Arta's Report on Keelung, Taiwan

Rebecca here!   What follows is an email from Arta.  Can't wait til we get to see the pictures that go with the post!
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Fifty-two coaches full of tourists left the port of Keelung, Taiwan headed for Taipei today. 

We choose the road less travelled, a leisurely breakfast, hanging onto our own balcony to watch a pilot boat usher another large cruise ship to dock beside us.  “Quick, take a picture,” Wyona said as she saw eight people in the veranda of the docking ship, all gazing at our ship, as we were gazing at theirs. Below our balcony the crew were outfitted in life jackets on a fire drill for our ship.  The cooks were hanging out the window of the other ship, waving.  Then we watched our crew winch up the lever that lowers the life boats into the water.  

Already I was topped up with my fun for the day.

We took our Hong Kong money to the currency exchange, just outside of the customs building, where we traded in 260 HKD for hundreds more of Taiwanese currency to be spent today – though finding train tickets for $1.23 was pretty pleasing.  “Don’t we pay $2.80 for a one-way LRT ticket at home and we don’t go 30 miles into town with that?”

“How much for a taxi to go to Taipei?”,  Greg asked at the Information Desk. 

 “$42 American dollars for the three people.” 

 “How much on the train?”, he asked next. 

 “$1.23 each.” 

There was a light drizzle.  We put up our umbrellas and walked to the train staton.  Wyona’s umbrella didn’t go quite as “up” as the rest of ours – broken now, – a perfect target for umbrella sellers, but she carried on, letting it join the Taiwan recycling event by the end of the day. 

We walked by the fish kites, blowing in the wind, then up the stairs to the overpass and the train station just as the man at the information desk had told us to do..

The ride on the coaches that our fellow guests took to Taipei lasted 45 minutes to get to Taipei.  The local train ride was also 45 minutes, but full of local colour.  Greg and I followed Wyona in and out of several coaches before she found the perfect seats – facing forward, me across from them.  We went from a near empty train in Keelung to full coaches by the time the train had picked up people at the nine stops between here and Taipei. 

I watched out the windows – the small streams that ran under the railroad track, the verandas which doubled as a second clothes closets, the umbrellas in large clay pots at the fronts of doors,

The seat beside me was taken by a mom with a baby on her lap. The little girl drank happily from her sippy cup.  Her five year old brother, on the grandmother’s lap right in front of me kept begging to sit beside his mom.  I was admiring the old jade pierced earrings, filigree trimmed in the ears of the old grandmother.  The little boy was not happy on her lap.  Finally the mom just squeezed him in between the 2 of us – so now there were four of us on our two-seater bench.  He knew no social boundaries.  Sometimes his little hand rest on my knee, sometimes he pressed his little body into my shoulder, his legs dangling underneath him.

Here are trip highlights in no particular order:

1.      A man and woman getting on the train,  a small bag of green leaves in his hand, and me imagining that they had purchased in that bag, what they were going to have for supper.

2.      Another couple walking along the quay, him pointing with his cane to leaves in the grass which she was also gathering – me imagining that they would be having the same meal as the couple above.

3.      Watching the boiling wells of water in the 7-11, seeing that to purchase what was in them, all I had to do was skewer the product and take it to the check-out desk.

4.      Trying to spend the last $600 ($20 US) that we were carrying.  I found a beautiful pair of earrings – a small Eiffel tower for one ear, and a large crescent, into which was tucked the Paris skyline. Even though I was taken by the asymmetry of the jewellery, I didn’t make the purchase.  There just seemed to be something terribly wrong with purchasing a souvenir of Paris in Taiwan.

5.      Standing at a soup kitchen, watching customers make their purchases and then sit in booths, holding the bits of food to of the water with their chopsticks, waiting for it to cool. I watched the cook take something out of the pot, put it in a dish, squeeze it with a sieve, then take scissors and chop it into six pieces, then serve it.  What was in the broth generated a discussion between Wyona, Greg and me: offal, sweet breads, tripe ... we couldn’t decide and I was powering down, unable to investigate.  It seemed that when the customers were finished their first serving, they could have a second serving – broth only.