#196 Exploring Elephant Peak in Taipei

Transcript

There's the sound of some rain. However, I'm not going to record in this room, because this is the, uh, the wet room, the shower room, very echoey. Let's go into the Airbnb proper. But I know, uh, proper new episode yet, because I haven't done anything, because it's still, uh, rainy time. But the typhoon I was worried about, it basically affected the southern part of the country, and Taipei is the northern part. So it hasn't actually been that bad up here, it's just rain. But, uh, that's enough to, uh, I mean, I kind of learned walking around, I guess, uh, my Jeju walk, where I was just like, I'm going to go deliberately walk through the rain. And I mean, visually, very pretty. I still remember that day, and I'm like, yeah, that was, that was nice. That was cool. I felt like I was in the Irish cliffs or something, you know, just was really cool. But, got all soaking wet.

Destroyed my poor boots for a while. It's just not a good idea to go out in the rain, and, uh, now additionally, as I chronicled the polyurethane in my fucking boots is breaking down. So when they get to wet, they smell like ammonia, definitely a problem. Turn into pee boots. So like today, when outside is super overcast, walked around for a bit till it started raining, and then it's like, I write, go supply up again, head the heck home. Don't stay out in this. But I just wanted to mention that I do just get a feeling like even though all I did was walk around my little specific neighborhood today for, she's probably only an hour or so, little more than an hour, you know, just didn't do anything, quote unquote. And it just feels good. I mean, it feels good in general that Taipei like I'm always saying is very small.

Like I took a, what's the line called? I took this subway to the end of the line near here, just as an experiment the other day, to lose how station. LUZHOU, where I just got to go a couple stops on the orange line and transfer onto the other branch. It's a little bit awkward. But just to test that out, and it was cool because that was a day where it was late in the day, so I didn't have a ton of time.

But there's a bridge right there, and across the bridge is Yinhanglin, which is the, the mountain I hiked up, I took the red line and I walked across that bridge and then walked through the mountains and then up around to the top of the mountain and had this super amazing view of Taipei. Should I want to go back there, maybe try one of the other peaks or something, I can just go, I can just go to LUZHOU station and it's like still going to be, you know, a bit of a walk, it's going to take a couple hours. But it's like, there's the mountain right there, you can just like, key right into that whole walk, very close to here, very easy to get to. But I didn't even go that far today, today I did nothing, just my neighborhood. And yeah, just has this good feeling that I can't really put my finger on. I'm not quite sure what it is about Taipei where, you know, the best feeling was Japan. I've just like, just get up in the morning, go outside, walk around, wow, Japan. Because as I chronicled when I was in Japan, I mean, it's just in my brain, you know, anime and video games, there's all this stuff, even if I don't truly understand. Even probably, even vaguely understand what Japanese society is really like. My version, my weird pop culture version of Japanese society, it's in there deep, it's been there a long time. So it just feels good to be there and to walk around. And South Korea is just different, where once I figured out what I was doing, once I got out of Seoul, once I got the lay of the land, visually beautiful. And functionally, still pretty similar, you know, there's transit, there's convenience stores, the landscape is gorgeous. Barring.

Pollution days. But I just didn't have this feeling in South Korea. I liked South Korea, I'll be back to South Korea, I'm glad I went to South Korea. But I just didn't have this feeling of, hey, I'm just walking around nowhere for no reason, and it just feels good. It didn't feel bad. The closest was Busan, Busan felt pretty good. And that one neighborhood in Jeju where I was in Segupo. Yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm not given South Korea enough credit. But I just had a feeling today in Taipei that I just feel like is not necessarily the most super common feeling, and I just do feel it a lot of times in Taipei. But I can't really explain it, I'm not totally sure why, it's just the totality of how everything comes together. Yeah, I don't know, it's just all I wanted to say, just I didn't do anything today, I just walked around, and I was like, I like it. I like it, I like how it feels, I feel good. I like being here, it's just good. Just feels good.

I think this Airbnb though, I shouldn't be hammering here for too long, it's no easier than I think it is. I feel like there's like a little high-pitch sound somewhere, I'm not sure what it is.

Oh, I see, it's something outside. Yeah, now that I'm by the window. Well alright, let me just close the door, close the door to the wet room.

That helps a bit.

But yeah, the one last thing I wanted to mention is it turns out the Taipei 101, I mean I'd never heard of that building, I just was walking around and walked right by it. And I was like, whoa, I saw it at night for the first time, and then I just kept seeing that building all over the place. My constant arbiter of where I am, you know, I can always figure out where I am in relation to that building. And because Taipei is quite small, pretty much everywhere you go, almost everywhere. There's a very good chance you can see the Taipei 101. But I didn't know anything about it, I just stumbled upon it, and I just keep seeing it.

But I was watching some little YouTube travel vlog, which actually it looks like on the east coast where I went last time, the Queen's Head. There's actually quite a bit of cool stuff on the east coast. You know, there's like shoreline walks, along boardwalks, near the coastline. That are maybe only like an hour long walk, but they seem really nice. But unfortunately, the bus ride to get there is like two, little over two hours each way. It is actually, the one time Taipei does feel big if you go as far as you can to the east coast. It's actually quite a trek. I don't know if I'm going to make it, because two hours each way, just for like an hour exploration in the middle. That's rough. That feels like the kind of thing next time I'm in Taipei, I'm going to take a look at getting an Airbnb over by the east coast, because then I could just dawdle around over there and explore, and it'd be very easy. I could have done that this time, but I'm glad I stayed here. This Airbnb is so good, and I'm glad that I'm just staying here at this one. But next time, that could be cool. The east coast definitely has some beautiful stuff, but it's quite, quite the bus ride to get there.

But anyway, this random travel person I was watching had a little bit about the Taipei 101 and talking about it, and it turns out it's no coincidence that I keep seeing that building. Between, I think they said it was 2004 and 2010, a somewhat brief span, but for a while it was the tallest building in the world. It's like, holy shit, I didn't realize that. Wow. And I guess it's because I was thinking in the sense of towers. I lived in Toronto for years, the sea and tower.

One of my little obsessions in Japan was the Skytree. Where's the Skytree? Walk to the Skytree. So obviously buildings and towers, two different things. So the Taipei 101 is a lot smaller than these towers. But it was, not that long ago, the biggest building in the world. I don't totally know what that means. Obviously the Burj Khalifa just destroyed everything else and made everything else tiny. It's like twice as big as the next tallest building or something, it's insane. But that's pretty cool. The Taipei 101 is actually a lot more notable than I realized. And because this is tiny island land, it's got all these cool things similar to what the Skytree has, where it will sway and shake. You know, just so when there's an earthquake, it's not going to fall over. Pretty cool. It's just a neater building than I realized. And it's much bigger than I realized, you know? Because like, yeah, sure, I've seen it a zillion times. And everywhere I go, I always coincidentally can see the Taipei 101. But it just never really occurred to me that like, oh yeah, that must mean that it's fucking big. But it is. It's real big. So unfortunately though, even once this typhoon thing passes, we're back to the classic, you know, the weather. The weather obviously, it's very variable. It changes all the time. But as it stands, they're basically saying rain every day next week. Maybe one day without it, but just get ready for tons of rain.

I've never used before the hourly weather report in my life. I don't think I've ever even clicked that tab ever on a weather website until I got to Taipei. And now I do it every day.

Like today, it was like, it's not raining right now. But it's probably going to start raining around five o'clock. But right now, it's only four o'clock. So it actually started raining around 330. I mean, you know, it's like, you know, it's not that useful to get that granular about the weather. Or to even necessarily take a macro view of the weather. But yeah, hourly weather, I've never cared before. I kind of, I don't know, I guess it's now at this point I have less than a month left. Got like 20 days left.

It would be silly to just go by temporary footwear. 10:00 But maybe at the start of when I got here, like back home I had just the straight up rain boots, you know, the big galoshes. And they're just handy to have. When it rains, you can actually go outside and do stuff. You can tromp through the woods and stuff.

And yeah, that's what you need in Taipei. I mean, I think the locals generally go for, you know, crock type shoes when they're just walking around town. Because, or sandals, because it's fucking raining all the goddamn time. For my purposes, for hiking around up through trees and woods and stuff. Yeah, I could use some rubber boots, man. I could use some, uh, some Welles.

I need a rubber boot rental store.

I just need to wrap fucking garbage bags around my goddamn feet.

But anyway, yeah, like I said, no proper adventure yet. I don't know if what's, because I mean something will happen, but I don't know what. Got a lot of rain ahead of me. So I just wanted to do a little wee bit of, uh, like, oh, the Taipei 101. A more notable building than I thought. And just, yeah, just doesn't matter if I'm not doing anything. Doesn't matter if I'm a little trapped, doesn't matter if I'm rained in. Just walking around my neighborhood for an hour feels good. Just feels good, man. Feels good.

All right. Uh, you know, I know you're listening to this in the future, but I presume rain is still a thing. So stay dry out there.

All right. All right. It seems the typhoon has passed. It hit mainly on the south. So me being in the north, no problem. Just a lot of rain, but nothing seemed too bad. But then still, uh, a bunch of rain announced for the upcoming week. Just rain, rain, rain day after day, you know, maybe not all day. But enough, enough possibility of precipitation that when you look at the next week, it's just rain, rain, rain. Not today, though, today's a Sunday. And it is fucking beautiful out super gorgeous. So I was like, all right, let's get my ass moving today. Soak this in while I can so I considered going to Lu Zhao station at the northern end of the orange line because you can walk from there toward Ying Hanlin, which was just cool when I was there. And, uh, there's other peaks and stuff. Just the feeling of walking toward that mountain felt cool. So that's a possibility, but it is still quite a journey to get there.

And it's like one-thirty in the afternoon. I don't know that I, yeah, now, maybe. But then I remembered, oh, I had this other idea, where whenever I would look at the Taipei 101 from a distance, like when I was down at Shindian station, there was this cool looking mountain over to the side of the Taipei 101. And I was like, what is this? How do I get there? So I'm not totally sure if this is it, but there's a thing called elephant peak that I don't know if I'll make it there specifically today, but it seems like there's a bunch of hiking stuff around here. Xiang Shan Park is where I met by Xiang Shan station on the red line. But the stop before this is the Taipei 101 stop. So I was like, oh, let me go take a gander. Let me go take a gander at the Taipei 101. So I'm only one subway stop away. It's right there. I did look up the other day, like a diagram of biggest buildings in the world, because apparently this was one of the biggest or maybe the biggest till around 2010. And it is a little weird, because there's always these, you know, sticky up poles, you know, antenna-looking things on the top of these towers and buildings that count toward the height, but I don't know that they should. It definitely adds a bit to the top that doesn't really feel like a proper part of the building. But basically, it's, you know, the Burj Khalifa is insane. It's like if you took a star destroyer and put it on its side, it's so much bigger than everything else. And then all the other big buildings are, you know, roughly this size. You know, this one, the Taipei 101, I think a good example is the New World Trade Center in New York. You know, it's about that size. Touched tiny or maybe. But anyway, here's where I'm going to be a bit of a dick. Now I'm standing right here, perfect view against the beautiful blue sky, a couple of nice fluffy clouds drifting by.

I'm as close to the Taipei 101 as you can get without distorting it. 15:00 You know, if you're right under it and you look up, you can't tell shit. This is like a block away, perfect. And it's just not that big. You know, I mean, obviously it is big. You can see it from all over the place. It's very cool, very beautiful building. But as far as at one time the biggest building in the world, it's not that big. Oh, it's alright. I don't know, I guess it's just like because towers tend to be bigger than buildings. Some of the towers are really a bit like, I don't know what the right word is. The obnoxious word, vertiginous, comes to mind. But like they make you feel kind of dizzy. They make you feel weird. They're just like, wow, that thing is so big. This thing's not big like that. Yeah, I don't know. I guess it's just, you know, I'm learning about building sizes. Because now I'm imagining if the Burj Khalifa was here, it's not double this. You know, it's like one and a half the size. And it's like, yeah, that would be pretty big. That's probably fairly impressive to see. But even that, I'm like, yeah, I guess. I don't know, it's just the scale of human architecture. There's only so much you can do. This shit just ain't that fucking big, man. It's just not. It's fine. You know, it's alright. It's pretty big, I guess.

But anyway, thought I'd just start the day off with that. I don't know, it's just surprised, I guess.

Because, you know, it's just like, oh, that's a cool building. That thing's a neat landmark. It was, I guess, it's because of the accolade. You know, I didn't know about that. I didn't know it was the biggest building in the world. It just changes your mind when you hear biggest. The biggest. It's like, really? That's the biggest. 15 years ago, that was the biggest building in the world. I'm a little let down. If that's the biggest, the Empire State Building must have been tiny. I saw the Empire State Building in 2009, but I don't really remember it had a lot of scaffolding around it at the time, and I didn't get to see it from a proper distance. I was right under it, so I don't know. I don't know. I guess maybe it's just dumb to care about the biggest. I mean, ask Sadia Rabia about that. What a waste of time. Who gives a shit? Oh, I got the biggest building and the plumbing doesn't work. We have to take the poop out in trucks. Who gives a fuck? Don't worry about it. Maybe worry about your goddamn infrastructure. Make that shit work. But what the hell am I talking about?

I guess that's okay. So I'm imagining King Kong now. I'm imagining King Kong holding Feyray. It's like, really? That's it. He's only that high up. Lame. Fucking lame. Yeah, in fact, I just got some internet. Man, I'm going to miss that back in Japan. You know, between South Korea and Taiwan, I've gotten pretty used to just like, I wonder if there's internet around. Oh, there is. I guarantee if I was in Japan right now in a random fucking place. There would be no internet. Yeah, I did look up the height. Let's just look up the height. 508 meters. And it's like, yeah, you know, again, whatever. Fine. But as far as natural, just the natural mountains around here, a 500 meter mountain would be a bit of a baby, bit of a little baby mountain. Yeah, and the Burj Khalifa is 828. I mean, that's, you know, that's big. That's like as high as the peaks in Bukansen were. That's pretty good. That's pretty impressive. But again, that's the biggest in the world. I'm probably offending engineers. I mean, it's amazing. It's amazing what you've done engineering-wise. But, yeah, you can't fight the natural world. 500 meters. It's like my dick 500 meters. That's fucking nothing. A random average mountain is bigger than that.

Anyway, that's a weird note to start the day off on. Let's get moving and stop complaining that buildings aren't big enough.

All right, here's a test. Can I do a little podcast segment while I'm going up this hill?

So unfortunately, I don't know the real name of elephant peak. Sort of similar to the lion's head peak down by Shindian station. You know, there's a Chinese name that I did not learn.

But luckily, there's no problem around here because there's elephant iconography everywhere.

There are steps all the way up just like there tends to be in Taipei. Oh, here's a observation deck. There's the 101. And now that I can see the 101 from the side, you know, I must be about 250 meters up because I'm halfway.

I was going to say, yeah, it looks bigger from the side. But, yeah, there's another building next to it. That is like three quarters as big and it's just some regular ass building. You know what I'm saying, dog? You know what I'm saying? You know, hey, still the same thing I said before. It's not bad. It's fine. It's pretty cool. But as one of the world's biggest, I wish I'd never known that. It makes it seem so much more not the building, but human endeavor. It seems so much lamer in that context. But yeah, it makes sense that it's really busy here because this is right by a station like just a 10-minute walk or something from the end station on the red line.

She ang shan and it's a Sunday and it's a beautiful day after rain. You know, again, rain on both ends, rain yesterday, probably rain tomorrow. So there's a lot of people here, but it is a nice walk. It's nice and shady. I was actually kind of worried about that because with all the rain, the heat wave finally passed. There were even some days in my Airbnb at three in the morning with my fan on to keep the air circulation going, whereas like, should I turn off the fan? It's a touch chilly in here. I mean, to be fair, I'm sitting here in my underrues.

But that's never happened before and that I ever felt even slightly chilly. Ultimately, I did not turn off the fan. But yeah, now as soon as the rain's gone, back to heat wave warnings, 32 degrees, 34 degrees. I don't know whatever it is. It's crazy. I was a little concerned. I didn't put enough sun tan lotion on the back of my neck. I was really feeling the burn of the sun. But now that I'm at the mountain, yeah, it's so shady. That's been very consistent in Taipei. Pretty much every mountain hike you can do, just the way the greenery grows around here is very shady.

But it's a little weird having all these people here because it kind of regulates your pace.

But that's, I don't know, I thought maybe that's a good thing because I like to go mega slow. Slow enough that I can record a podcast while I'm walking continuously upstairs.

Keep me from getting blown up. Keep my knees safe.

So I would get behind, you know, like a, a dad with his son and I'm like, perfect. Little teeny kid. I'll go at your pace. I do not mind going slow. I can't go too slow. And then they stopped. But I was like, yeah, you know, fair enough. It's a tiny child. What do you think's going to happen? Then I got behind some ladies in like full burka style stuff and they're going nice and slow. And as a good enough ladies, I'm behind you. Let's go slow.

But then they stopped. And yeah, just now I'm passing somebody else. It's like I'm trying to go slow here. Maybe I'm not as slow as I thought I was. I'm trying to go slow and I keep passing people. But luckily, that's where being a gangly, long-legged toothpick is handy. Because yeah, I can just switch over to two steps at a time mode and just put it, put it, put it, see you later. But yeah, it is a little tricky regulating yourself when there's a constant line of people going up. I don't know. Anyway, this is a nice walk and all. But I guess I'm a little surprised. I mean, I shouldn't be. Again, it's so accessible. The main mountain in the National Park. It was like a hundred times emptier than this, but it was a lot harder to get to. Had to take a bus than everything. This is right by the subway.

Yeah, this seems cool though, because this is kind of on the edge of town. This is not that far from when I tried to head over this way at the big cemetery and the heat, the intense heat turned me back. This does seem like it goes on and on and on for some time. This seems cool. There's a bunch of stuff you can do. So yeah, maybe if I get to this first elephant peak, maybe if I keep going from there, things will calm down a little. But anyway, yeah, I mean, I can technically talk while I'm going up these steps, but it's not pleasant. It doesn't feel good.

So let's stop.

All right, well, just what I was hoping would happen is what happened. As soon as I got past elephant peak proper, it cleared out like crazy. There's like 5% as many people, if not less. 25:00 Nice and calm again. Nice and uneventful. An elephant peak itself really passed by. I didn't even realize until I realized I was going down again. I'm like, oh, I guess that was it. I guess we passed it. Definitely did not stand out. So as far as just easy to get to hikes that are near subway stations, Shindian is I think a lot better. This one, if you were just to do elephant peak, I would say not really worth it. Not that great. There's lots of hikes. Lots of other hikes to do. But if you want to keep going, this seems pretty nice. So I'm at a nice opening, can see out. It's cool because you know, the old Type A 101, I'm glad that I just did that research right before I came up here about all it is. Because I'm almost three quarters of the way up, probably not quite. Three fifths of the way up. So you can just tell how high up you are just by seeing it, just by looking out at the old tower. Will I get to the very top? I don't know. I don't know what's ahead of me. But yeah, there's all kinds of different paths and routes. So the one I am on, again, the amazing signposting in Type A is fucking the best.

Oh, how strange. I thought I pulled out my camera and took a really quick picture of just of the sign just so if I had to know where I'm going, I would know for the various crossroads and stuff. But there'll be more crossroads and stuff. I'll take one at the next signpost. Because I guess I did it too fast. There's no picture on my phone. How did I do that? But yeah, it said it's 76 minutes to the next peak. So I'm like perfect, you know, because this elephant peak doesn't even feel like it counts. I just started. That's just like base camp, just the beginning. So whatever the next peak is, 76 minutes sounds perfect. Then from there, I'll see if there's another way back to loop around or I'll just come back this way. But that seems just right. And yeah, like I said, nice and quiet now, way less people. And it's still these steps, like stone steps, the whole fucking way. It's kind of remarkable. I'm trying to think if I've ever been on just kind of a rough-yoon trail. A little tiny bit, you know, little bits of trail sometimes. But not really, everything is so mega-developed in Taipei as far as hiking. It's probably good for the ecology and stuff too, because you just stay on the steps. You know, you just don't fuck with the rest of the mountain. But yeah, this is like incredible. I mean, I thought South Korea was well developed and had well-signed posted hiking paths. And it does. Like if I think back, the only times I really remember getting kind of lost. Like, Bukhansen was tough to figure out how to approach, because it's like a great big national park. There's tons of ways in. But the only time I really just kind of got off trail and like lost, was in Jetjan, which is a pretty obscure place to begin with. And then I was off on some relatively obscure peak.

And I followed the wrong little ribbon. You know, like I had to go quite far out of my way to fuck shit up in South Korea. But I've never even managed to do that in Taipei.

It's just like the easiest hike. The easiest hike in the goddamn world. Just steps.

And here's a nice big Canon style statue.

The lady in the robes.

Thanks pretty big. Pretty fucking big. I guess it's all relative, right? I'm complaining that the Taipei one-to-one's not big enough. You know, this statue is probably 25 meters tall. Nothing compared to a 500 meter mountain. But as a statue, it's like, wow, impressive. Pretty big. Am I right, ladies? Wow, 8 inches. So big. You know, it's all relative. It's all relative to the item in question. But yeah, the only thing. The only thing that would make this better. I keep thinking back to this guy that I met in Vancouver when I was going up the grouse grind. The last time I did that many years back, where I met a dude from India who had moved to Germany who was visiting Vancouver because of his sister's wedding or something. And we became little buddies for the day on the way up. And he didn't have enough water. I gave him my water. I shared my water with him. And yeah, he was saying he was surprised there was nowhere to buy water because he was just used to mountains in Europe. And I don't know about India. He specifically said in Europe. But he said usually there's a little like, you know, stands or something somewhere. Someone will sell you some water. It'll be overpriced. But you know, that option is there. That's the only thing that would 30:00 make this more amazing is if there were drinker machines. Maybe that would be though. It might hurt the natural beauty. And there's not a ton of vending machines in Taiwan. It's pretty similar to the South Korea thing. Like they pop up usually around transit stations. But it's not like Japan. Japan is the only place that I've been to where they're just everywhere. And they don't have drink machines on mountains either except for rare occasions like the Aboryama Katai observation deck.

And yeah, this is so fucking nice dude. This is so nice and I still just can't get over how accessible and close everything is in Taipei. Like this was like I said 10 minutes. 10 minutes from the fucking subway stop to get to the trailhead. And then even then it took like maybe 20 minutes to shake off all of the people that were just going to Elephant Peak. And now I'm just walking through the goddamn woods man. Amazing. Big looming mountain ahead of me.

I feel like if I get to the top of that thing, which is presumably where I'm going.

I predict I will be roughly, roughly at the height of the Taipei 101. Maybe a little below, but it seems like it'll be pretty close. And there is stuff like there's side steps and there's a sign that is fully in Chinese. I could try to translate it and stuff but there's always like the main route. It's very obvious what the main sidewalk is because it's double sized.

It's big enough for two people to walk. So I'm just going to stick with this. Who knows where the smaller stairways go. Maybe some like look out spots. Maybe some little Buddhist statues and stuff.

But for my first time and maybe the one time, just stick with the main route. It'll serve you well. Man, I mean, I'm already thinking ahead to when I get back to Canada. You know, it'll be nice to go see my friends in Toronto. Between this year I've spent galvanting around in Asia and then the four years of COVID before that. I have not seen them in some time. It's going to be nice. But my plan is just like, well, I guess I'll just start hitting up coffee shops more and I'll really get back into like writing a novel mode because this type of thing will be gone. This does not exist in Toronto. It is impossible. This is just not an option. And it's just so cool that around here, not only is it an option, it is so fucking easy. It's criminal. It's insane how easy it is to get to these beautiful places. The hexing mine, seven minutes that way. What is that? I don't know.

Holy shit. I think I underestimated. So this is not the same mountain. I could have swore the mountain I was heading toward was T, but that must be the next one maybe. Because now we have Mount Moos Hishan, Moos Hishan, MUZ HIS HAN, 22 minutes ahead and it's 690 meters. It's significantly higher.

There's also something called the U-shape to look out. 16 minutes ahead. It's 510. So it's 2 meters higher than the Taipei 101. So yeah, it looks like my future. My future is to go higher than the Taipei 101. This shit too. I mean, I know I said it a million times, but I love it because I could never go up in the Taipei 101. I lived in Toronto for years. I never went up in the CN Tower. That's the kind of heights that just scare me so fucking bad. So fucking bad. I hate it. I just hate it. If you had my family at gunpoint, I guess I would do it. But I'd think about it. The idea to me that people just spend money because it's fun to go up in towers like, wow, I clearly have a phobia. But on these mountains, I can go higher than that. And it ain't no thing, man. Don't fucking matter. At all.

Man, I bet this would have been a good day, too, to go back to the main national park, the 1100 foot mountain.

Ching-shin. Don't quote me on that. I'm not going to look it up. But it's so clear out today. I bet from up there today, you could see all kinds of stuff.

But that's fine. I'll just see all kinds of stuff from here. 700 meters, 1100 meters. What's the fucking difference? It's in the sky.

But yeah, this is fucking great. This is my fucking great.

Wow, this got real steep, real steep. Still steps, though. Just steps going all the way up. I think this 700 meter peak, this may be the peak for the day. I probably don't need to proceed on to another peak after this. This is pretty, pretty good peak. I'm pretty fucking good.

But it's funny, too, just how these words, you know, like elephant mountain, lion cub mountain, lion head. That one had a bunch of names. I couldn't quite nail it down. It is funny that all these words that I can't read, you know, they're words. They all mean something where, you know, I've had this issue in Japan and Korea and here in Taiwan. That to me, to my ignorant ass, these words are all divorced from everything. They're all specific individual words, you know.

What's the word I'm looking for? Not boutique, not discreet. Well, whatever, you know, they're just individual sounds.

But yeah, they all mean stuff that would be so much easier to remember if I knew. So for instance, this mountain I'm going up, I just passed a sign that for some reason one of the signs was in English, just one. And it called it thumb mountain. I'm going up thumb mountain, which now that I think about it, that probably explains why it's so steep.

700 meters, sticking up out of the ground like a thumb. I mean, it was only, I think it was 500 meters that one by Okutama that scared the shit out of me because it was also a thumb.

So I guess we'll see how this feels at the top, but so far, it feels pretty good. There's a couple of parts where there was a police tape and the side of the trail was crumbling a bit that were slightly scary, but generally not too bad. Oh, is this the top? I do see blue sky.

But yeah, this also happened the other day with a, so the Chuo line is the main line that I would always take to get from Central Tokyo to Western Tokyo, goes through Tachikawa to Haijima.

But I just thought of it as the Chuo line again, just divorced from all other things.

Oh, cool. I can see the other side now.

Not the Taipei 101 side, a different farther, more obscure part of Taipei. So this is not the peak.

And there's the 101 on the other side, but I was watching this YouTuber. I like this guy Nomad Push, who's a guy from Saipan, which I had never heard of before. I started watching his channel, very tiny island, but he lives in Japan, speaks Japanese, is functionally Japanese, travels around Japan, and just vlogs about it, and finds him delightful, Nomad Push. But he was in some random city down in Southern Japan, and he said he was going to Chuo Station, and he said Chuo just means center, just means the central station. And that's when I realized like, oh, so the Chuo line means the center line, which makes sense. It's not all that up north isitama stuff. It's not down by the coast, it is in the center. You want to go from east to west in the center, you take the Chuo, and it's just like, wow, I had no idea. Geez, actually, I'm going steeply down, maybe that was the peak. Wow, second peak in a row. Or it's like, okay, there's another peak though, not too far from here, so maybe that, maybe it's like two side by side peaks. These peaks are a little strangely, I mean, again, it's the journey not the destination, that's fine. There's plenty of cool views, who cares about the peak, but it's funny that these peaks are just passing me by, and I'm barely realizing. Usually, there's a plaque or something, or, you know, elevation number. Whoa, there's a big-ass spider. I haven't seen that many spiders lately.

But yeah, Thumb Mountain, elephant mountain, Chuo line.

Abura Yama, you know, Yama being the mountain.

A touch, a touch of knowledge in any of these languages would definitely help, but that seemed like a bit of an overwhelming proposition just in Japan. Now that it's spread out to three separate languages, and maybe more as I travel to more places, it's like, hey, I think I'll just pick up what I pick up.

There's a jogger. Man, that is hardcore jogging. But yeah, I mean, this is totally appropriate to jogging. Kind of more appropriate than when I was in the National Park, and someone was jogging there, because that whole area is so misty, slippery. 40:00 Not this, this walkway is perfect.

We have also kind of realized what's going on now that I can gauge myself against a crowd with how my slowness is not slow enough. Is when I was at the beginning with all the crowds of people, there was another lanky white guy, so he was easy to keep track of, because he was the only other lanky white guy. Yeah, he passed me, but then I passed him, and he passed me, and then I passed him, and eventually I just never saw him again, and it's because he kept stopping. I know he's going real fast, but then stopping. And now, up here, no more lanky white guy, as well. He did pass actually a lanky white guy a little earlier coming back down.

Actually, he was more of a hardy white guy with a big beard.

Oh, here's a nice look out.

Perfect view of the 101. I've taken so many pictures of the stupid 101 today, but it's just the thing. It's the thing that I keep seeing.

But yeah, now that I'm up here with far fewer people, I don't need to just pick a white guy to gauge how fast I'm going compared to everyone else, because there's few enough people that I can just tell who's who. So a similar thing happened where I was at, I think it must have been the U-shaped look out.

It was a look out that was vaguely U-shaped, and there were some people there who took off ahead of me, Bigity Bam. I was going at my turtle pace, and yeah, this is total tortoise in the hair stuff, because I was just going slow, but then we got to the next little rest area, and they were all there. You know, resting, so I passed them. It's like, alright, and then eventually they did pass me again, now they're somewhere ahead of me. But yeah, I guess that's the difference, is that there's a lot of people going faster, but they stop.

They keep stopping, and even the people that were going slower than me at the start, I also couldn't stay behind them, because they stopped, and they kept stopping. So I think that's the thing, is like, I go mega slow, I'm all about it, nice and slow. I'm going up a 700 meter mountain, what's the goddamn hurry? You know, take a nice and slow, but I don't stop, man. I just don't stop. So I really think this is the way to do it. God bless my bad knee for teaching me this technique, because you still get there, before you know it, it never takes that long to go up a mountain.

It's a lot more comfortable on the body and the lungs, and the knees, and all the parts of the body. And yeah, you don't need to stop. You just keep going like the motherfucking terminator. I stop if there's a view, and that's it, other than that, I just don't stop. I'm not trying to yank my own dick here, I'm just saying that's how it is. And I've just started to realize on this trail, specifically, that yeah, that's not how people do this. They push themselves too hard, and then they stop. So yeah, just go slow. Bros and sisters, go fucking slow, and you don't even need to stop. You just walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk for all time.

It's the shit.

I just wanted to start preparing. I just wanted to start preparing for lunch. Yeah.

Man, people are annoying. So I got to the peak, the thumb mountain peak. And there was a sign, but some people were taking pictures with it, got a picture with the sign. They were nice, though. The guy gave me a nice grin and a nod. And I did see the number seven. So I'm like, all right, there it is. It's the 700 peak, which is interesting, because yeah, that other place, I guess that was the 500 meter horseshoe shaped, U-shaped observation deck I was at before. So it was at the exact height of the 101, but it looked below. And now I'm above it. I'm higher than it by about 200 meters, but I'm looking at it right now, and I still feel like I'm lower down. That's just, I don't know, interesting phenomenon, that maybe because, again, the prominent thing, just because it's a building, just standing straight up, and I'm on a relatively, you know, steep-ish, but it's still very gentle incline, compared to the side of a building. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't look like I'm higher up than it, though the numbers tell me I am. But anyway, I got to another peak, a little bit beyond, and it had a more proper plaque with, you know, the name and the elevation and stuff. 45:00 And some fucking dude was standing exactly on it, deliberately just standing on it. All of his friends were standing around, but he decided to stand on the plaque. And it's like a little plaque that's not even flat to the ground, you know. It's like a little bit at an angle. It's not a comfortable place to stand. He's just being a dipshit, he's not thinking about what he's doing. But that's fucking annoying his hell for everyone else who just wants to look at the stupid thing. And I'm sure not good for the plaque. Don't stand on the plaque, you dipshit. Anyway, I'm glad that the people have cleared out a lot compared to how it was at the start, but, you know, no surprises here. Same story as always, I'm just happier when there's not people around. You know, again, maybe Asia's not the place I should be then in that case. But there's so many places where there's just nobody around. This one, little busy.