#184 Hiking in extreme heat in Taipei

Transcript

That's a nice lazy Sunday. It's just a guy practicing his saxophone in the park. That is something I'm going to run into a bit here and there. I guess just because people have small houses and stuff. I don't know, even in North America, it must be tough to practice instruments, because I grew up in a gigantic old house I probably could have, but I think your average apartment and stuff, you're probably still going to bug your neighbors. It's tricky. I remember even just wanting to read an audiobook. I wrote a book about the last of us. KeithCourage.com. You can get it for free or you can listen to the audiobook. But it was really tough to find somewhere to record. I eventually found a deserted beach in British Columbia, which was really tough. It's because I had to cross a train line and then it was blocked off on each side by fisheries and stuff. Basically, it was somewhere I was not supposed to be. And people still ended up there sometimes.

Yep, finding time alone is tricky. So I woke up a bit earlier today, not a ton earlier. What time is it anyway? I'm on my way. This is getting ridiculous now. So chow university. I hiked up behind it and found a path. It's not even quite new yet. It's not so bad. I found a path that went down into this university, but it continues on into the woods.

And it seems like it just goes into the woods into nowhere. It's the only unpaved non-stone path I found yet in Taipei. It's just a dirt path in the woods. But I think it's not as severe as all that. I'm pretty sure over there. I'll eventually just connect into the river and not be that far away from the brown line metro. But I won't know till I do it.

And that was one of my very first hikes. That technically I guess I was actually my first official hike in Taipei. And I've never been able to make it back because I've learned about the insane weather around here, where there's literal two hour long thunderstorms almost every single day in the summer. The humidity builds up. The steam rises. It builds up in the sky and then crazy thunder. And then in the evening, it's fine again. And it just happens over and over and over. So same thing today. The weather says strong chance of rain. Only a 25% chance of thunderstorm, but a much higher chance that there'll be rain, whether or not it has thunder.

But you know, it says that every day. So it's like, who the fuck knows, man? I feel like the weather is only useful. The weather report in very vague generalities. However, what I have learned is that you can physically see it. You can literally see the storm coming well before it starts because the evil dark clouds form in the sky. You can see him in the distance. So right now, as of noon, usually around two or two thirties when this happens. As of noon, everything is clear skies with just some nice white fluffy clouds in every direction.

And yesterday, it didn't rain. So I'm just going to try it and we'll see.

But there's the other different the various axes of weather. It's super crazy hot out. Oh, I finally got to the end of my deodorant. It took a while. I was shocked and amazed. So I still have two more deodorant buyers that I bought in South Korea, which is good because I haven't looked at all in Taipei. I have no idea what the situation is here. But I got double backup from Korea. But yeah, it turns out, I guess I would have been fine. If I had never found deodorant in Korea, I would have made it. But it's still the better that I did because the potential danger, what if I had run out in Korea that would have been awful. But yeah, it's super, super crazy hot. The air quality is a little on the poor side today.

But that is dropped to the very bottom of things that I care about. I hear someone under this other bridge who's practicing dancing and older lady dancing to some jazzy tunes doing a routine of some kind. 5:00 I guess this is what you do. You go hang out under bridges and you practice your craft out of the sun. Yeah, the air pollution problem since it's only, you know, it's like a little bit above 50. It's not that bad. That's become such a minor problem now compared to how it was in the winter. Now the heat is way, way more of a problem. In fact, I was thinking about that, like how there's so many air being bees available right now. I just have my pick of Taipei and it's like, yeah, this would be a truly insane time to fly around the world if you only had two weeks. This would be the worst time of year, I think, to deliberately come here. It's kind of fun for me because I'm already here. I was already in this part of the world and I'm just like, give me my 90 days and I'll just deal with whatever happens. But yeah, this would be the time of year, mid summer, where you would never, ever want to come to Asia for a vacation. And I realized like, this is their winter, basically. The same way you probably wouldn't want to go to Canada in January. Like, why would you go when it's super winter time unless you deliberately want to go skiing? That's similar. Why would you come to this part of the world when it's super, super hot every day? There's daily thunderstorms. Yeah, like I don't even know what the upside would be. There is not really an equivalent to skiing in the winter. I mean, even if you wanted to sunbathe, if you're a fucking lunatic, that would still be too insane in this time of year, you would just die.

Yeah, this is definitely the worst time of year. No question, it's so hot.

So yeah, I'm fighting the heat and I'm feeling semi-confident about the storms because I just don't see any clouds yet, any black storm clouds. But I'm going to keep my eyes peeled because it's kind of neat to realize like, I don't need the weather report. I just need what I see and if I see them starting to form, time to get the fuck out of there.

But it's also kind of interesting now that I realize how it all works that it's not going to fit starts raining. It's not going to just rain all night. It's going to rain for two hours and it's going to stop. I could literally just stand there under my umbrella for two hours. That'd be weird. But if I had to do it, that would probably solve the problem of my shoes and my pants getting super wet. But anyway, here's hoping that doesn't happen. Man, it is fucking hot today. Fuck me.

Alright, well I think this is definitely a mistake. Trying to remember what the weather said today. It's funny how you just keep moving the goal post where when I was on Jeju, if something got toward 30 degrees, 32, whatever I was like this is insane. This is absolutely insane. I'm pretty sure today it was 35 when I checked and then feels like, you know, the fact that the feels like number was like 39. You know, there was below 40 because the other day it was 42. I've moved the goal post. Now I'm like, hey, whatever, it's been worse. That doesn't make this okay. This is insane. This is fucking insane.

It's not though like the day that I turned back because it was mega humid. It doesn't feel like that. This just feels pretty much. It is humid, but it's just the straight-up heat. That's the problem. But yeah, I've kind of yo-yoed up and down where I stopped at a convenience store and I got an ice cream bar and a nice coffee. And that made me feel a lot better. And then I got to Suchau University and it's quite a small campus. I knew it would be tougher. It's easier to exit these places, you know, going back up through. It's like, oh, there's a chance that I'll mess this up and get lost and confused. But I didn't. I found my way back pretty easy, pretty small campus. And I found a public washroom there that I didn't realize was there that had a shower. It was so weird to just be in a public washroom and there's a shower room. And I've never been on this campus on a weekday. Something always goes terribly wrong. I've just been here on weekends when it's nice and empty.

But because it's so empty and it's a Sunday, I got to admit, I lingered. I mean, of course, I'm not going to take a shower. What the hell? But I did linger and look at it because I wanted to. So bad. It would feel so good to get under the water. I'm almost at the point where the path turns into a dirt path. There's a nice view across the river. There's the Ferris Wheel. I found one the other way too. I found two Ferris Wheel so far.

And there is the Taipei 101, pretty much directly across from me. And actually, yeah, you can even, again, use in visuals. 10:00 It is hazy today. But it was a lot hazier. The other time I was up here, it was like, you know, it was evil and dark and death cloud looking over there. Today, it's just kind of a nice gentle haze. This is like, again, just a little bit over 50. It's bad enough for the weather website to say the air is poor, but by the standards of the area, it's actually pretty good. This is fine.

But yeah, I mean, even if I did hop in the shower. Basically, I would dry off immediately, you know, it would all just evaporate in a second anyway. And it would wash off my suntan lotion. Could not have that. That would be terrible.

But yeah, I got to the little path behind the university that leads up here. There's like a guy's, like a tombstone dedicated to a famous guy.

Maybe Su Chow himself. And that walk was much worse than I expected. It had like guide ropes and it was a little tricky on the way down. It was easier on the way up in that sense. It really wasn't very steep. It was easier to go up and down. But going up in the heat is just insane. And you know, this isn't even that high. I'm coming to this, quote, unquote, mountaintop. I'll be ahead soon. I don't remember the exact number, but it's well below 200 meters. This is very small. But in this heat, it felt three times longer. It's like I just kept going up and up and up. And that's when I really started feeling like this is not the right thing to do. This is terrible. I started having these visions of, it's never happened to me, but I've heard about like when you just stop sweating.

Because I bought the biggest bottle of water that will fit in my pocket. I couldn't get the big two liter, but I got like, it's probably like eight or nine hundred millimeters. And now that's really seeming small all of a sudden. It's like, fuck this. I need more water. But I've passed at least 15 people going both ways since I've gotten up here. And I've just only been up here 10 minutes right away. There's just people. So that made me feel a bit better again. It's like this is still hot and crazy, but not so hot and crazy that everyone's just staying home. And in fact, it's like way busier today than it was the other time I was up here. So just knowing that there's people around just feels a little better. If I collapse in the dirt, someone's going to find me. I don't actually think that's going to happen. I think this is just going to be unpleasant. But you know, it's that mix. It's unpleasant, but it's like cool also. It's quite a beautiful day. I'm finally up here on this trail. Finally doing the thing.

But yeah, this weather can fuck right off, man. It's so fucking hot.

But yeah, now that I'm up here, it's more shady. It's at least semi-shaded. There's an occasional little breeze. This isn't so bad. I was going to keep recording until I got to the thing that said how high the mountain was. But I'm going down now before I go back up. It's just too hot. It's too hot. I can't speak anymore. Who cares? Who cares? It's a hundred and something. Who the fuck cares? Let's fade the hell out and then come back when I'm further in.

All right, 184 meters was that previous peak, and that's as far as I went before. So now going a bit farther, I got to a road, an impassable road, Jiangnan Road, JIA and ANN Road.

So from here I could have turned to the right, gone south, down to the Ferris Wheel, and to Jiangnan Road Station on the brown line and escaped. And that's what I started to do. I even walked a little ways. There was also a big, a big like communal meeting, Pagoda-type thing that a bunch of hikers were at at that point. And I was like, yeah, with this weather, maybe that shit I should just get out of here. I should just take this opportunity. But on the other hand, I finally made it out here, and I mean, what are the chances that the weather's going to be better? If I wait, you know, they might just be worse. I mean, at this point, it's a bit past two o'clock, and the skies are still clear. I think I actually got away with a non-thunderstorm day. The heat's insane, but who knows how long it's going to take for that to pass? So instead, I went the other way up north to a little green dotted hiking 15:00 trail on Google Maps. And at this point, there's no more people. No one else has come in here. They're definitely just doing that hike. Pass to Chao, because then, yeah, that goes, just goes, cuts through the city, and then drops you off right by a subway. That is obviously the logical one to go on, the logical hike, where, yeah, I've just gone deeper into the woods. And I just passed another peak, which was, had to take pictures, because my brain cannot retain numbers anymore. 216 meters. And unfortunately, I had to go down to a road and then back up. So I don't know, again, from sea level, I don't think I went up 200 meters, but I went up enough that I was like, oh, fuck this sucks. The heat is so hot that, you know, normally my hiking style is just breathing in out really deep and just go slow and consistent. Pretend you're one of those little, like, tin marching soldiers that just chink, clink, clink, one foot in front of the other foot in front of the other foot. Like, don't even put space between your feet. Stop just ahead of your toe, heel toe, heel toe, small little steps up the hill. And I can do that forever, but not today. Today, that was not even going at that slow deliberate pace was like I was forcing my way quickly up a mountain. I kept having to stop and just wait till I got my breath back. This heat is just insane. It's just nuts. And then the heat combined with waking up early, definitely a bit cranky, too, because yeah, just every time I take my phone out, my gross, sweaty palms get sweat on my phone. And then I want to have it be dry before I put it back in my little day bag, but I can't wipe it off anywhere because all of my clothes are just drenched in sweat. So it's just wet, wet, wet, and it's just like, fuck, how am I supposed to dry this thing off? This is so fucking annoying. And then the little pouch that I put my phones in, it is starting to come apart. If I don't, if I don't slide my phone in just right, it gets caught on the little interior where it's starting to tear. So my phone was in getting stuck and I couldn't get it in. And I'm just like hitting it. Like, fuck you. Get in the bag. Fuck off. You fucking fuck. And I was like, oh shit, I'm pissed. I'm getting angry because my phone won't go in my day bag easily.

So yeah, I don't know what to say. This is a bad idea. This is a dumb plan. But I'm doing it. So whatever. Alright, here's the more developed path I'm crossing over because I've just been on a nature path this whole time. The nature path continues on, but here is a nice rock path. And it even has stairs with a metal banister. What is this shit? Okay, looks like this will just loop me back down to Gianan Road. So I think I just need to continue on forward. And eventually this will all just connect me up to other trails that will stay under the day. My fate is just to eventually get down to the brown line. And in fact, I'll probably still only be like probably one subway stop east on the brown line. But that's not too bad because at least this seems pretty pretty safe. You know, I'm still not miles away from other people. They're not extremely far away from me. Yeah, just a nice little mountain hike that will eventually connect me up to a road that will eventually take me down to the brown line. I'm just taking the long way instead of going straight there like I probably should have done half an hour ago. I'm taking the long way. But yeah, talk about your type too fun. It's going to feel good in hindsight. I'm going to think back to this and be like, oh, that was nice. You know, when it's just conceptual, when the heat is just like, oh, yeah, that was a hot sunny day. That sure was hot. It'll seem fine in hindsight. And I love just adding to my mental map. I like knowing if you get on the path, you head east from Siuchau. Then you head north up to the other path. Where does that go? Well, it goes here. I'm there right now. Need to know, fun to know, fun to daydream about in the future. But in this moment while I'm actually here, not my best 20:00 plan of all time. At some point, I should just give up with this heat. I should just give the fuck up and just accept that this is not the kind of weather you go outside in.

Man, there's a ton of butterflies up here. At first, that was like, are those bats? They wouldn't be bats in the daytime. But the butterflies were so dark colored that they just looked like bats. They just look black. But one just went by that had, it was still black, but it had iridescent blue on its wings. It looked very beautiful. Yeah, lots of butterflies up here.

Again, yeah, you know, conceptually, gorgeous. On a mountain path, quite rugged, but I mean still the developed knitness of Taipei is holding true. I just got to another peak. Mount Jian Nan east peak, 205 meters. So even these just rough paths in the mountains are still really well delineated. Still have markings and peak numbers and stuff. And down on the road proper, they had those signs that even said like the time in minutes, how many minutes to get to this temple or whatnot. Yeah, the trail systems in Taipei are still 10 out of 10, a plus, even out here.

Any butterflies? And now that I'm deeper into this jungly area, the sun's not even beaten down on me very much. It's actually very nice. It's just, it's just that, yeah, I won't be able to, I won't be able to appreciate it fully until it's a conceptual memory because the literal physical environment that I'm in right now is not good for people.

It blows my mind that I'm only subtropical, that it gets worse than this, how crazy. And my friend Brad was telling me that he was on a trip once in his youth, where he was basically right on the equator, and that the day is really where half and half. Sun comes up at 6 a.m., it goes down at 6 p.m. every day. It's like, yeah, I guess that is what would happen. That's fucking weird. But actually, this feels a lot better too, now that I'm more or less just going along sideways. Going up was really the bad part. Going up in this weather is so awful. Now that I'm just going along a ridge, this is a lot better.

Oh wow, okay, now this is starting to get worth it. I just came to like a little outlook. There's a bench here, but man, this bench is fucked. It's clearly been here for a long time, and somebody has tried to sort of mend it back together. Yeah, it's super rusty and fallen apart, yeah, someone has taken plastic ties to try to reinforce it a bit, but I don't know if I want to sit on that bench. That bench is fucked. Yeah, you come out to a cliff side.

Wow, and this view is fucking amazing.

So I can see a road down there. Is that Jan N. Road? Interesting, because where I was at, it just was like going between the mountains. But what I'm seeing here, it's like passing through a little town. And there's the mountains across from me with little buildings. Like the buildings really do. They get sparse up in the mountains, but they are still there. They really hang around in this town.

Yep, that's Jan N. Road, all right? Cool.

And yeah, I guess that's the national park as they keep looking out into the distance.

Yeah, so it's just a big valley. Oh, actually, I'm a little closer to the cliff side than I realized. It's kind of hidden by bushes. I should step back a bit. That's a little scary. Yeah, apparently I'm 200 meters up and I'm just looking down into the valley and there's a road and there's a little bit of traffic and there's just various buildings all kind of scattered through the mountains. Back behind me to the west, ahead of me is just just trees. Nothing but power lines and trees. I see nothing coming up ahead of me. But yeah, this is very fucking pretty. So there we go. That's the first thing where, because you know, it's all kind of even conceptual in the sense that I'm just walking through the brush without really being able to see any views or anything. 25:00 This view, though, this is excellent. This is really good. Although this does put me directly in the sun. I still got half of my water. That's not so bad.

Yeah, it had another odd moment in this podcast where I just described something that you can't see. I mean, I'll take a picture. It'll be the episode image, but the pictures never quite get across the real thing. How high up was Goonsan? Yeah, I'm looking down at the road below me and there's only one little yellow truck driving along. So it stands out a lot and it looks about the same size as things looked from Goonsan on Jeju. But yeah, this is like a cliff side, like perfectly formed like out of a Disney cartoon. Like imagine the Lion King except verdant. It's like a perfect cartoon cliff side. It's just excellent. We're like in a story or a movie like you just need that perfect outlook. A post-apocalyptic young adult story or something. That's what this is. Shit, dude, that is worth it. That is nice. Highly recommended, just not in August.

Well, this is pretty interesting. So I got to a way more official path, like a stone path. It's still kind of uneven stones, but it's very, you know, official roadway path. And right away, I started just bumping into people on this path. I've already passed like five people. I wonder where this path originated from. I mean, I'm glad I took the little rough path up in the east, Jan and Peak trail, because I got to see that cool view. But this is clearly the real path through the woods. So not only did I meet some people, which is nice feeling in this insane climate, but I just got to a point where everybody else is walking. Well, I guess, of course, they're walking the opposite way for me, because if they're walking the same way as me, I wouldn't see them yet. But I passed like five people going the other way, but I did just get to an arrow pointing the way I'm going. Just a chalk arrow on the ground, because there is like a side path that's smaller, but still concrete, still like an official path. And I don't know where that goes. It upsets them in a little curious. But in this weather, you know, I don't want to just go meander excessively. And the little arrow is pointing like forward. Like, nope, don't go there. Follow the arrow. It reminds me a lot of in the movie labyrinth near the start. Turn back, Sarah, when Sarah is drawing arrows on the ground. But then the creatures of the labyrinth pick up the tiles and turn them to fuck her up. But yeah, that's just kind of neat. And also at that intersection, there was a little umbrella wedged at the bottom of a tree, and inside was cat food. And like a dish with some cat food and a little water dish.

So somebody comes out here to leave stuff for the mountain cats. It's very cool. Now, here is another rough path up into the mountain.

So if I go forward, it's this main path. Going uphill is a miserable nightmare. But it's probably not that much further up, and there might be another view.

And there's no arrow this time. See, the other path kind of went down, but this one, yeah, if I could, I'm going to go up. I'm going to break the exact rule I just said about me andering, just because if there's another one of those views, I want to see it. Those views are insane.

So probably this will just take me up a little bit, and then we'll circle me back down to this main path. But yeah, whatever this main rock path is, this is clearly the one. This is what I want to be on.

All right, I did find a view. It's not as good because it's more trees in the way and it's looking back to the south toward the Taipei 101 building, which I felt like I was perfectly across from it before, and now I'm just the tiniest bit beyond it. I guess when you're passing by a tower from the other side of a river, it takes a long-ass time to get beyond that tower. But I'm sitting at a nice little table, just taking a little break. There is a little shaded shack type meet-up place here as well, but nobody else is here. There was an outhouse, and I was like, oh, you know, I don't especially need the outhouse, but I'll use it if it's here, but it was a squat toilet, and I remember seeing a squat portapoddy back at the Nanzo in Temple in Fuquokai, and I was like, oh, man, I hope I never have to do that. 30:00 I've had to do that many times since getting to Taiwan. They love squat toilets here. This one, I don't know, because there's an upside to the squat toilet, you know, especially out in these rural areas. You just don't really want to sit. Trying to think, was there a squat toilet? At the Ome hiking course, the one north of Ome station there might have been, because I think maybe that's when I first had this idea that actually a squat toilet is kind of good in an outhouse scenario because you're not having to sit on anything. But this one, I don't know, is very dark and eerie and creepy, and once you, you know, it's actually a little bit breezy up here, but once you close yourself off in one of these hot little tin boxes, yikes, man, you just start sweating like crazy. I just don't need to use the washroom bed enough to deal with all of that, but it is here. But also, at this table, there's a key. I don't know what it's for. Just a little black handle part and a little key. It's just a little medium sized key, but yeah, obviously somebody lost it or dropped it, so somebody else placed it here so that it could be easily seen. But I have to imagine the chances of somebody realizing they lost their key, realizing they lost it on this hike, even coming back to try to find it, because if it just fell at a random point, like as if, man, you're not going to find that shit. It was quite lucky that it fell here at the meeting point, so I mean, he has his best possible chance to find it, because it's a black key on this white table. If he did come back, he'd probably see it, but I wonder what the chances are. I feel like the chances of that key returning back to its home are very small.

But yeah, this is actually pretty nice, nice little, nice little meeting spot up on the mountain.

Not an amazing view, but not a bad view. However, I should get going because I'm still just sweating away, sweating and sweating.

I still got three-fifths of my water and even a swallow of coffee left. I'm not doing so bad.

I know I've run into this before. I distinctly remember coming to this conclusion already that one bottle of water is not enough, I need two. When did I forget that? It's very fucking true. It's very true. You need two bottles of water.

And yeah, I mean, if this was still like on Jeju where I just had my weather-resistant coat slung over my shoulders all the time, it had lots of extra pockets in it. It was easy to have extra stuff. Yeah, it really is as simple as I just, it's already very difficult to juggle the stuff that I've got. I just don't know how I would do this. I need a dedicated water sling, just an extra sling just to put a bottle of water in. Actually, that's not the worst idea. I bet I can get something like that at the dollar store for approximately a dollar. I think I should just bite the bullet and do it.

Have a little Robin Hood quiver, but all that's in it is the bottle of water. Because yeah, it's just uncomfortable. I feel like this is going to work out fine. I'll come to the end of this course just as my water is running out, running low. But if I had an extra bottle, I could just shock on this whole bottle right fucking now.

It would just be a nice thing to be able to do. Get this one through your head, Keith. Get it through your fucking head. This weather is out of a dream. This is not like anything you've ever experienced. You need just water all over. You need a stay puff marshmallow man suit of water all around you. You need to be king of water. This is not fucking optional. Get some more water. You stupid fucking dickhead.

Alright, we'll see if it sinks in this time. Let's continue on.

Alright, I've come back to another road. I'm seeing another sign Taipei Grand Trail Section 5. I feel like every sign I've seen says that. So I don't know what the fuck Grand Trail Section 5 is. I don't even know what the Grand Trail is, but I mean everything I've done so far is all part of Section 5. It appears.

But yeah, I got to a road where it looks like I could still go up to some degree to different various temples and places. 35:00 But it's a little less clear. I might just have to walk up a road. Anyway, now it's clearly time to go down. Time to go down finally. Time to head back. So I met the Jin Mian Shan Trailhead, J-I-N-M-I-A-N-S-H-A-N.

Jin Long, I-N-D-Road, J-I-N-L-O-N-G-I-N-D-Road. So anyway, yeah, this trailhead seems like it just will take me down, down, down, something called Scissor's Rock.

And then eventually back to civilization and to the brown line.

At least one stop, maybe two stops beyond the Ferris Wheel.

This is kind of cool where it still has the times. I wanted to go to Bishan Temple. It's 3.6 kilometers 87 minutes down this road. Cool. I'm not going to go there, but that's handy. That's neat.

And here's yet another sign. Lots of signs. This second sign is not an English at all, but it does have distances.

Yeah, it's a little tough to read. I'm not totally sure what I'm looking at. But it seems like it should be about an hour at most to get the fuck out of here. In fact, this trailhead I'm connecting to looks very similar to that trail I was on before. The rocks. This must be the same one. I'm 99% sure it is the same one. So I've looped around and hooked back up to it, heading back down this nice stone path. And now I'll just have to take whatever direction leads me down, down hill. That's always a nice thing. It makes it easier to navigate when I can see where I'm going. I can see the river through the trees. I'm just heading that way, heading down.

Well, this is not as straightforward as I thought it would be of just heading down. It's still up and then down and then up and then down. And in the grand tradition of things inappropriately reminding me of video games when they're really not the same, just these different routes down the mountain. It reminds me of the old game, the old Sega game Outrun. It's a driving game where you could choose different routes to take as you drove. You had to basically finish five legs of the course, but at each leg you could go left or right. So you could snake your way through a bunch of different ways to the end. It was like a fucking cool game, a classic of the 1980s arcades. But that's how this feels, is I was heading down Lungen Shan Trail. And I thought I was heading towards Scissors Rock, but nope, I took the wrong path, so I'm not going there. Then I saw Jin Mian Shan Cliff. And I was like, all right, I guess I'm heading there. But I finally pulled up my phone again and I missed both of those. Now I'm heading towards something. It is a photo op, because I do see a view through the trees here. So presumably it'll be an opening in the trees called Huashanting, H-U-A-S-H-A-N-T-I-N-G. And I'm nearing the end of the trail at that point. And then I'll be behind the tachming university of science and technology. And not far from Shihu Station, X-I-H-U.

So yeah, I feel like this adventure will be over soon. But yeah, this is kind of neat, because in theory there's definitely other stuff I could do here. There's many other outrun paths I could take and other things I could see. However, am I going to do that? No! No! Because beyond the heat, man, also, so just the sweat, you know, is like pouring down my shirt. And especially at the bottom, you know, is where all the moisture is really building up. And then I occasionally have to grab the belt loops of my pants and hike them up because I've got a bottle of water and an umbrella and all this crap in my pockets that is slowly pulling my pants, earthward.

And it's just so gross. Oh, there's another one at the bottom.

The butterflies with the blue patches on their wings. Oh, pretty. But yeah, I've got to pull up my gross sweaty shirt, then hook my fingers around my gross sweaty belt loops on my gross sweaty pants and pull them up. And then my fucking hands, it really reminds me of, I have this one guy in no back home in Canada who, I don't know, like borders on a mental disorder. How long this guy goes without taking showers and changing his clothes and stuff. He just smells gross all the time. Hey, you know, these people you grow up with is just like, well, whatever. 40:00 He's been this way for decades. It's not going to change. You just deal with it. You're just like, whatever. Sure, you know, live your life, man. But I smell just like him. I've never been the guy to smell like that. That's his smell. That's his gross smell. That's not me. I'm not supposed to smell like this. But my fucking hands smell like this and that solves the mystery of, oh, that's what his smell is. It's literally just sweat. It's just because he didn't change his goddamn clothes. I don't like smelling like this. I'm fucking over it. It's fucking gross. There is zero nice things about being out in this heat. Absolutely zero except for the literal fact of being able to go outside and hike, you know. But man, my head sweating, my hat's disgusting. Everything I'm wearing is fucking gross. This is where actually those garbage bags, I bought these scented garbage bags at my last Airbnb because I had to couldn't flush toilet paper. So I bought garbage bags to put my toilet paper in so I could seal it up tight in a nice scented bag. But it came in a little three pack, three rolls of garbage bags and I only used one. So I had these extra ones and I'm like, what am I ever going to do with these? Oh, there's a nice view of the city and the Ferris wheel. Yeah, I'm getting close, getting very close. I was like, what am I going to do with these? But they've actually been handy specifically for laundry.

They were extra handy when my clothes were musty from trying to do air dry them in the humidity. That was an especially unpleasant smell. But even just the sweat because you know, just tossing my clothes in a laundry bag. But it's like a mesh laundry bag. And in my little teeny Airbnb room, it's like Jesus. I just don't have anywhere to put my clothes anywhere that I put them in that room. That room's too small and they smell gross. But I don't want to just keep them stashed out in the public area of the Airbnb because then I'm making it everyone else's problem. But then I realize like, oh, I have these nice scented garbage bags. So it's great. I just put my dirty laundry in one of these plastic bags and it's wonderful. And then at the laundromat, I throw that shit away.

And yeah, I'm looking forward to that greatly. I'm going to get down onto the ground. I'm going to go to a convenience store. I'm going to buy a popsicle. I'm going to buy more water.

And I'm already just imagining getting home and sealing these clothes away into their own fucking industrial waste containment bag so that I never need to think about it again.

All right. So here I am at something.

There's this specific trail marker.

It's only 350 meters down to Huan Shan Road. But here's a little point where I can go up a little bit. I believe this is a view waiting for me.

Oh, and a rare bit of garbage. Somebody left a cup up here, a plastic cup. How unfortunate. I'm tempted to pick it up, but I'm already having a hard enough time with the stuff I'm carrying. Again, I just have nowhere to put it. Oh, yeah. Here's some people coming down.

Apparently, if I go higher up, it's an even better view. But do I care? Do I fucking care at this point? I don't think so. I've seen enough views for one day. It's like straight up. It's very steep. I have to go up from here. Fuck it. I ain't doing it.

This is a good enough view from here. Oh, and there's an airplane landing.

There's an airport right there.

What the hell is that? It's definitely not the airport I came in at.

Oh, yeah. Now that I see where it's landing, that's a big airfield. Let me check on a map. What the hell is that? Apparently, there is a second airport right in the middle of Taipei.

What the fuck? Taipei Songshan Airport. Yeah, look at that. Look at that. Big ass airport right in the middle of town. That's interesting.

It seems like the kind of thing that would be a problem. Usually when there's an airport this close, it leads to a very unpleasant situation with tons of airplanes. But I guess I guess if they're coming in from the direction that plane came in from, it's flying over what's mainly just mountains and stuff, not the city proper. So I guess you just don't hear them that bad. Interesting.

Yeah, big ass airport right there. What the hell?

And there's, I can hear some people and there's a guy hiking up behind me, 45:00 definitely back into civilization. Yeah, and again, again, it's sort of interesting. I wonder if I go up from here. I wonder what that's like. But again, it's just like stuff I could do some other day if it wasn't August. I'm afraid my chances of coming back here while the weather is even remotely like this are 0.0 percent.

Oh, and there's a train going by. There's the brown line. Nice. Yeah, it's very close from here. Sweet. I'm essentially, I've essentially escaped. I basically made it.

So yeah, with the sound of fellow hikers chattering away behind me, let's call that an episode. That's what it's like to hike in extreme heat. I don't recommend it. Not a good idea. But again, type 2 fun. It'll be fun in my mind and my memory when I think back. Yeah, a lot of people have noticed in lieu of hiking poles have umbrellas. Good, it's a good plan.

But yeah, I'm glad to say, time is it now. It's a little after three. Still no sign of rain. So yeah, let's look at the bright side. I managed to get out here and do this hike on the rare day when it didn't rain even a little. So yeah, I'll take it. Good enough. Now I see those people that passed by behind me. They picked up that cup that someone else left. They didn't take it with them, but they tucked it away at least. So it's like, I fuck it. I'm going to pick it up. I'll take it with me. I'll take it with me. I'll clean up the cup. But yeah, try to look at the bright side. You see, I actually made it up here. I've been trying to do this for ages. And it would have been great. It would have been nice. It would have been not only a really cool hike, but again, like breaking the seal on a new place I can go, a new set of adventures. But I just can't in this weather. Oh, here comes another plane. Yep, they come in over the mountains. Well, that's pretty cool. At least if you're going to have an airport right in the middle of town. Because yeah, like I used to live, I lived in flushing. It wasn't even that close to the airport. Like I lived by the unosphere. Wasn't that close to the airport in Queens, but it was close enough that when those planes blew in, they rumbled to the fucking, they rattled the windows of my apartment and fucking suck. Like every once in a while, I mean, I'm very sound sensitive anyway. But once in a while you could tell that a plane was flying lower than they were meant to fly over the populated part of Queens because it would not just rattle the house that would rattle my brain. Like it would trigger my, like, mesophonia. It would like make me angry. I'd be like, fuck you. Are you kidding? Get out of here, airplane. But it seems like this is a, if you're going to do that type of thing, they seem to have the best possible setup here. Just coming in across those mountains. So they just fly in from the ocean, fly across the mountains, fly over a very little populated area. Though if you do live in this little bit between the airport and the mountains, but it's fucking annoying. This is a pretty nice view. This is a nice enough view. If I did climb up further, you know, it would be a nicer view, but I'd just be seeing more of Taipei. I can still see a shitload of it. And yeah, I'm done for. I am finished. So thank you for joining me on this adventure. Don't do this. Do not hike when it's 35 degrees out. Do not hike in August. Just don't do it, man. Just don't do it. Don't even come here this time of year. Just don't. You know? If circumstances align like they did for me that you're already in this part of the world, and it would cost you $2,000 to fly back home to North America or wherever you're from. So instead you just spend theoretically 300 bucks to fly to Taipei. And then, you know, maybe, maybe there's a typhoon and maybe you need an emergency $600 flight. But that's all acts of God. You couldn't have known that was going to happen. So then you happen to just be here in the summer. And it's like, alright, well, just deal with it. It's still nice. But yet don't.