By Lucy

Toast is me.

I am toast.

• Snowman

Post-script 1: northern Ontario is on fire again, to the surprise of no one with more than 2 brain cells to rub together, which is to say, the Americans are very surprised. I find myself more annoyed this time around, seeing people in Barrie and Toronto complain about it being smokey. Back home, people are devastated; towns have been destroyed and it’s too toxic to go outside, with businesses shutting and every conversation dominated by ways to stay safe and if they’ll have to evacuate. You can’t even see the sun. I know it will be dreadful for me because the room I was staying in before had old windows that will not keep the smoke out, and that’s ignoring that we will be expected to work outside with no masks because we have before. The Americans also have the gall to complain, as if we are manufacturing the smoke just to irritate them, with vague threats of “if the Canadians don’t do something about it we will”. You’ll what? Invade us to put out the fire? You %^&%*& couldn’t even stop LA from burning to the ground a couple of years back. Try me, b*tch. I will be the first person on that wall.

Second post-script; the AI creep continues. LG has also started rolling out automatic software updates that includes “records audible conversation within range” in its terms of service. So far, this includes many monitors going back to 2023 models. There is a way to disable this spyware, but it’s only time before they install more. I’m definitely switching to Linux once I get back. We used to laugh at Mountainhead…

In the morning, I got up, had a quick breakfast, and started packing up. Around 8, I noticed Annalisa stirring, so I hit the road. When I was on the MRT heading to the main station, I texted her, “I headed out already.”

“What?” Came the immediate reply, “I thought we agreed to 9.”

We did not. The trains we want to be on leave at 9 or earlier. As it is, not wanting to spring for the fast train, I won’t be in Yilan before noon. “The train leaves at 9:12.” I reply, which leaves the door open for her to rush if she really wants to.

“This is really rude.”

“Sorry. I changed my mind and wanted to go by myself. Have a good day.”

I won’t lie, it did twist my guts. You know me, once I agree to plans it’s almost impossible to convince me to change them, but I really felt that if I went with Annalisa, I’d spend the whole day regretting it. The hike up Elephant mountain and the search for dinner, plus the argument about the noodle shop, was so grating and exhausting.

I find it hard to explain, but something about Annalisa always rubbed me the wrong way. She seems to get all her travel information off Instagram and Tiktok. She’s also too wealthy, in my opinion, to be using volunteering as she travels, although at least she isn’t snooty about it. She has a full time job – she just saves up her time off to travel for a month at a time – and she has a Galaxy Flip, which is possibly the most expensive phone on the market. Privately, we had all expressed some concerns about her, but she was never rude to our faces.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the train station. Turns out there’s two ticket counters, one for the high speed trains and one for the regular trains. Since I didn’t take the fast train, I can’t comment on how they are, but the regular trains are basically subway carriages. I was worried about the train tickets selling out, but at least to Yilan on a weekday, that’s highly unlikely.

Navigating the trains is a little complicated because almost no train says on the schedule “from Taipei main station”. Any train that goes to or from Taipei is either Shulin or Qidu; presumably that’s where the train yards are. I also wasn’t going all the way to Yilan. I was getting off in Toucheng, because that’s where the Yanlang museum is.

I waited on the platform for half an hour. A good Samaritan, assuming I was going to Jiufen, tried to correct my platform choice, so I just showed him my ticket.

About 2/3’s of the trip took place through the mountains. It’s possible there’s a way to take the train to Jiufen and then entirely down the coast, but let’s not make it complicated.

My heart leaps every time I see the ocean!

The island you can see is very interesting and I was really tempted to spring for a guided tour out to it. It’s called Turtle island because viewed from shore, it looks like a giant turtle swimming along. It’s the only active volcano in Taiwan, and often it’s obscured by the sulfur clouds billowing from the volcanic activity, but you can land on it and go for a hike. Dolphins and whales are often seen from the boats as well.

A little girl, who was also on vacation because she was taking pictures out of the window too, came over and asked me where I am from, which was adorable. Her family got off a stop or two before me, and she waved goodbye.

I spent half an hour walking around Toucheng old street, but there wasn’t much to see. Wrong day? Too early? They don’t seem to have a daily night market.

Lacking any decent food options, I went to a sit-down restaurant and got the local fish and chips. It was pretty good, although a small portion.

I walked another 15 minutes down the road to the museum, which is located almost exactly at the halfway point between two stations.

Yanlang museum is cool for the architecture alone. I wish we had buildings like this in Canada. Is it the cold? The snow? Lack of willpower? Why don’t we?

It was 100 NTD to do the main exhibit. There was other exhibits, but the list of prices was all in Chinese and the staff didn’t really speak English. I was sort of off the beaten path, here.

The main exhibit was interesting. It’s very interactive, full of wax figures and other life-sized displays. You take the elevator to the tip of the building and work your way down. One display is just a small room across an overpass on the second floor. I will say, about half the displays were in Chinese only, and all the displays with an auditory component were in Chinese. Which is to be expected, just warning you now.

Yilan is interesting. It’s located on an alluvial plain – the rocky bed of a braided river – so it keeps changing. It’s also one of the rainier locations in Taiwan; I was lucky it was a sunny day, because they get 200 rainy days a year. It was one of the last places to be logged, and was used more for camphor production. It’s also still mostly indigenous peoples.

For future trips to Taiwan, there is a trail that goes from Taipei to Yilan and vice versa. It’s called the Danlan trail and it takes three days, which sounds like fun! Plus you know you can just hop on the train and go back to Taipei, easy.

A lot of this is generic factoids I’ve absorbed elsewhere. Like most of tribal Asia, rice planting goes hand-in-hand with duck rearing. Because you need a lot of water, dams, and canals for both ducks and rice, lots of these places have a pond or two for the ducks to live in, and they turn the ducks out onto the rice field once its been harvested to eat up the leftovers.

They have an entire whale skeleton here. Apparently there’s some discrepancy about what kind of whale it is.

A “living bamboo fence” is also common here. I wonder at the utility of it.

They also have an entire fishing boat on the last floor. I guess that’s exciting.

Anyway, it only took me about an hour to walk through the museum. Which was fun, but not enough to justify the train trip.

I glanced around maps for something else to do. I’d wanted to hit the night market, but it didn’t exist. I’d walked through the entire town already. I debated hopping back on the train to head further into Yilan, but then I noticed a beach a 20 minute walk away, right by a station and a train back to Taipei at 4.

I mean, why not. Who said a day trip needs to be a lot?

I applied another layer of sunscreen and walked down to the beach.

I mean, I couldn’t do this with Annalisa in tow. Or maybe she would have agreed to it, but it was much easier to be by myself.

On the way, I passed a Mr Brown cafe. Mr Brown is the brand of canned coffee I fell in love with in New Zealand. They make it in Taiwan; they can grow coffee in Taiwan, but they usually import the beans. I imagine, in ten years as climate change keeps altering the growing zones, there’ll be a lot more coffee and chocolate grown here.

The beach was lovely. On the south end there is a few resorts and that end was crowded with people, but the north end was almost devoid of people. The sand was black, and there were large slate formations pushing through in places. The waves were also massive, taller than my head and shoulders, digging giant chunks out of the seabed when they crashed. This part of Taiwan is where the Philippine plate is being subducted, so 50 kilometers off the coast, the seabed rapidly descends to 4’000 meters.

I kicked off my shoes and played around in the waves for a bit. I had safety shorts on under my dress, so I wasn’t really worried about flashing anyone. It hasn’t been long enough since my tattoo to risk getting my arm wet, so I can’t swim.

It is also slightly terrifying, staring at the horizon knowing there is nothing out there until you hit America.

I noticed a town down the road has a “cold spring” – cold meaning it’s only 22 degrees. It’s noteworthy because it’s full of carbon dioxide, so the water is naturally “fizzy”. That might be something to try on the way to Hualien.

I let my feet air dry and walked down the beach.

At 4, I put my shoes on and walked across the road to the train station. The soles are falling off my boots again. So much for the quality cobbler.

As I waited for the train, a couple of old men harvesting bamboo near the tracks smiled at me. When I smiled back, they waved and shouted something that sounded like “Have a good day!”

As the train arrived, I got in the first car. I noticed the words “Friendly carriage” across the windows. I puzzled out that it means there’s an attendant in the car, in case you need help or don’t feel safe travelling alone, which is a good idea. Why don’t we do that?

I grabbed takeout on the way back from the station.

Annalisa won’t talk to me.

I didn’t think much about it at first; she came back from whatever she had spent the day doing and responded to my friendly “hi” with a haughty chin lift. I figured she’d cool down overnight and want to talk the next day.

The next day, she coolly returned my “good morning”.

Which is just as well, if I’m honest. My concern was that she would want to have A Talk, and expect an apology, which I wasn’t going to offer. I’d decided to myself that I didn’t want to do anymore sightseeing with her, to spare us the awkwardness, and I felt a bit guilty about hurting her feelings, but I also doubted I’d get an apology from her if the positions were reversed. With her behavior afterwards, I felt even more justified; she was so annoyed with me that she moved her items in the fridge to a different shelf! You can keep what you’ve got, hun, I’m good.

We had guests in our room that night, which didn’t help my mood. There was a lady in a wheelchair, which was understandable, although she was more annoying that the other one. She was smiley and she spoke English, but she was less considerate about letting me access my belongings. We also just had some regular guests, but then the hostel was packed. I slept wretchedly, as the guests kept turning the light on in the middle of the night and waking me up.

I slept in and came down have breakfast at 10.

As I came out of the elevator, I noticed Annalisa talking to the boys about the plans to go for dinner that night. No one invited me over to join the conversation. As the day went on, no one pulled me aside or texted me to let me know what the plan was, although I overheard that the plan was to go at 7.

We each had ten beds to do. Even hustling, it took us a few hours to get everything done, not helped by the inadequate cleaning supplies. This mystery blue cleaner is even more harsh on my nose than the bleach, all of us sneeze and cough when we use it. They also complained about the unmovable soap scum; although I had noticed a bottle of white vinegar in the storage cupboard, I was in no hurry to point that out, and part of what they were complaining about was the steel faucet rusting, which no amount of cleaning will help.

I spent the rest of the day resting and typing. The boy from the front desk came over and asked if I was a blogger because I’m always typing. I corrected him to novelist, even though I’ve finished the revision for now. No one here needs to know I blog.

I’m drinking tonight. I just feel like it.

Marco stopped me as I was about to head across the road to grab liquor, “We’re going to get noodles at 7, did you want to come?”

I glanced around, “Pretty sure I’m not invited.”

“I’m inviting you.” He says, sounding perplexed.

“Annalisa hasn’t talked to me for 2 days.” I reply.

“Why not.”

“A little hard to ask someone why they won’t talk to you when they won’t talk to you.” I reply dryly.

“Just come, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” He insists.

“I’d rather not make it uncomfortable for everyone else.”

As I walked across the road to the store, I wondered about how easily I was giving up. Used to being excluded; used to watching the other kids go out to the playground by themselves, used to my parents leaving me behind to “teach me a lesson”. The only thing I learned is that I’m fine all by myself, which is a lesson best learned early, but now I think I give up too easily.

Of course, part of that is the ephemeral nature of the group. Marco leaves on the 11th, Annalisa a few days later and me a couple of days after that. If this were a more permanent group, I’d fight it. I’ve burned cliques to the ground rather than surrender my crown. But I wonder what it is about me that makes people reluctant to discuss problems. Instead of talking to me about Saturday, she was totally cool with excluding me and casting withering glances over her shoulder. Is it me, or is it her?

As the clock rolled on 7, Marco came down to my seat. “Are you really sure you don’t want to come?”

I smile at him. It’s always interesting to see who really wants to be your friend. Also, phrasing. No, I do really want to go. But I don’t want to deal with a long night of Annalisa… doing whatever she will do to express her displeasure. “I’ll be fine. Go enjoy your night.”

“Are you really sure?”

Go away, Marco. This is a bit much. “Yes. It’s fine.”

I spent the evening drinking and watching Community with Vlad instead.

The next day was quiet.

I’m starting to feel that anxious feeling of “have I seen enough”. I realized one of the things I had forgotten to do was see Taipei 101, so around 5, I jumped on the MRT and headed down to it.

Gulp.

It’s interesting because it is also a fully functioning office building, with a giant mall underneath. It’s not straightforward to find your way to where the tourist floor is, but eventually I got there. 600 for a ticket, jeez.

Unlike the CN tower’s glass elevator, the elevator here is fully opaque, which is good. You woosh up at more than a kilometer an hour, although it’s not a kilometer tall, so you go from the bottom to the sightseeing floor – 89th – in 30 seconds.

I was surprised – I felt like I was on the deck of a ship. No one else seemed to notice, so I assume its just my sensitive inner ear that could tell the building was swaying with the breeze. I knew about the mass damper because it was part of the plot of Artemis Fowl, but I hadn’t realized it only absorbs UP TO 40% of the force exerted on the tower, which is quite a bit of sway leftover. There’s been a couple of times when the mass damper swayed around a meter, which means the tower itself must have swayed a meter as well.

You can see the sea from here! I guess it’s only 30 kilometers as the crow flies to the sea, but it was still a surprise.

They have all these little selfie spots around, which makes sense. That’s all there is to do. There’s also a “post office”, which I wish I had known about so I could have posted my postcards from the top of Taipei!

I did a lap around and then I went down to the mass damper. It’s not very exciting unless you work construction. A lot of tall buildings have them, but they usually hide them – Taipei 101 was one of the first to do it, so they have it on display. I doubt Eoin Colfer has been here, because from what I can remember of the plot, the way he has it happen doesn’t work with how it looks. But maybe I should reread the book.

Still, it was exciting. I was here! And it was designed by Canadians!

I debated staying to watch the sun go down, but it was cloudy, so I headed out. The elevator down dumps you in the middle of the mall with no sign to the exit, probably hoping you’ll get lost and spend all your money. No thanks!

When I got back to the hostel, Vlad sent me a screencap of a typhoon tracking site.

There was one headed right for us.

Of course, it wasn’t expected to make landfall until Friday, but it was a big one. With windspeeds of 200 km/h, and on the satellite it stretched from Korea to Luzon, its slow-motion approach was terrifying to watch, like a car you knew would hit you but you couldn’t move out of the way.

Crap, there’s another 3 days I won’t be doing any sightseeing.

As I was chatting with Marco in the evening – he was having a large coffee, which I jokingly called an aperitivo and he was baffled I knew that word – I discovered his flight back to Milan was leaving on the 11th.

“I don’t think you’re heading home, Marco.” They closed the airport for Mekkhala and Mekkhala was smaller than this.

Since Meg was setting the schedule, I asked her if she could put me on the first floor for the next day. Then I have more time to pack up and head out. I was leaving right after work so I could have 2 whole nights in the mountains.

I almost managed to fit everything in my backpack. Almost. I probably could have if I didn’t bother with my headphone’s carrying case and just travelled with them around my neck, but I bought expensive headphones with a carrying case for a reason. I just threw some other things in my shopping bag. I went back and forth on bringing food with me and decided against it. I’m on vacation.

The bus station here looks like a stock market. They’ve designed it so the buses can drive all the way up to the fourth floor. You buy a ticket from the vendor you want on the first floor, then go up to the terminal. Only one bus goes direct from Taipei to Sun Moon Lake, Kao Kang; most people take the train to Taichung and then a shuttle from there, but this is direct – and cheaper.

I hustled in case it was busy, but it was not. By the time we departed, there was only two other people on the bus with me. By the time we arrived in Puli, we’d acquired a few others. About a third of the seating space was for wheelchair users, which was unique.

I read Oryx and Crake on the bus. I’d asked Vlad to find a PDF version for me and he succeeded, yay!

It’s an interesting book. Crake reminds me of Josh, in many ways.

Reading it as the bus weaves its way along the elevated highway, I discover it’s a good thing I didn’t read the book earlier. For one, I would have guessed the end from Crake’s resemblance to Josh alone. Crake’s plan was Josh’s, at one point, before reality happened. We had even joked during the pandemic, when it was bad and looked like a lot more people were going to die before they created the vaccine, that he needn’t have bothered. One mildly fatal air-borne virus and the stupid will line up for it.

For the other, partially because Oryx needed the context I now have, from having toured Southeast Asia, but also because Oryx reminds me uncomfortably of myself.

“So I learned about life,” said Oryx.

“Learned what?”

“That everything has a price.”

“Not everything. That can’t be true. You can’t buy time. You can’t buy…” He wanted to say love, but hesitated.

“You can’t buy it, but it has a price,” Said Oryx.

“Not me,” Jimmy said, trying to joke. “I don’t have a price.”

Wrong, as usual.

As I watched the scenery roll by, it occurred to me… I have changed.

I mean, I’ve had that realization a couple of times on this trip. I can’t quite recall the timing, but I think it was back in Malaysia when I commented that I was having an identity crisis.

I think it just resolved.

When I first cut Josh out, he still lived rent-free in my brain. I vented about him to people who were in the know, wondered what he was doing, heard his voice commenting on what I was doing. And I engaged with it as much as I needed to to take the edge off.

At some point in the last couple of years, his voice faded, but I still found myself occasionally wondering what he was up to, if he missed me, if he’d ever reach out. If he reads this blog. It wouldn’t surprise me, he would follow what our classmates were doing all the time, long after I had lost interest. I have blocked his number and most of his social media accounts, but anyone is reachable if you really want to. I’ve seen his account on the watch list for my Twitch streams, once or twice. He doesn’t want to.

And I don’t want him to message me, if I’m honest. I don’t ever really want to cut anyone off fully. If they really grow and change, and they want to reach out, to make amends as part of their growth, I’m open to that. But I’m not interested in anything other than that. Like I always say, anyone could sincerely feel regret and apologize, but it’s funny how rarely people do.

I realized, I just stopped thinking about him entirely. More than that. Because he inspired the villain of my novel, I used to think about how he’d react to something to keep my writing moving. But as the villain has evolved away from being inspired by him to being its own person, Josh’s influence disconnected from my mind. The villain is just the villain; its creation is an emotionally neutral fact.

And alas, I have no one to discuss this with. Paul has the barest of details. Kevin and Andrej, even less. Rich was the last person who knew the whole story; no one who’s left in my life knows, and no one else ever will.

The straw that broke the camels’ back was that Josh got a new girlfriend, but it’s not the girlfriend part. I’m polyamorous; I don’t really feel jealousy. And considering our on-again off-again relationship outlasted every “girlfriend”, I would never seriously consider it a threat. No, what really upset me about it was that he was dating a girl he had known since high school and I had known since me and her were 7 or 8 and she moved in down the road from me. Over the last couple of years, he’d made some real strides in moving onwards and upwards, maturing, growing. And now… now he was moving backwards. Regressing back to high school. And it was pathetic. He used to have such lofty ambitions, of leaving town, of going to university, and now… 27 years old and he still hadn’t gotten his shit together enough to get his full license, and now he was hooking up with girls we had left behind 10 years previously.

Pathetic.

I think back, what would he say to what I’ve done in the last two years, and the voice is quiet. It has no words. I have no idea what he would say to this.

I outgrew him, I’ve realized. I was always going to. He was so small.

They never talk about this in the books. What it feels like to realize the voice of doubt is quiet, and that you’ve moved on.

For a moment, it feels terrifying, like freefall.

Except I’m in control now. After the better part of a decade, I’m finally free. I’ve snipped every string holding me up, and now I can see, they were only holding me back.

There are no strings on me.

Of course, I’ve learned other things about myself here. I’ve learned to like tofu, which is good, in hindsight. I hope to raise chickens, and rabbits and goats, but I already know that even if I manage to get my little hobby farm up and going, I won’t try to raise any livestock beyond that. A field of soybeans is way easier to tend to than any livestock. I’ve learned to appreciate chopsticks. I’ve learned new ways of using the whole animal, and things to do with rice.

I’ve learned about togetherness.

I’ve learned about sobriety. As much as I complain about how stressed out I am, I’ve found some sort of Zen, because every time I travel I stop drinking.

I’m broken out of my introspection by the bus pulling into the station in Puli. Everyone gets up and gets off the bus. Am I going to be kicked off? The driver barks something in Chinese, and I blink at him, uncomprehending.

“English?” He asks. I nod. He comes over with his phone and types something into it. “Do you need to use the restroom?”

“Oh, no.”

He laughs incredulously. “Do you mind if I go?”

“Oh, no, go ahead!”

He’s gone for a few minutes. When he comes back, he has a can of coffee with him, and he hands me one as well. “Xie xie!” I say. I stuff it into my bag; I’m not drinking coffee this late in the day.

It’s a 20 minute drive to Shuishe. I’m not even concerned for myself; I just know whomever is doing check in at the hostel is tapping their foot, waiting for me to show up so they can head home. They texted me halfway here to ask when I was showing up and to remind me check-in closes at 7. I feel a little guilty.

We arrive at 6:30.

He says something in Chinese again. I have no idea, so I just gather up my belongings and exit the bus. He stops me at the exit and types into his phone again. “Are you travelling alone?”

I nod, unsure where he’s going with this.

“Aren’t you bored?”

I laugh, “No!”

He also finds this terribly funny. We laugh together for a minute, then he bids me goodbye and we go our separate ways.

I smile all the way to the hostel. These little moments are so much more fun than the curated tours. I wouldn’t have these kinds of interactions if I were with a group or in a couple, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I check in to the hostel, pay in cash – dammit, I was hoping to use card – get shown around, and she takes off. There’s some other people staying here as well, but I have the room to myself for the two nights I am there, which is heavenly. The bathroom is an ensuite as well, which would normally annoy me, but since I don’t have anyone waking me up in the night the privacy is great.

I walk down the road to an eatery. Shiushe is small; despite half of it being hotels, most of it closes at 6 and a few close at 9. This place is “famous” for its tea. It had the same offerings as the noodle place in Taipei, so I got noodles and tofu. They have you order and pay on your phone, so you don’t even need to talk to anyone.

I take pictures of the sun going down over the lake. This is the biggest lake in Taiwan, although it’s not even 30 kilometers around – lake Superior laughs. Hell, even lake Simcoe was bigger, or the Holland marsh. But it’s a popular weekend spot for Taiwanese. The other name means “the green dragons fighting over a pearl”, because there is one perfectly circular island in the middle of the lake, between the “sun” side and the “moon” side, and when viewed from above it looks like two dragons fighting over it.

On the way back to the hostel, I passed a vendor selling millet flour donuts. She was offering 1 for 40 or 3 for 100, and she only had 3 left, so I decided to buy them from her and then she can pack up and head home. That’s breakfast sorted.

I spent the evening in the common room, and slept well.

Too bad I can’t sleep in. I have a jam-packed day today.

Coffee and donuts for breakfast, yay.

I went down to the dock for the ferry. There’s a ferry that goes across the lake, stopping at 3 spots. Going to all three is 300, although the hostel sells gift certificates for 200. I waited for the first ferry of the morning. I was the only white person and the commentary was in Chinese, but I got the gist. They pass close by the pearl on this trip, and we all ran to the side to take pictures.

This dock drops you off at a Buddhist temple, which most people did not get off at.

This is where my day took a sharp turn.

I’d brought my mala with me; I’ve been neglecting it. I mean, I’m not going to put it on when I’m cleaning bathrooms and stuff, so I just don’t use it. But as I shook it out of the silk bag, a few beads fell out.

I stared at them uncomprehendingly.

It’s broken.

Shit, when did that happen? And how?

I pulled the whole thing out in case I could fix it. The string was broken at the Buddha bead. I do beadwork, I could fix it.

But should I? Maybe only monks should.

I searched it quickly. A few website said the malas break when you have learned all you need from them, and the beads should be thanked for their service and returned to the earth.

That didn’t sound quite right. I’m here with monks, I should just ask them.

I sorted everything back into the bag and made extra sure it was shut tight.

There’s a small altar near the dock, but the temple proper is up the hill. This temple is for Master Xuan Zang, the monk who travelled across China to India to bring back Buddhist texts to translate. He inspired the story “Journey to the West”, which everyone knows Sun Wukong from. His relics were located in Nanjing, and then the Japanese took them back to Japan after… y’know, World War 2. Eventually they agreed to share them with Taiwan, so this temple was built to house them. The steps are supposed to symbolically imitate his journey. It took him 17 years to go to India and back.

No one else from the boat went up them; I walked alone.

It was nice and shady. I put on bug spray.

The temple itself is gorgeous. Large carved murals, larger than life statues, a feng-shui garden.

I walked around a bit, snapped some photos. It was fairly quiet – there were more monks than guests.

I went up to the main temple. A guide beckoned me in, and female monks with shaved heads were puttering about.

See, this is why I don’t like Theravada Buddhism. You can’t be a female monk. I mean, there’s a lot of things I don’t like, but the no female monks part really kills it for me.

I took my shoes off and went upstairs to where the relics are located. There were several signs around about his life story, mostly in Chinese. I watched someone pray to the relics and felt a little annoyed that I couldn’t participate. I don’t know what I am doing.

After I was done the tour, I approached the young woman standing in the main area. “English?” I asked her. She smiled, but she obviously didn’t understand me. I took out my phone and wrote, “Where is the female monk?”

“Ah!”

She lead me across the courtyard. The female monk was having tea with a guest.

I wrote on my phone, “My prayer beads broke”.

The lady explained it to the monk, who asked to see them. I took out the silk bag and handed it to her, she shook them out onto her hand. Her face lit up, she exclaimed something in Chinese and took off.

I glanced at the lady. She took out her own phone and wrote, “She said it will take 10-15 minutes to fix. Please, sit and have some tea.”

Ok.

I sat down and the other lady poured me some tea. I apologized for interrupting. She shrugged.

15 minutes later, the lady came back. “She said there is a bead missing, so it will take an hour to fix. You’re welcome to walk around, and at 11:30 we will have lunch.”

(My mala have 109 beads)

Ah, ok. I explained to her that I was going to the pagoda and left.

Another 700 meters up the hillside is a tall pagoda, 12 stories I think. It has no real meaning; Chiang Kai-Chek built it for his mother, and now it’s just a pretty tower. It’s fun to climb and has a nice view of the lake, if you’re unwilling to spring for the cable car, like I am.

Then I walked back down.

No one was at the cafe when I got there except the server. He called me over and handed me the silk bag back. I shook it out; there was my mala, repaired. I couldn’t even tell where it had broken or which bead was the replacement.

I walked back to the front to thank the lady. She got excited and waved for me to follow her. She led me to the back where the kitchen for the cafe was, talked to someone for a few minutes, then got a box of food and a container of broth. She led me back to the cafe, gestured for me to sit and placed the food in front of me. “Please enjoy your lunch.”

Then she took off.

Wait, what? What lunch? This food? Am I paying for it?

I spent a few minutes staring at the box of food. The female monk wandered by and laughed at me, before gesturing for me to eat.

Oh, it is my food.

It was pretty good. The sign says they only do vegetarian, but I honestly would have told you I was served chicken and eggs, I couldn’t tell the difference. The broth was a little thin and flavourless, though.

Towards the end of the meal, I got some clarity. They offer a number of free lunches to visitors, but they usually place them on a tray by the front with a sign to help yourself. I guess the lady figured I needed to be fed. They also offer a dessert of fresh fruit, but I was honestly so full I couldn’t finish the meal and I declined.

I tried to ask the female monk about my mala but she wasn’t interested in having a conversation via phone and left, so I have no answers.

I went to the bathroom, refilled my waterbottle, and did a loop around, but the lady was gone. I asked the server at the cafe to thank her for me and left. It was 12:30 and I was behind where I had planned to be for the day, not that it mattered.

Back down to the pier. There was some sort of party happening by the dock. I didn’t find out; I noticed the ferry waiting at the dock and went right to it. They seemed to be waiting for me, because once I boarded they left.

The next stop was Ita Thao. Ita Thao is the other town on the lake; it’s technically smaller, but not by much. There’s a proper market here that you can wander around and try things. It’s named for the indigenous tribe of the area. They got ravaged by disease when the Han Chinese discovered the area and only 600 members still live today, only 200 in this area, according to a plaque, which is devastating.

I tried some different things. The first thing I ordered was a cup of their locally grown tea, which is said to taste like honey, on ice of course. I drank that way too fast… I was hot and tired. I also got a cute little tart with the tea in the custard. I walked past a store offering their millet wine as a slushie, which was very tempting, but I decided to be a good Buddhist and pass. They have a lot of “vinegar drinks” for sale, which reminds that I wanted to try kombucha.

I was still pretty full from lunch, so I didn’t buy much. I did notice a car drive by with a Rotary decal on the side, and I debated chasing them down and decided not to.

Back to the ferry.

This ferry operator speaks English. His eyes lit up as soon as he noticed me and he immediately started yelling country names at me.

“Canada.” I replied.

“Ahhhh, from Toronto! What’s your name, dear?”

“Lucy.”

“Lucy! Like the movie!” He turns around to face the packed ferry, and yells something in Chinese that was probably “Who’s seen the Lucy movie?” Because there’s a lukewarm cheer.

I find a spot to sit down. This is the longest journey across the lake, back to Shuishe, and the operator keeps switching back to English so he can hail me. Everyone on the boat turns to look at me when he does so.

When I get back to the dock, I take off again.

The last place I wanted to see today was Wenwu temple, although in hindsight, I should have walked from Ita Thao. It’s about 6 kilometers from Suishe, and it takes me about ten minutes to walk a kilometer, although I was stopping to take photos and drink water. They have a lovely bike trail most of the way around the “sun” side of the lake, an elevated pathway skirting the water, so you can have a beautiful relaxing stroll, taking in the nature.

To ascend to the temple is the “birthday steps”. There’s 365 of them and each step has a date and a proverb carved into it, with landings each “month”. My phone can’t translate the Chinese, though.

The temple itself is gorgeous, perched on the hillside.

I wander around the temple for a bit. Now what?

There’s a geyser nearby… well, another 3 kilometers. As I scan the map, it occurs to me that it’s next to a bus stop. I could walk down, check out the geyser, then hop on the bus back to Shuishe.

Sounds like a plan.

At this point, I’ve walked 17 kilometers and I’m starting to feel it. I’m slightly limping by the time I get to the geyser. It’s bubbling away, not quite spewing, but the path down to it is closed for a washout and I can’t get a good photo through the trees. You’ll have to imagine it.

I head to the bus stop and hop on the bus. Yay! At this point I’ve walked most of the way back to Ita Thao.

Of course, I still need dinner. I go in the hostel for a few minutes to cool down in the AC, and then I go back to the same restaurant and order the same meal, except this time I also get a passionfruit smoothie. Yum!

Once that’s consumed, I limp down to the lakefront. There’s a “happy line” that run from the temple through the “pearl” to where it intersects with the lakefront. You’re supposed to tell a wish there. I meant to sit and watch the sun go down, but there was a noisy family, with the kids running around screaming and taking selfies, so I sat for a minute and then I limped back to my hostel.

Final total for the day; 20.5 kilometers.

Sleep is rough. I have to pop two Tylenol and a Pocari before I can sleep. I have a good restful night after that, although I have to get up early again (gross).

I get up at 7, grab some breakfast from the 7-Eleven next door – which is light on options, but its the only 24 hour one – and pack up what I’ve got and head out. I head back to the bus stop and wait for the bus, which is… a mini van. There’s only me and one other Chinese man, who I assumed was Taiwanese.

Today was all transit. I could have gotten back on the same bus back to Taipei, but I wanted to take the forest train.

I was wondering why the bus takes 3 hours to get to Alishan – it’s not that far as the crow flies – but I discovered the real reason later. It’s because we were climbing to more than 2’000 meters through the tallest mountains in Taiwan, so we were zigzagging along switchbacks. The view was gorgeous, if repetitive, because we went back and forth along the same mountain about 3 times. There was also lots of tunnels, and the internet cut out a lot. I looked it up and discovered we were looking at the tallest mountain in Taiwan, which, like Mount Kinabalu, is the same height and hikeable, but unlike Kinabalu, Jade Mountain is not on a plain, it’s among mountains that are 2’500 meters in height, so it’s less noticeable.

At the top, the bus has a stop for fifteen minutes. The bus driver kicked us out so he could go for a smoke and I talked with the other rider. Turns out he’s from the PRC, and he assumed my UBC shirt meant University of British Columbia. I’m unnerved by how much these PRC tourists know about Canada. He was also taking the train, but a different one.

A bunch of hikers got on when we took off again.

I had 15 minutes to make the train in Alishan. When I got there, I discovered it costs a fee to enter Alishan, although the PRC guy guessed that I didn’t know and grabbed a voucher for me, which was nice of him. Then he took off.

When I went to pick up my ticket, I noticed a sign on the desk saying my train was the last one before they shut ‘er down for the typhoon. Brr.

Alishan is famously foggy.

I did not get a window seat. I got seated next to a Rotary kid – I know because he had a Rotary sticker on his luggage – and I told him I was also a Rotarian, but he wasn’t much for conversation. He spent most of the ride on his phone, which made me want to ask him if we could swap since I actually wanted to see the scenery.

The Alishan train was built for logging. It uses these adorable red engines and has commentary in English, Chinese and Japanese. The mountainside is so steep it has real switchbacks, where the train can’t turn around and has to literally switch tracks and ascend or descend backwards. Locals line up at the stations and wave at us as the train goes past.

There used to be a sacred tree at Shenmu station, which is funny because Shenmu means “sacred tree”. It was hard to find information about said sacred tree because Shenmu is also the name of a video game. It got struck by lightning and cut down in the late 90’s. For more information, see Taoism.

It takes a little over 3 hours to descend, although the last hour is pretty boring.

I end up in Chiayi with an hour to go until my train back to Taipei. I debated staying overnight, but decided against it in light of the typhoon. I wandered around near the station and bought a pineapple bun and a bento box to eat on the train.

It was a long train ride. I’m pretty sure they don’t expect anyone to actually ride these trains from one end to another like I do, because most people seem to use them just to get to the next city. I tried to surrender my seat to old people a couple of times of times and got waved down. I guess I look as exhausted as I feel.

I’d downloaded Moana 2 to watch once the sun went down and I couldn’t see the sea anymore.

Moana 2 is not a good movie. It’s not a bad movie, either. It has the usual Disney problem in that, they started to create a TV show, then decided to release it as a sequel movie instead. Which they have been doing for decades, but at least in the era of VHS, it made some sense; renting cable space is more expensive then just buying a few thousand VHS tapes. But now, they have Disney Plus! Even if you think the show isn’t going to do well, why not just release it as a movie on your streaming platform? Why push for a feature release?

But yeah. So what’s good is good, but it watches like you’re watching a 5-part TV series and then hitting skip in the middle of each episode. This time she has a scrappy crew that’s obviously working up to a moral about working together, but then we just smash cut to the end of the movie with them working together perfectly with no character arc. The songs just aren’t as good this time, either; I actually skipped half of them.

The best thing about the movie is the villain, Matangi. She devours the scene every time she’s on screen, and her song is really good.

I got back to the hostel at 9, super drained. Marco was still up. His flight home had been cancelled for the typhoon.

Ready up.

“So Crake never remembered his dreams. It’s Snowman that remembers them instead. Worse than remembers: he’s immersed in them, he’d wading through them, he’s stuck in them. Every moment he’s lived in the past few months was dreamed first by Crake.

No wonder Crake screamed so much.”