesn't know anything and not to trust him and that there were no more buses.

(I think they were the same guy.)

So we charter 2 taxis, which cost a pretty penny, because dammit I wanted to go to Xiao Wulai and I was going to go to Xiao Wulai.

On our way back, just as a side note, we not only passed a bus returning to Xiao Wulai that we were assured did not exist, but as we were preparing to leave a bus going to the falls - not just the turnoff 2km away but the actual falls - went by. Seriously. What the. Pffft. Taoyuan Bus Company: FAIL.

Anyway, along the way we saw some gorgeous butterflies and dragonflies:

And the falls were down several hundred meters worth of uncomfortably spaced stairs.

Sasha, Lilian, Becca, Joseph, Brendan and me.

We then hiked up about another hour to Dragon Phoenix Falls (not worth it) and the Wind Balancing Rock (not really worth it, either). What was worth it - the views and mountain scenery as we made the stiff, steep hike up the side of the mountain.



Wind Balancing Rock. Apparently this rock is worshipped as a god by some locals and aboriginal tribes. It's OK.

There are signs all over the place warning of poisonous snakes, and I know Taiwan has snakes, but other than a baby snake we once saw near Jiufen I've never actually laid eyes on one. This is the closest I've gotten to seeing a real, live, adult snake in Taiwan:

As we returned to the gatehouse, just in time to see a bus that doesn't exist roll by, the light improved a lot for picture taking.

That's Xiao Wulai in the corner.

The advantage to taking a taxi was that we could stop in a few places for photos, and we also stopped to buy some local alcohol (made from grapes but not wine) and Lalashan Honey Peaches, which are expensive but wonderfully scrumptious. We would have bought bags full but 3 of them cost NT$400 (a little over US $10).

We stopped again to take more photos as the sun set before heading back to Daxi and catching transportation to Taipei, where we had dinner at Jolly (near Nanjing E. Road MRT). Very good food and awesome on-site brewed beer.