#186 I saw a monkey in Taipei

Transcript

Alright, man, I love these symmetrical time warps or parallel. I don't know how you describe it, where it's the next day, but I'm pretty much in the exact same spot as I was at the end of the last episode when I was yammering about video games. Except I'm going the other way now, instead of walking down the mountain road, I'm walking up the mountain road. And I know I yammer about the weather way too much on this podcast, but it really is so confusing.

Where I noticed in Seoul in the winter, even on days when it was like the AQI was like 150, and it's like, man, you should really be wearing a mask. I noticed there were some people, some locals who just never wore masks ever. And I got to assume it's because they just, I assumed at the time, and I still think this, they probably just got tired of checking, or they just never cared. But just having to check every day and some days it's this, and some days it's that, and eventually you just give up. You either wear a mask every day, or you never wear a mask, and you're just like, whatever, fuck it. That's the sense I get around here too, is I bet people don't check the weather, because there's just no fucking point. Why bother? You know? Because the two different sites I checked didn't even have the same information. One of them said it was 35 degrees today, but feels like 42, which is just so insane. And it's very hot, and I'm sweating a lot, but it's not hot like that. It's just not. You know? It's like, it's not that painful, like the sun immediately feels dangerous. I don't know how hot it really is, but like, it's definitely not hot like that. Here's a little walkway down to the river. I didn't notice yesterday, a little platform and everything. Look at this. Yeah, the rust color, the like oxidized sulfur, whatever it is. It doesn't smell like sulfur, but the orange color continues pretty much the whole way down this river. See yesterday's episode for details of the cool waterfall at the top of this river. But yeah, the other website I checked said it was not that hot, but quite insistent that today was going to be a rainy day. Like, not just the, it starts to rain at 2.30 and it stops at 4.30, but all throughout the day. However, the sky is pretty fucking clear. It hasn't rained on me at all, and I don't think it's gonna. Unless, you know, it does build up to the late afternoon, sudden storm. That's still possible. But yeah, it's like these websites, they're both wrong, and they can't agree with each other. And it's like, who even cares? Why even bother? Oh shit, I'm there already. Holy shit. Yeah, I was afraid this might take a while. I was thinking like I could walk up the 1,300 historic steps and across the monkey trail and down to the waterfall again. It's the much prettier way to get here. But you got to go way up and then back down. And it's just like, that's an awful lot of walking in the heat. So instead, I just walked up to Mountain Road. It's a little narrow. It's not the easiest road in the world. And it's that general grind feeling of just walking uphill, but this didn't take nearly as long as I expected. So here, this was the goal. This was the thing I saw yesterday that's been stuck in my head all night. Hongtan, a little over a kilometer away, about 40 minutes. I met a small shrine, see if I can figure out the name. Yesterday, there was incense going. Today, no incense. I don't know if there's anyone around or not, but I don't see anyone.

I could have swore. I saw this shrine's name on Google Maps yesterday, but now I'm not seeing anything. I think maybe it's maybe part of my various confusions with Google Maps. I guess I don't totally still know how it works because I always use the offline map. So maybe I'm on the offline map now, whereas yesterday, perhaps I had been online at some point, and it gave me additional names and information that I now don't have. Possibly, I don't know. Anyway, I met a little shrine, and there's these stone steps heading up into the mountains further. And apparently, in 40 minutes, I can get somewhere. Oh, and I see here is some kind of a map that actually says it's it's a loop, perhaps? Oh, wow, it's a bunch of stuff. 20 minutes to this, 60 to this, 30 to this, 10, 20, 30, 30 to all these different places that I don't know what they are. Well, anyway, I guess I'll just start walking and we'll just see what happens. Contaminated hot spring water stream situated in the vicinity of the John Shen building, the rapid flowing song she stream is a tributary of the sulfur stream, and therefore contains various metallic elements as a spill 5:00 over from these hot springs. These have died the significantly eroded streambed golden yellow. Prior to the opening of the baneling industrial road, scores of photographers were drawn to the area to capture the white foam of the colorful song she's rapids, along with a very photogenic historic stone bridge connecting its banks. Cool, so uh, geez, I spoke way too soon about the raining. It started raining on me as I was reading that. Where's that coming from? There's no, I don't see any clouds. What the heck? Anyway, I apologize, weather website. It is in fact raining on me. But that's cool, so it is sulfur that explains why that river is that cool color. Golden yellow is a good, good way to describe it.

Or rusty orange, but it's like bright. Anyway, I wonder if that is the sulfur springs that I was at a couple of weeks ago, where it was extremely sulfur-y smelling. I'm not sure of geographically how everything lines up, but maybe that's the sulfur they're talking about that runs down into this river. But yeah, not only did I see this cool little sign, but then I saw a very distinct temple-looking building in the distance. And I was like, I bet that's it. I bet that's what they're talking about, and that's what really spurred me on. Literally seeing it in the distance.

And I was just like, oh, dude, I got to try to go there. That seems so cool.

So here I am, the very next day.

Hongtan, about 35 minutes. These signs, yeah man, they're crazy. They're so good with the signs in Taipei. This is pretty much straight up though, up at this little stone staircase. So let me turn off the recorder, but I just wanted to yammer briefly about humidity. I always noticed when I moved from the east coast to the west coast where it's way more humid in Canada, that my fingernails and toenails grew more quickly. Enough so that I noticed, and I looked it up, and that's the first time I read about how humidity can make your hair and your fingernails grow faster. The thing that's happened here now with the extreme humidity is I kept getting like itchy ears. The inside of my ears were itchy, and I actually bought Q-tips. I'm not a Q-tip guy. I've never bought Q-tips in my life, but I bought some to try to clear out my earwax and make them stop itching. And I looked that up, and apparently that's another humidity thing. It really can. It makes earwax production can raise, and it can be a lot worse than just itchy ears. Some people get like impacted ear canals, and it's really painful and stuff. So that's, I don't know, just something I never heard about, never ran into in my life, never experienced, but I've been experiencing it here. It's so distinct. This has never happened to me in my life, and now that I'm in Taipei, it's like, geez, I got to pay extra attention to my ear canals. So anyway, there's our little thing that we learned for the day. I think the rain has already stopped, but now I do see a little bit, a little bit of slightly ominous cloudage in the distance.

What time is it anyway? Uh oh, yeah, it's quarter after two. Uh oh, wish me luck not getting rain done, and I guess we'll see. And also, I spoke way too soon about the rain stopping. It's just this weird kind of rain, where just standing under, just this one tree I'm under right now, is more than enough to stop it, but yeah, now that I'm looking out past the branches, it's like, okay, no, it is still, it's that weird kind of rain that it's like raining, but it's very hard to see it.

But I got my umbrella, I'll break that bad boy out.

Well, the rain stops, that's nice, although, yeah, I'm still seeing, it's so distinct. To my left, it's just super blue sky. To my right, it's like white-ish, white cloudy sky, and then right ahead of me is the darkness. Man, though, the city looks like hell today, it looks so bad from up here. I didn't check the AQI, but it must be pretty high today, because it looks like garbage down there, it looks awful. It's such a shame, because it's like a nice day in the short, the foreshortened distance directly around me, but yeah, now that I'm at like an observation point, I can look down and see Taipei, see the whole good chunk of the place, yeah, it's very 10:00 fucking bad. I haven't seen that level of haze since soul in the winter, you know, or that day, that really bad day in Busan, or that little stretch of four days that was insane. Yeah, I wonder, I'm curious, because I mean, I guess who needs the number? You just gotta look and you're like, that sucks. Actually, I had a little chat with Cody from America and a new roommate guy who just moved in Maurice from Austria, and it turns out that is one reason why I never see anybody, or when I do they're on the phone, is that yeah, they are on working holidays, they're, Cody is a graphic designer, a freelance graphic designer, and Maurice actually moved here for the next six months for something to do with this company, he's learning Chinese and everything. But yeah, we should chat at about stuff, but that is one of the things I warned him about since he's going to be here for six months. I was like, yeah, you know, the one thing, we're having a very nice chat, you know, of like, yeah, it's fucking cool in Taiwan, everything's really neat and cool. So I didn't want to be Debbie Downer, but I did mention like, PS, you know, the air quality index seems a little bad around here, and my experience in Seoul in the winter was that it was like really bad. So watch out for that, be prepared, you know, once winter time hits here, I assume it's this bad in the summer, it's going to be bad. It's going to be bad. It's already bad. I mean, just looking at that, I'm like, I should probably be wearing a mask right now. I have one tucked away in my day bag, but I haven't, I haven't worn a mask in a while. There was a couple of days on Jeju where I wore one, and that's the last time, but in this heat and stuff, it's just like, I just don't think so. At least I don't feel it. I mean, it was so bad in Seoul that it hurt my fucking lungs. Here, I don't notice it that way, but I don't know if I lived here, I guess I would have to have a reckoning with myself. Like, how are we going to deal with this, the long-term effects of this? But since I'm just visiting, it's fine. I'll just fucking breathe in the bad air, and that's that. But also from this view, I can see that tower that I saw in the distance, and I don't know that that's where I'm going. I don't think so. It seems like there's a valley between me and it. I'm on a different mountain going a different way. Although I guess that that other sign I saw had like a loop, a big long loop, that would take many hours to do. So maybe it's part of the loop. That seems likely, because if I was to loop around as the diagram displayed, I would end up over there. So that's probably the case, but the actual place I'm going to now, I think, must be something else.

But this is kind of cool. It's like a little, it's another irrigation thing similar to the Tienmoo Historic Trail, how it was a trail next to a water pipeline that's been there for a long last time. This is similar. It even said, like this is a similar situation. This is a different irrigation system and water pipeline from way back in the day, bringing fresh water to the people of the area. And we have these cool little walkways near it. It's similar to the Tienmoo trail, but tends to be less crowded. And that's true, because there's no one here. I haven't seen any people.

I hear some men are of animal. That's all. But that's pretty nice.

Man, though, it is that level of heat now. The heat's building up where it's hard to even use this recorder because I'm in that like sweaty palm thing where it's hard to take the recorder out. It's hard to put it away because I don't want to get it all wet and sweaty. But like I, when I rub my palms on my, even on like a dry part of my pants, it doesn't work. I have to like scrape my palms back and forth across dry cloth. And it's still my, my palms are still a little clammy. It's fucking weird. It's like, what is the deal? But that's the level of sweaty humidity we're at now. I'm certain I think both those weather websites were right. The one that said it was going to rain. I mean, it did rain. And the one that said it was hottest fuck. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you just hadn't built up on me yet, but it is in fact hottest fuck. So it's all weather at once. It's all things at all times.

Well, this is pretty cool, so I got to a sign that said it was only a kilometer to an observation deck to see a waterfall, and I had a feeling it was pulling me away from the original path I was following, but I mean a kilometer to a waterfall, you know, of course. And as I followed 15:00 along, it's this really cool walkway next to the way that the Tianmu steps are next to a pipe. This one had some pipes, but this particular part is like a stream, just literal water that goes along the side of the mountain in this walkway next to the stream. And I even saw some people, I passed three people as I went along this, but it's really beautiful, just this walkway along the side of the mountain, big lush foresty trees and mountains on one side and just sort of a cliff side on the other side. But really nice, and then when I got here, of course, it's the same waterfall from yesterday, because I mean, yeah, it's only a kilometer, I'm in the general vicinity. I started figuring out, like, oh yeah, I see the water down there, and there's that rusty, orangey, golden yellow, as they say, color. And yeah, definitely, it must be with Google maps that I haven't been on the proper internet today, because I can't tell you the name of this waterfall. It's not an English today. It was in English yesterday. So yeah, that's gotta be it, I guess, that's very strange, though. I don't know. I mean, there's so many little things about Google maps that drive me nuts. I wish that I could get on the team to whip that thing into shape.

But it is weird that my pre-downloaded map does not take into account at all the language of origin. It's a pretty big, pretty big problem. You know, if you could give me English names or Chinese names, and I need one or not the other, and you gave me the other. I guess it depends on how you think about it. Like to me, I feel like the person who downloads an offline map of the area, I presume that that's a visitor. Not a local, but maybe they're presuming it's a local. Maybe they got stats to say it would probably be a local. I don't know, but anyway, I can't tell you the name of the waterfall. I'm afraid.

Hmm, unless I do have two phones. That's some science.

Let me look it up on my other phone. I like never use my other phones, Matt. But I have been online because this is the phone that I use for day-to-day stuff.

However, Google Maps wasn't open at the time. I don't know.

The life of the man who doesn't have a data plan is a silly and annoying life.

But it still saves me from myself. That I can't check Instagram while I'm up here, you know.

Yeah, this one's in English. Swafeng Falls. TS-U-I-F-E-N-G-Falls. Nice.

So yeah, I'm not extremely high up. I mean, it's not a very big waterfall anyway, or the main part isn't. So I'm a bit above that. But I can get a better view now of the upper part of the waterfall. The smaller part, but I can see it better from up here. Any of you know, it's just cool. It's just neat to be up here from the top. The view from the bottom is the cooler view. But this was nice anyway and just neat to walk here. However, it is definitely not part of the prescribed trail because unfortunately, the other thing that's here is a big gated-off door, one of these steel gated doors with barbed wire on top. They're serious, which is a shame because it does go farther. The platform, it goes way up, like way up to the actual proper top of the waterfall. And it's like, oh, it's such a shame that they won't let me go up there. It's so nearby. It would take 30 seconds to walk up there, but they won't let me. And the only explanation is there is a sign here that says like, don't wash your feet in this water. Don't touch this water. Do not contaminate this water source. It is still water that people use in the current day. And it's like, yeah, okay, sure, but I've been walking along it this whole time. And in fact, the little pipe that it originates from is right out here. I don't understand. I don't understand why I'm not allowed in there. I don't know what it would do. Seems harmless to me. But for whichever reason, they don't want me in there. So I just got to walk back, but that's all right because this was bucked in pretty as hell. This is very nice little walk. And even, yeah, even though I'm only midway up the waterfall, that's fine. That's plenty. I was thinking like I wonder if this would connect up to the little suspension bridge I was at. I still don't know where that goes. It's possible that this maybe would all connect up to that, but I guess I can't find out because I am trapped. Hmm, probably not. Yeah, the ban links suspension bridge. I guess I'm looking at it on the map. It's a little waste from here. It doesn't quite. All connect up. Or does it? The 20:00 banling trail. I don't know. Very strange. What if I was on the banling trail and I headed this way?

Yeah, I don't know. I just feel like this door should be open. I don't know what the deal is here.

Now, just looking for the temple I was at earlier to see if I could see the name of that. But it's quite hard to determine exactly where it was just by scrolling around Google Maps. I don't see that name. But I read, I guess I'm heading back and continuing along the original journey. But yeah, it's just a little 1.1 kilometer.

What's that word? What's that word when you go around about to a different area? Detour. A 1.1 kilometer detour? Very worth it. Not even just for the water fall at the end, but the whole walk along the waterway is very unique and very cool.

Hmm, this is a bit confusing. I think I'm at the Hongtan thing, whatever it is. But there's like nothing here. It's like a teeny little closed up building. But that's kind of like a cool traditional roof. There's a table here with some ladies just chilling out, having a chat.

Hmm, so if I go back 100 meters, I can connect to the banling trail somehow. If I go forward, another 1.2 kilometers, it's blessed terminus. Here's a little map and there is someone coming from that direction. So this seems like a pretty okay walk for the next kilometer through a mountain trail.

But then to like a road and a bus. Hmm, I wonder where the heck that is. I guess I'm going to go back and try to connect up to this banling trail and see what's going on. Because if I could also start to trend my way back towards civilization now at this point, it might not be the worst thing.

Yeah, I'm not, I'm really not quite sure where I'm going or anything. I'm just following whatever seems the most obvious. Man, the leaves here are like Jurassic Park. Some of these plants have leaves so huge. Again, just like how everything is five or six times bigger than in eastern Canada. Same thing with these leaves. They're just like a leaf on a tree except giant size. It's like, what the fuck? Crazy. I also was really starting to get feeling that feeling of like, man, when's the last time I even saw a washroom? I don't think I saw one at all all day. Even when I was in town proper. If I go the other way, there's a bunch of parks with public washrooms and stuff. But just by coincidence, the direction I went to get to these trails and stuff. If there are any washrooms, I sure don't know where they are. And obviously I'm here. I'm on mountain trails and stuff. But I was still thinking like, it's been a while. And then just as I said that, a pair of squat porta-potties appeared. So it's like, well, can't complain. That's what I wanted. And that's what I asked for.

All right. So here's a little sign.

Hongtan.

Mehu bus station.

Actually, I guess I'm going to go back to where I was and go down that path because I guess that does seem like, I don't know. I don't know where anything goes around here. But this looks like the Henling Historic Trail, I think. Pretty much everything though is eventually just going to lead me to some roads up in the mountains. I don't know. Maybe it's finally a day to take a bus home. Because there's quite a few bus stops. But as for, yeah, walking back down, I think I've just already reached the point where I'm just, I'm a difficult height up into the mountains. And it's only going to get worse. But that's, that's what I'm doing. You know, what did I think was going to happen.

But yeah, we'll just chalk this up to some more general exploring, which has gone pretty well so far anyway. Even just finding that route to the top of the waterfall. Pretty cool. And yeah, I'm just going to bite the bullet eventually. I just got to start taking buses. So a little annoying to just sit and wait for a bus. And then to not quite know where it's going to go. And it might be crowded.

But that is the price you pay for all this awesome geography, all these cool mountain trails and 25:00 intertwined stuff and neat shit. It's so cool that you can just walk out your door and start wandering around and just be in this twisty tourney up and down, complicated, cool, beautiful mountain jungle stuff. But you can't just unravel it. Or you can actually, you can just unravel it by getting on a bus. That's the only way. By foot, it's not snakes and ladders. There's no water slide. You can just hop on at the top and slide all the way back down into town. It is certainly nice having the extra bottle of water though. I'm not quite done my first one. And I also have a big bottle of coffee. I've been going back and forth between. So I haven't had to break open the extra bottle yet. But it just feels a lot more comfortable having it. There's a definite stress in the back of my mind all the way as if like god damn, I just don't have enough water. And that would totally happen today too because both the water and the coffee bottle are getting low.

But I got a backup. So it's okay.

This is definitely a day where my poor old shirt is as though I walked into a lake just fully soaked with sweat. Gross. I'm actually I'm wearing this shirt that I bought a couple of shirts. From Daiso in Korea that are kind of like mesh. They are good for this. They're going to have a shirt that just gets fully soaked. This kind of sports top. I don't have a lot of these. I just have general normal t-shirts. But this kind of mesh thing is way better. Anyway, this is kind of interesting. Maybe I can walk home after all because the first time I came up here to the monkey trail. The thing I wanted to check out was there was a hiking path that ended at Keonchan Park, Q-I-A-N-S-H-A-N Park. But it was getting on in the day and you know that would have just taken me higher into the mountains. So I just instead I went to the major road and was like oh shit there's a McDonald's and I just walked down the road and that was that. However, now I'm near there. I'm nearer the top of that. I only have a little ways to go. So I can go down that path but in the reverse way. Now I'm at the top so I can go down through the bottom. It's only quarter after four so this should all time out pretty good. And then that'll bring me to the monkey trail. Then from there I can head down the monkey trail. So there's the steeper trickier version of that path that goes down to the waterfall which is the prettier way and then down along the river. But I literally did that yesterday. So instead I can explore the other method down which was you know like proper steps. Will probably be a lot quicker and will not lead to a waterfall but that's fine. So yeah geez it looks like I can walk home after all. This is still working out. This is very much though. I keep thinking I'm kind of at the edge of how far I can really go up by walking but I think this really has to be it. I feel like at this point I really do need to you know take again with the bus thing like take a bus to here and start from here if I want to go meaningfully further up the mountain. Because yeah I'm just stretching this rubber band further and further every time. But speaking of monkeys wait what the fuck is this? pedestrian trail oh shit well now I gotta go explore this. So this is leading further into the mountain but there's a pedestrian trail that literally is just a hallway that leads right into the side of the mountain. Hall of the fucking mountain king what is this shit made by the dwarves. You are here. I'm not that far from the Miyapu trail entrance that heads up to one of the main peaks. Mount Kixin main peak QIX ING.

Mount Kixin bus stop to Langshu Ken pedestrian trail. Wow yes so there's a lot of trails all the way up through these mountains and honestly bus stops like not at the very very mountainous parts but all around Langshu Ken visitor center with a bus stop right there. Fuck man look at that shit that seems like the moneymail and that seems like a very major bus stop in it. I bet it's not that hard to get to. But then there's these other smaller Mount Shemayo 30:00 trail. What is this? Well I'm right next to that shit. What?

Wait so maybe that's not exactly what I thought I was planning to do but maybe I should do that. I'm really near the northern trail entrance to Mount Shemayo. I don't see any particular reason not to do that. However what is this? What is this? I mean I guess I'll just go through it. I think it's just a short walkway through this mountain. I assume I'll just go through take again during come right back. God damn it's so weird that I'm just about to leave this neighborhood because there's still so much stuff here. I really feel like I'm probably just going to start taking a metro to come back here. Though it's going to be a little cool the new place since it is right across the river from Shimen just to be able to go back there. I'm going up some stairs and yeah and there's some mountains near there too that I can explore.

I just went up a million stairs. Where is this taking me to? What the fuck is this? Alright, so now here's another trail. So what is this shit? Okay, Yang Mishen National Park Headquarters Visitor Center, less than a kilometer from here. So yeah, that would lead me into the National Park proper.

That is not where I want to go. So, back down, back through. Good to know though. As long as I can find a mountainy path, fuck, look at these mountains ahead of me, just like shit. Huge, huge and beautiful.

Man. Oh, that is steep. That doesn't seem pretty bad, but hey, I got my bottle of water, my extra bottle. So anyway, speaking of the monkey trail, I saw a monkey. On that little trail I was just on, which wasn't even very long of a trail. I get light up to this road where scooters are going by. I saw quite a few people on that trail. It was fairly populated. And here's a sign about them. Formosa and Makak. This socialized species of the monkey is in Demic in Taiwan. They live in natural forests, the top air rocks, and in the vicinity of water sources scattered around areas under 3,000 meters above sea level. In consequence of their frequent appearance at dawn and dusk, the following precautions must be taken. Do not stare at the Makak, but continue walking at an easy pace on the far side of the Makak. Please turn around or take a detour. If you're carrying food or pets, do not stop to watch tourist feed. Please ask them to immediately stop teasing the Makak, says it is dangerous. The especially cautious of monkeys that exhibit the following characteristics, monkeys with tails thrust up high, monkeys that stare with a closed mouth with eyebrows that jump up and down. But yeah, I was quite surprised because there was a lot of people on that trail.

And just at the one point where it was just me, that's when a monkey showed up. And it was a single presumably male monkey by itself bigger than I expected. You know, muscular shoulders. You could really see that this thing if it wanted to tear my face off would probably have no problem. And it was a little eerie because it wasn't paying attention to me. But it was just walking right toward me and just not giving a fuck. Very non-plussed. So I did pull out my phone. And while not making eye contact, I did hold up my phone and just took a little awkward video without really looking. So my Instagram is novel pod. If you go on novel pod, you'll have to scroll back because these podcasts takes the while for them to come out. But I took a video of the monkey.

And I was a little concerned because I just threw away my garbage, but I had just opened. I bought this thing ill-advised. I shouldn't have bought it where I usually just buy dried fruit because it's so easy to pack away. You can just put it in your pocket, put it in my little daybag. It doesn't matter if it gets squashed. And it's a good little snack. Oh, here's a washroom. I should stop and take a pebble. Let me finish rambling about the monkey first. Yeah, so I bought this thing today. Not a good thing to buy. It was a little lemon cake thing that I squeezed in my daybag and it was just getting crushed more and more every time I took out this recorder because it really wasn't room for it. So I finally just ate it. This crushed a little lemon cake just to get it out of there. But I had, you know, it was very strong smelling. It's lemon, delicious. But I had the wrapper in my back pockets. I was like, uh-oh, this monkey's 35:00 walking toward me and I probably smell like a treat. I haven't all day. If anything, I just smelled like a gross sweaty man. But now I smell like lemon deliciousness. But basically, it stalked its way toward me, but it wasn't looking at me. And then it got quite close before it went to the side and just went up into the mountain and it did take one gander at me as it went by. But yeah, I saw a monkey. So I can check that one off the list. Scared me a little. I don't really want to see anymore monkeys. They're definitely like, you can really tell. You can really tell that these things could easily fight you even though, you know, they're a fifth your size. But yeah, I met some kind of bus terminal. See, I'm going to figure out from here somewhere or another around here is a trail that heads back down the mountain. Well, it'll be probably up a mountain and over it and then back down. That's the plan and that should all work out very nicely. And if it doesn't for some reason, I mean, yes, this is a pretty major bus terminal I met right now. There's a lot of buses here. So, good. It's a very good place to bail out. Oh, there's a white guy. Is he the one I saw earlier? Maybe as I was coming back from the waterfall, I passed a bunch of people. It was kind of nice that I got to be at the waterfall by myself and record a little thing because I passed a lot of people on the way back and one of them was even a white guy. And yeah, I think that's him. I guess there's only so many paths you can take around here. We're on the same journey today.

But all right, even though it's only a bit after four, yeah, the sun goes down quick around here and especially with the mountains. It makes it seem as though it's going down extra quick, so I should get a fucking move on.

Well, this seems like a great place if I am to make my way deeper into the National Park. This is a good spot by Kien Shan Park, Q-I-A-N-S-H-A-N Park. It says like a whole little town here. It's got a post office and all kinds of people and little buildings and stuff. I didn't see any convenience stores now that I think about it, but yeah, and from here, pretty good view of those mountains. They're not very far, but they are very tall. Yeah, this would be cool to start from here. Obviously, this time of the day, heck no. And in fact, here's what I got ahead of me. So yeah, the trail I saw in that map, Mount Shemayo Trail. And just the greatest hits, it's 643 meters, and it's like a bit late in the day, and I'm pretty worn out and fucking sweaty, but it's like, well, let's go. That's not that bad, because I mean, I'm already, it says 643 meters, but obviously I'm who knows how far up I am right now. Pretty far up. So yeah, realistically, this is probably no biggie. Yeah, and it's only a kilometer, it says to the peak distance wise, but oh, here we go. Wow, they got everything here. Yeah, I'm actually at 400 meters now. Oh, that's not so bad then. That's not bad at all. Sweet, the Cleano Metric map I've never seen that before, but that's exactly what I need. This mountain's great. They should have that more often. That's exactly what I need to know. But anyway, that's the cliff's notes, but Mount Shemayo, which reaches a height of 643 meters, is a parasitic cone of the Mount Kixin volcano. It's attractively round bell shape, was formed by the slow-flowing, highly viscous lava that erupted from the mountain, and the depression in its center is the result of lava in the crater contracting as it cooled. Can I give credit to the English on these signs, by the way? It is so much fucking better than Japan and Korea, like a hundred times better, a million times better. It's just proper English, you know. The mountain is named Shemayo, which means gauze cap, because of its strong resemblance to the black gauze headgear worn by Chinese officials in dynastic times. Thanks to the shelter of Mount Kixin, which protects it from much of the effects of the fierce northeasterly monsoons, wonder Mount Kixin, is that what I'm seeing behind me? Is that what they're referring to? It is a much bigger mountain nearby. Mount Shemayo is heavily forested over most of its area, exceptions are small expanses of silver grass and arrow bamboo on the top, and the trail is densely shaded. So that could be interesting. I'm probably not going to feel much like I'm on a mountain, and there may not be a view from up there, unless I luckily get to some point that is one of these rare exceptions, but that's fine. In addition to the vegetation, hikers on the trail have a chance to observe monkey's birds, reptiles, insects, and butterflies, although it does say watch out for snakes to not feed wild animals, yet, yet again, probably better, 40:00 you don't see most of these things. Signs of early development by Chinese immigrants, reforestation during the Japanese occupation period, and the visit of Crown Prince Hero Hito can still be seen on the mountain. Among the historic sites are the tomb of the grandmother of King Dynasty scholar Chen Xiaoling, the Chen He boundary stone, and Prince's pavilion. Along the trail, you can also see tree species that were planted during the Japanese occupation, including Crypto-Maria, Taiwan cherry, and Formosen sweet gum. So many things I've never heard of before. You can enter the trail from the northern trail head, Yangmin pond entrance, opposite the teacher center bus stop on Shimao Road, so I think that's where I am. Beside Yangmin Lake in Kian Chen Park, or from the southern trail head, Dapu hiking trail entrance, between the first observation post bus stop and the Dingbanland bus stop. So yeah, that's where I was before, those bus stops, and I was like, oh, there's a trail near here, but no time today, no time for love, Dr. Jones. The trail is 2.2 kilometers long, and the one way hike takes about an hour and a half. It is an easy class 2 hike. Good enough. So yeah, actually I'm going to be cutting this a little close as far as daylight goes, especially if I got to keep walking home after this. So I should have stopped standing here, reading, fucking informational signs, and get moving. But that was very interesting and informational. It turns out a lot of these signs, I'm like, I don't know whatever, I don't care. But I guess if it's about a mountain, I suddenly do care, because I love mountains. So yeah, it did seem like there were various things to see, the tomb of so-and-so, and what nots, that I may not see, because I'm not going to meander, or whatever the direct path is up over this mountain, that's what I'm doing today. But if it does appear that there's cool stuff up here to see, maybe I'll come back and explore that later. But yeah, for today, just up and over.

All right, I said I wasn't going to just stop and read all these signs, but they're just, they continue to just be interesting. So I passed one that was just about general ecology and nature of how these plants look peaceful, but they're in a constant battle to try to out reproduce each other and take all those to space. But this one, the story of the Taiwan cherry. As you walk up the mountain from the trail head beside Yangman Lake in Ken Shan Park, do you see the Taiwan cherry trees that crowd the trail welcoming you? No, I did not notice that, because I actually don't really know what they look like. Well, I mean, I guess it's not, you know, cherry blossom season, so they just look like trees. However, the Taiwan cherry is endemic to Taiwan and is commonly used as an ornamental tree in the Yangminshan area. By the way, so Yangman Lake and Yangminshan. Again, I think this is one of these cases. Shan probably means mountain, Yangminshan. So if I say Mount Yangminshan, but I don't know. All right, there is a special story, however, behind the Taiwan cherry trees along the Mount Shimao Trail. The Japanese governor general decided to carry out reforestation on Mount Shimao, Mount Kixin, and Mount Dayton to welcome the visit of Crown Prince Hero Hito in 1923 by creating landscapes similar to those of Japan. Alongside the roads, the Japanese planted Taiwan cherries, foremost in sweetgums and other ornamental trees that provided seasonal changes. Hero Hito never made it to Mount Shimao, which is odd because I thought the other sign insinuated that he did, but anyway, Hero Hito never made it to Mount Shimao, but his visit to Taiwan left these beautiful scenes which we enjoy even today. So yeah, that's just really cool. That's literally a hundred years ago. They planted a bunch of these trees in a direct effort to semi-replicate Japan. Weird thing to do in some ways, it's like why if the emperor was visiting from Japan? Doesn't he want to see Taiwan as it is? He doesn't need to see a version of Taiwan that looks like Japan, but whatever. People do weird stuff for royalty. And yeah, it's just neat that, again, to this day, it's like that classic thing that, you know, plant a tree even though you yourself will never get to experience the comfort of its shade, but you will be giving that gift to future generations. I mean, that's literally what happens here. They planted a bunch of trees, and they're still here.