Louis-Philippe Véronneau - travelhttps://veronneau.org/2018-07-18T00:00:00-04:00Taiwan Travel Blog - Day 6 & 72018-07-18T00:00:00-04:002018-07-18T00:00:00-04:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2018-07-18:/taiwan-travel-blog-day-6-7.html<hr>
<p>This is the fifth entry of my Taiwan Travel blog series! You can find my
previous entries here:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-1.html">Day 1</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-2-3.html">Day 2 & 3</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-4.html">Day 4</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-5.html">Day 5</a></li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p>I wasn't sure if people were enjoying my travel blog or if I was spamming
planet.d.o with pictures of random mountain …</p><hr>
<p>This is the fifth entry of my Taiwan Travel blog series! You can find my
previous entries here:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-1.html">Day 1</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-2-3.html">Day 2 & 3</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-4.html">Day 4</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-5.html">Day 5</a></li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p>I wasn't sure if people were enjoying my travel blog or if I was spamming
planet.d.o with pictures of random mountain paths, but several people told me
they liked it. Thanks for the feedback!</p>
<p>I've been busy in the last few days so for convenience's sake, I'll merge
together what I did on the 14th and the 15th.</p>
<h2>From mountain to sea</h2>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-18/shoreline.jpg" title="The view from the 193 road from Taroko to Hualien" alt="The view from the 193 road from Taroko to Hualien" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:left"></p>
<p>I left late in the morning on the 14th from the Taroko national park were I was
staying to move to Hualien. Taroko was beautiful, but there is only so much to
do there and I think I did most of it.</p>
<p>The bike ride was easier than I thought it would be. Taroko is in the mountains
so I was travelling on a downward slope pretty much the whole way. There wasn't
a dedicated bike path, but the road I took (n° 193) had a speed limit of
40km/h. The view was beautiful, as this road follows the shoreline all the way
to Hualien.</p>
<p>I guess I must have been quite a sight for the locals: a foreigner riding a
bicycle a few sizes to small for him on a small country road with a large bag
and hiking boots strapped behind on the rack.</p>
<p>Fun times! I also caught a bad sunburn, as it seems the sun is stronger here
than at home :(</p>
<h2>Hualien</h2>
<p>After more than a week of travel, Hualien was the first large city in Taiwan I
visited. Although its the largest city on the east coast, Hualien only has
100'000 inhabitants. That's a manageable size for me.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-18/beach.jpg" title="The Hualien beach" alt="The Hualien beach" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>I arrived in Hualien in the beginning of the afternoon and after having
checked-in at my hotel, I decided to go out for the night to have a meal and
enjoy the city. I'm really happy I bought a bicycle, as it makes moving around
so much easier than walking!</p>
<p>Following Andrew's advice, I first stopped at Danji's Bianshi shop (戴记扁食)
to enjoy one of the best Bianshi I ever had. From what I understood from the
pictures on the wall, this shop has been there for a least a few decades and
only sells one dish: Bianshi. For those of you not familiar with Bianshi, it's a
dumpling soup similar to Wonton soup, but where celery plays the leading role
in flavouring the clear chicken broth. Hmmmmmm.</p>
<p>At the night market I got to eat a ton of food once again, from donuts filled
with red bean paste to octopus takoyaki. It's also the harvest season here so I
enjoyed many fresh juices like watermelon (the first time I had some juiced) and
later on white jade bitter melon (白玉苦瓜), deliciously sweet and bitter.</p>
<h2>And the Lord said ‘This bike shop shall be closed on Sunday’</h2>
<p>On the 15th, I went out to try to get my bike fixed. I wanted to buy a longer
saddle post and the bottom bracket on my bike was loose and I wanted to have it
fixed.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-18/litchis.jpg" title="The litchis I ate, with part of my new bike in the background" alt="The litchis I ate, with part of my new bike in the background" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:left"></p>
<p>Since the bike I bought is still under warranty, I had the great idea to cycle
across town to the Giant store to see what could be done. Of course, I didn't
check if the store was open and ended up realising it was Sunday when I saw the
sign on the door.</p>
<p>Some say bad things happen for a reason so I comprised, bought fruits from the
fruit stall across the street and decided to go watch the waves on the beach.
The mango I ate was delicious and it had been a really long time since I ate
fresh litchis.</p>
<p>I came back to my hotel in the middle of the afternoon, once again thinking I
would have a quiet night listening to podcasts while working on some DebConf
stuff when aLiao (Andrew's friend who owns a recording studio in Hualien)
reached out to me to ask if I had plans for the night.</p>
<p>I ended up at his studio listening to him and a bunch of his friends jamming. We
later went to a seafood restaurant on the edge of the night market called <em>The
Tall Knight</em> (高大侠) to have some fresh seafood grilled on charcoal.</p>
<p>We ate a bunch of grilled shrimps as appetizers, very large scallops cooked in
their shells and oysters the size of a toy football. I'm used to the small and
delicious oysters we eat raw in Canada, but this one was served cooked with
homemade hot sauce. They also had Hardcore beer (a local Taiwan craft beer) on
tap and it went very well with the meal.</p>
<p>Cheers!</p>Taiwan Travel Blog - Day 52018-07-13T00:00:00-04:002018-07-13T00:00:00-04:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2018-07-13:/taiwan-travel-blog-day-5.html<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-13/view.jpg" title="The view from my hostel this morning" alt="The view from my hostel this morning" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>This is the fourth entry of my Taiwan Travel blog series! You can find posts on
my first few days in Taiwan by following these links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-1.html">Day 1</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-2-3.html">Day 2 & 3</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-4.html">Day 4</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Old Zhuilu Road (锥麓古道)</h2>
<p>Between all the trails I did in the Taroko National …</p><p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-13/view.jpg" title="The view from my hostel this morning" alt="The view from my hostel this morning" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>This is the fourth entry of my Taiwan Travel blog series! You can find posts on
my first few days in Taiwan by following these links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-1.html">Day 1</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-2-3.html">Day 2 & 3</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-4.html">Day 4</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Old Zhuilu Road (锥麓古道)</h2>
<p>Between all the trails I did in the Taroko National Park, I think this one was
the best.</p>
<p>Old Zhuilu Road has quite a story behind it. It was built in the 1910s under the
Japanese occupation of the Taiwan island. Most of the trail already existed, but
the Japanese forced the natives to make it at least a meter large everywhere (it
used to be only 10cm wide) using dynamite.</p>
<p>It's quite sad that such a beautiful trail is soaked the in blood of the
Taroko natives.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-13/cliffpath.jpg" title="The path at the top of Old Zhuilu Road" alt="The path at the top of Old Zhuilu Road" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:left"></p>
<p>The Japanese wanted to widen the trail to be able to bring cannons and weapons
up the mountain to subdue the native villages resisting the occupation. They
eventually won and killed a bunch of them.</p>
<p>Even though this trail is less taxing than the Dali-Datong trail I did two days
ago, it easily scores a hard 3/5 as half of the path is made of very narrow
paths on the side of a 700m cliff. Better not trip and fall!</p>
<p>Sadly out of the original 10km, only a third of the trail is currently open. A
large typhoon destroyed part of the path a few years ago. Once you arrive at the
cliffside outpost you have to turn back and start climbing down.</p>
<h2>Night market in Xincheng (新成乡)</h2>
<p>Tonight was the night market in Xincheng township, the rural township where my
hostel is located. I was pretty surprised by how large it was (more than 50
stalls) considering that only 20'000 people reside in the whole township. The
ambiance was great and of course I ended up eating too much.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-13/abyss.jpg" title="Looking down into the abyss" alt="Looking down into the abyss" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>Fried and grilled chicken hearts, fried bits of fat, fried fish balls, grilled
squid, hollow egg-shaped cakes, corndogs, sausages, soft-serve ice cream, sweet
black tea, I guess I should have paced myself.</p>
<p>Although the food stalls were numerous, there were also a large number of
clothes vendors, random toys stalls for the kids and a bunch of electronic
pachinko machines where old people were placing bets on one another. The kids
were pretty funny: since I seemed to be the only westerner in the whole market,
they kept coming in groups of 3 or 4 to laugh at me for not speaking mandarin,
and then left running and squealing when I started talking to them.</p>
<p>Blurp! More chicken hearts please!</p>Taiwan Travel Blog - Day 42018-07-12T00:00:00-04:002018-07-12T00:00:00-04:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2018-07-12:/taiwan-travel-blog-day-4.html<p>This is the third entry of my Taiwan Travel blog series! You can find posts on
my first few days in Taiwan by following these links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-1.html">Day 1</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-2-3.html">Day 2 & 3</a></li>
</ul>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-12/waterfall.jpg" title="The Baiyang Waterfall" alt="The Baiyang Waterfall" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>I had to take care of a few things this morning so I left the hostel a little
bit …</p><p>This is the third entry of my Taiwan Travel blog series! You can find posts on
my first few days in Taiwan by following these links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-1.html">Day 1</a></li>
<li><a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-2-3.html">Day 2 & 3</a></li>
</ul>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-12/waterfall.jpg" title="The Baiyang Waterfall" alt="The Baiyang Waterfall" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>I had to take care of a few things this morning so I left the hostel a little
bit later than I would have liked. I've already done quite a few trails and I'm
slowly starting to exhaust the places I wanted to visit in the Taroko National
Park, or at least the ones I can reach via public bus.</p>
<p>I've got another day left here and I plan to use the mountain permit I got to
visit Old Zhuilu Road (锥麓古道) and then I'll cycle back to Hualien.</p>
<h2>Baiyang Waterfall Trail (白杨步道)</h2>
<p>I took the bus to go to Tianxiang (天祥), a mountain station about 20km inland
from the Taroko National Park entrance. I considered riding my bike there but
the mountain road has a lot of blind turns and buses frequently pass one
another.</p>
<p>I wanted to visit the Baiyang Waterfall and the Huoran temple, but only found
the trail for the waterfall. I blame the heavy construction work in the area.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-12/monkeys.jpg" title="Formosan Rock Macaque, Yang Hsiao Chi, CC-BY-SA-4.0" alt="Formosan Rock Macaque, Yang Hsiao Chi, CC-BY-SA-4.0" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:left"></p>
<p>Baiyang Waterfall was a very nice and leisurely trail. Paved all the way, it
follows the Tacijili River (塔次基里) for a while. The trail starts by a tunnel
250m long carved into the mountain. There are no lights in there so it's pitch
dark for a while!</p>
<p>I was very lucky to see a colony of bats sleeping with their pups at the exit
of the entrance tunnel. So cute!</p>
<p>I also encountered a family of Formosan Rock Macaques in the forest next to the
trail. Apparently, they are pretty common in Taiwan, but it was the first time
I saw them. Andrew Lee tells me that if I want to meet more monkeys, I can go to
the nearby hot spring and bathe with them. If it wasn't so darn hot I just might
go.</p>Taiwan Travel Blog - Day 2 & 32018-07-10T00:00:00-04:002018-07-10T00:00:00-04:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2018-07-10:/taiwan-travel-blog-day-2-3.html<p>My Taiwan Travel blog continues! I was expecting the weather to go bad on July
10th, but the typhoon arrived late and the rain only started around 20:00. I'm
pretty happy because that means I got to enjoy another beautiful day of hiking
in Taroko National Park.</p>
<p>I couldn't …</p><p>My Taiwan Travel blog continues! I was expecting the weather to go bad on July
10th, but the typhoon arrived late and the rain only started around 20:00. I'm
pretty happy because that means I got to enjoy another beautiful day of hiking
in Taroko National Park.</p>
<p>I couldn't find time on the 10th to sit down and blog about my trip, so this
blog will also include what I did on the 11th.</p>
<h2>Xiaozhuilu Trail (小锥麓步道)</h2>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-10/suspension.jpg" title="Suspension bridge in Xiaozhuilu" alt="Suspension bridge in Xiaozhuilu" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>The first path I did on the 10th was Xiaozhuilu to warm my muscles a little bit.
It links the Shakadang Trail to the Taroko Visitor center and it's both easy
and enjoyable. The path is mainly composed of stairs and man-made walkways, but
it's the middle of the forest and goes by the LiWu river.</p>
<p>To me, the highlight of the trail was the short rope suspension bridge. How
cute!</p>
<h2>Dekalun Trail (得卡伦步道)</h2>
<p>Once I finished the Xiaozhuilu trail, I decided I was ready for something a
little more challenging. Since the park was slowly closing down because of
the incoming Typhoon Maria, the only paths I could do were the ones where I
didn't need to ride a bus.</p>
<p>I thus started climbing the Dekalun Trail, situated right behind the Taroko
Visitor Center.</p>
<p>Although the path is very steep and goes through the wild forest/jungle, this
path is also mainly man-made walkways and stairs. Here is a forest
interpretation poster I really liked:</p>
<p><em>The leaves of a tree are its name cards. The name cards of the Macaranga tree
are very special. They are large and round and the petiole is not on the leaf
margin, it is inside the leaf blade. They are called perforated leaves and look
like shields. [...]
The Macaranga tree is like a spearhead. When the village here relocated and the
fields were abandoned, it quickly moved in. The numerous leaves form a
large umbrella that catches a large amount of sunlight and allows it to grow quickly.
It can be predicted that in the future, the Macaranga will gradually be replaced
by trees that are more shade tolerant. In the meantime however, its leaves,
flowers and fruits are a source of food loved by the insects and birds.</em></p>
<p>A very <em>fengshui</em> tree yo.</p>
<p>Here is a bonus video of one of the giant spiders <a href="/taiwan-travel-blog-day-1.html">I was describing
yesterday</a> being eaten by ants. For size comparison, the half step
you can see is about 10cm large...</p>
<video width="70%" style="margin-left:15%" autoplay loop>
<source src="https://veronneau.org/media/blog/2018-07-10/spider.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
Video of a huge dead spider being eaten by ants.
</video>
<h2>Dali - Datong Trail (大礼-大同步道)</h2>
<p>The Dekalun Trail ends quite abruptly and diverges into two other paths: one
that goes back down and the other one that climbs to the Dali village and then
continues to the Datong village.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-10/dali_view.jpg" title="The view from Dali Village" alt="The view from Dali Village" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:left"></p>
<p>It was still early in the afternoon when I arrived at the crossroad so I decided
that I was at least going to make it to Dali before turning back. Turns out that
was a good idea, since the Dali path was a really beautiful mountainside path
with a very challenging heigh difference. If the Dekalun Trail is a light 3/5,
I'd say the Dali trail is a heavy 3/5. Although I'm in shape, I had to stop
multiple times to sit down and try to cool myself. By itself the trail would be
fine, but it's the 35+°C with a high level of humidity that made it
challenging to me.</p>
<p>Once I arrived at Dali, I needed a permit to continue to Datong but the path was
very easy, the weather beautiful and the view incredible, so I couldn't stop
myself. I think I walked about half of the 6km trail from Dali to Datong before
running out of water. Turns out 4L wasn't enough. The mixed guilt of not having
a mountain permit and the concern I wouldn't have anything left to
drink for a while made me turn back and start climbing down.</p>
<p>Still, no regrets! This trail was clearly the best one I did so far.</p>
<h2>A Wild Andrew Appears!</h2>
<p>So there I was in my bed after a day of hiking in the mountains, ready to go to
sleep when Andrew Lee reached out to me.</p>
<p>He decided to come by my hostel to talk about the DebConf18 daytrip options.
Turns out I'll be the one to lead the <a href="https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf18/DayTrip#Tracing_River_L">River Tracing daytrip</a> on
the MeiHua river (梅花溪). River tracing is a mix of bouldering and hiking, but
in a river bed.</p>
<p>I'm a little apprehensive of taking the lead of the daytrip since I don't know
if my mandarin will be good enough to fully understand the bus driver and the
activity guide, but I'll try my best!</p>
<p>Anyway, once we finished talking about the daytrip, Andrew proposed we go to the
Hualien night market. After telling him I wasn't able to rent a bike because of
the incoming typhoon (nobody would rent me one), we swerved by Carrefour (a
large super market chain) and ended up buying a bicycle! The clerk was super
nice and even gave me a lock to go with it.</p>
<p>I'm now the proud owner of a brand new Giant bicycle for the rest of my trip in
Taiwan. I'm retrospective, I think this was a pretty good idea. It'll end up
cheaper than renting one for a large amount of time and will be pretty useful to
get around during DebConf.<sup id="fnref:1"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:1">1</a></sup> It's a little small for me, but I will try to buy
a longer seat post in Hualien.</p>
<h2>Music and Smoked Flying Fish</h2>
<p>After buying the bike, I guess we said fuck the night market and met up with one
of Andrew's friend who is a musician and owns a small recording studio. We
played music with him for a while and sang songs, and then went back to Andrew's
place to eat some flying fish that Andrew had smoked. We drank a little and I
decided to sleep there because it was getting pretty late.</p>
<p>Andrew was a wonderful guest and brought me back to my hostel the next day in
the afternoon after showing me the Hualien beach and drinking some tea in a
local teashop with me. I had a very good time.</p>
<p>What an eventful two days that was! Turns out the big typhoon that was supposed
to hit on the 11th turned out to be a fluke and passed to the north of Taiwan:
in Hualien we only had a little bit of rain. So much for the rainpocalyspe I was
expecting!</p>
<h2>Language Rant bis</h2>
<p>Short but heartfelt language rant: Jesus Christ on a paddle-board, communication
in a language you don't really master is exhausting. I recently understood one
of the sentences I was trying to decipher was a pun and I laughed. Then cried a
little.</p>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>If you plan to stay in Taiwan after DebConf and need a bicycle, I would be
happy to sell it for 1500 NTD$ (40€), half of what I paid. It's a little
bit cheap, but it's brand new and comes with a 1 year warranty! Better
than walking if you ask me. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Taiwan Travel Blog - Day 12018-07-09T00:00:00-04:002018-07-09T00:00:00-04:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2018-07-09:/taiwan-travel-blog-day-1.html<p>I'm going to <a href="https://debconf18.debconf.org">DebConf18</a> later this month, and since I had some free time
and I speak a somewhat understandable mandarin, I decided to take a full month
of vacation in Taiwan.</p>
<p>I'm not sure if I'll keep blogging about this trip, but so far it's been very
interesting and …</p><p>I'm going to <a href="https://debconf18.debconf.org">DebConf18</a> later this month, and since I had some free time
and I speak a somewhat understandable mandarin, I decided to take a full month
of vacation in Taiwan.</p>
<p>I'm not sure if I'll keep blogging about this trip, but so far it's been very
interesting and I felt the urge to share the beauty I've seen with the world.</p>
<p>This was the first proper day I spent in Taiwan. I arrived on the 8th during the
afternoon, but the time I had left was all spent traveling to Hualien County
(花蓮縣) were I intent to spend the rest of my time before DebConf.</p>
<h2>Language Rant</h2>
<p>I'm mildly annoyed at Taiwan for using traditional Chinese characters instead
of simplified ones like they do in Mainland China. So yeah, even though I've
been studying mandarin for a while now, I can't read much if anything at all.
For those of you not familiar with mandarin, here is an example of a very common
character written with simplified (后) and traditional characters (後). You
don't see the resemblance between the two? Me neither.</p>
<p>I must say technology is making my trip much easier though. I remember a time
when I had to use my pocket dictionary to lookup words and characters and it
used to take me up to 5 minutes to find a single character<sup id="fnref:1"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:1">1</a></sup>. That's how you
end up ordering cold duck blood soup from a menu without pictures after having
given up on translating it.</p>
<p>Now, I can simply use my smartphone and draw the character I'm looking for in my
dictionary app. It's fast, it's accurate and it's much more complete than a
small pocket dictionary.</p>
<h2>Takoro National Park (太鲁阁国家公园)</h2>
<p>Since I've seen a bunch of large cities in China already and I both dislike
pollution and large amounts of people squished up in too few square meters, I
rapidly decided I wasn't going to visit Taipei and would try to move out and
explore one of the many national parks in Taiwan.</p>
<p>After looking it up, Takoro National Park in the Hualien County seemed the best
option for an extended stay. It's large enough that there is a substantial
tourism economy built around visiting the multiple trails of the park, there are
both beginner and advanced trails you can choose from and the scenery is
incredible.</p>
<p>Also Andrew Lee lives nearby and had a bunch of very nice advice for me, making
my trip to Takoro much easier.</p>
<h3>Swallow Gorge (燕子口)</h3>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-09/yanzikou.jpg" title="Picture of the LiWu river in Yanzikou" alt="Picture of the LiWu river in Yanzikou" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:left"></p>
<p>The first trail I visited in the morning was Swallow Gorge. Apparently it's
frequently closed because of falling rocks. Since the weather was very nice and
the trail was open, I decided to start by this one.</p>
<p>Fun fact, at first I thought the <em>swallow</em> in Swallow Gorge meant <em>swallowing</em>,
but it is <em>swallow</em> as in the cute bird commonly associated with spring time.
The gorge is named that way because the small holes in the cliffs are used by
swallows to nest. I kinda understood that when I saw a bunch of them diving and
playing in the wind in front of me.</p>
<p>The Gorge was very pretty, but it was full of tourists and the "trail" was
actually a painted line next to the road where car drives. It was also pretty
short. I guess that's ok for a lot of people, but I was looking for something a
little more challenging and less noisy.</p>
<h3>Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑步道)</h3>
<p>The second trail I visited was the Shakadang trail. The trail dates back to
1940, when the Japanese tried to use the Shakadang river for hydroelectricity.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-09/blue_water.jpg" title="Shakadang's river water is bright blue and extremely clear" alt="Shakadang's river water is bright blue and extremely clear" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>This trail was very different from Yanzikou, being in the wild and away from
cars. It was a pretty easy trail (2/5) and although part of it was paved with
concrete, the more you went the wilder it got. In fact, most of the tourist gave
up after the first kilometer and I had the rest of the path to myself
afterwards.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-07-09/purple_plant.jpg" title="Some cute purple plant growing along the river" alt="Some cute purple plant growing along the river" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:left"></p>
<p>The path is home to a variety of wild animals, plants and insects. I didn't see
any wild board, but gosh damn did I saw some freakingly huge spiders. As I
learnt later, Taiwan is home of the largest spiders in the world. The ones I saw
(Golden silk orb-weaver, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephila_pilipes"><em>Nephila pilipes</em></a>) had bodies easily 3 to 5cm
long and 2cm thick, with an overall span of 20cm with their legs.</p>
<p>I also heard some bugs (I guess it was bugs) making a huge racket that somewhat
reminded me of an old car's loose alternator belt strap on a cold winter
morning.</p>
<p><audio controls><source src="/media/blog/2018-07-09/forest_sound.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"></audio></p>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>Using a Chinese dictionary is a hard thing to do since there is no
alphabet. Instead, the characters are classified by the number of strokes
in their radicals and then by the number of strokes in the rest of the
character. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>