Start of Part 4: Tai Tam Tuk Reservoir

End of Part 4: Shek O village from Tai Tau Chau

This spring has been quite terrible here in Hong Kong. It rains everyday, and just like back in Shanghai, you rejoice when you get the sun, because it is rather rare. So it is with this I told myself, whatever happens I’m out to complete the Hong Kong trail this weekend. That would be Section 7 & 8 according to the official map. This would mean starting off at Tai Tam Tuk Reservoir, go right through to To Tei Wan and then up to the Dragon’s Back mountain trail and ending up at Big Wave Bay. Lets just get to the plot here, to mention that there’s a Part 5 after all, and I never made it to Section 8 on this trip as Dragon’s Back trail is a little too tough to complete in one afternoon along with the hike from Tai Tam reservoir.

GPS plots of the path (in green) for Part 4, with Stanley and Shek O in the picture for positioning

It’s the usual. After filling up on a heavy brunch, I’m off by MTR to Shau Kei Wan, and then onto bus 14 on the main road just before Chai Wan Road. Booted up my Garmin Colorado 300 GPS and got off the bus right before the reservoir. There are not too much space here for any lingering. The dam is so narrow, there is only room on the top for a 2 laned road, so the views will have to be appreciated either in the vehicle, or on one end of the dam. Water is choppy due to a drizzle, with wind from the sea whipping up small waves.

A road runs on the Tai Tam reservoir dam, but being narrow, I don’t think I want to walk on it while double decker buses come charging down one side.

Tai Tam Bay

The initial part of the trek is along thick forests, along a concrete path, so it is quite safe.

Tai Tam reservoir viewed across from the other side of Tai Tam Bay

Tai Tam Bay coastline

Lan Nai Wan Village

Then it is a short walk up Tai Tam Road before going into the forest on the right following a path where I left off in Part 3. Here the path should be rated as easy as it follows a catch water and the altitude reading on my GPS is pretty much constant throughout. Under this heavy tree cover, there are no photo opportunities except for plants macro. The trail are paved almost all the way to Tung Ah Pu Village. The trail is not really straight, quite simply because it follows the contour lines of the hillside. There are some areas where there are clearings and this is where the views of Tai Tam Harbor can be had. It looks across to a bunch of apartments on Red Hill. Some sections I could see Lan Nai Wan village in the foreground and the expensive houses on Red Hill in the background. So a nice mid telephoto lens like 105mm can be useful here. Wide angle lenses are ok, but because there are always shoulder level undergrowth, it is not possible to get a clear shot. When I was there, there were patches of rain cloud and some patches of sunlight, so I was hoping for perfect lighting to capture an interesting shot. I don’t think I was given that opportunity anyway.

Tung Ah Village

Tung Ah Village upclose

Tung Ah Village looks quite interesting. The houses there are old, no doubt, but it has a long jetty and it is around this area when the vegetations start to change. There are no longer tree shelter on the path and the plants look more like the ones you see near the seaside. However we are still about 40m above sea level at this stage but in the lighter tree cover, there are huge boulders made of reddish colored rocks.

Not too easy to see, but its a speed boat turning back to retrieve a fallen water skier

From here the forests give way to thick undergrowth that’s more representative of a coastal ecosystem

To Tei Wan, with the storms closing in…

It is somewhere near Ngan Hang Village when the trail turns from the familiar concrete into compacted earth and starts to go downhill. This continues all the way to To Tei Wan beach, I saw a sign that says the proper name for it is Deity Beach. This looks like where most of the watersports freaks take off. I counted sailing, water skiing and so on. My interest is somewhere else. It is almost 5pm right now, having spent about 4 hours to get form Tai Tam Tuk Reservoir to where I am. The path starts to climb from here up to Shek O road. The climb is tough but concrete stairs make it easy to climb in all weather. I’m tired because I think I’ve seen and climbed too many hills lately. Right along the road is the bus stop for Bus number 9 that will take you all the way back to Shau Kei Wan, or if you prefer, to Shek O. I checked my watch and there is no way I could make it on to Dragon’s back and to Big Wave Bay before night fall. So time to call it quits for now, and headed over to Shek O. The only way to get there is by bus since the road is narrow and you’d be nuts to be walking with bus traveling FAST on it.

I will miss Cape D’Aguilar this time, but I will be back on this one…

Made it to Shek O with an hour and half of light left for the evening according to my GPS sunset computation. Bus 9 stops right in the middle of Shek O town, and a short uphill walk brings you to Shek O Headland where plenty of cliffs await. The obvious thing when you get here for the first time is that this a choice spots for locals to shoot their wedding photos. I can’t recall how many brides and bridemaids I’ve seen during my walk here. More of them than groom for sure. At the headland on the way to Tai Tau Chau, I’ve tried to set up my tripod and take pictures of the waves crashing onto the rocks, but it is impossible as this place is filled with girl modeling for photographers. There is one corner where there were at least ten men with SLR cameras and funny flash diffusers shooting a swim suit model lying on the rocks. It must hurt.

Downtown Shek O

Village life in Shek O

Tai Tau Chau from Shek O Headlands

Rock patterns at the ocean end of Tai Tau Chau

Storms closing in, I took at least 20 pictures here, having brought a tripod but forgetting my RRS L-bracket of all things… This is a few second exposure to create the silky smooth waves.

Tai Tau Chau is an easy walk, and it is possible to walk all the way to the end. The trick here is that the farther you go towards the end, you get less photographers. I guess models don’t like hiking. Right at the end is some water station of some sort, but there is a rocky platform large enough if you are willing to jump the railing. There is enough space here to picnic with the waves crashing below you. The air here is filled with salt water mist, so keep your expensive equipment in the bag. It was close to 6pm when I got here, and it is time to have a last break before I make my way back to Shau Kei Wan on bus 9 to mark the end of Part 4.

Moving Time: 2hrs 50mins
Stopping Time: 3hrs 12mins
Odometer: 14.95km
Moving Average Speed: 5.3km
Total Ascent: 367m
Max Elevation: 44m

Stormy seas from Tai Tau Chau

Storm closing in on Stanley

Next and last part: Go to Part 5…

Another view of the Hollywood-esque sign in downtown Keelung

27 June 2009

This is my second trip to Keelung. The first trip is here. So no long introductory pleasantries in this post. Tapping this out on my E71 as I go along, and with my fat fingers, the less I type the better it would be. Now that I’ve made my apologies, I’ll let my laziness take it from here. Will make the pictures do all the talking.

This weekend the port is devoid of any large ships, unlike the first time I was here

And before I start a post about Taiwan, why not start with a photo of the bikes!

By train from Taipei central train station. 43NTD by TRA train. The tickets can be bought at any of the TRA counters, but may be a lot quicker to go to the basement next to the entrance gate to the trains and buy the ticker at the vending machine there. First mistake of the day for me. First train starts just before 6 am. I took the 9:34am train. Quite obviously I woke up later than planned.

The weather forecast is wrong today. Was expecting thunderstorms but got greeted with a years supply of sunlight in a day. Its hot as hell and I have a large umbrella from the hotel with me. Not a day I feel like spending wholy outdoors out of the shade! Taking bus 301 to the Dutch City (Taibaizhuang). Fare seems to be 15NTD. The bus is a small mini bus with blaring local radio in Taiwanese. Loud advertising, and loud old 80s style songs.

The first route I took was a deadend, but nice photo opportunities, so it was not a waste

Bus 301 is driven by a mute thug. Dropped me off at the last stop that looks like nothing much. A few exploratory walk, and it looks like the right direction is towards the sea and on the left is a little road up the hill. According to the map, this road leads either to the Baimiwong fort or a Power Station on the top of the hill. Temperature is soaring today, sunny by far.

Baimiwong Fort parking lot; who knows where those planes came from

View of the Port of Keelung from the fort

An arty photo of tourists on a hot day above the remains of the fort's guns

Baimiwong Fort with power station smoke stacks in the background

A better view of the power station

Got up to the top of the hill and Baimiwong fort is up here. The power station is at sea level and doesn’t look as though there is a path to go down there. Nothing special about this fort, 3 big guns that are no longer there, and a hill top lookout that requires some extra stairs climbing. As with most places in Taipei, there is a couple here for a wedding photoshoot. I wander for a while, took a picture or two with the 2 cameras I have with me and then its time to go back where I came from.

Roadside construction crew on the long walk back to Keelung Port

Port cranes up close

At one of the temple I stumbled across on the way...

... you will always find appetizing street food anywhere in Taiwan

Was hoping to go westwards but there are no road other than a highway which I probably can’t walk on. So the only way is to walk back towards Keelung and see if there are anything interesting along the way. So far this place is quiet. Very very quiet.

Fishing Village at Siehe Road

With a popular looking swimming spot

But what I'm interested in is the port itself

Boats are repaired here in the village, I don't think they manufacture the boat here, as the all look in the state of repair.

Now this is funny, its a boat equivalent to tail whipping. What's funny is that it looks deliberately aimed at the anglers and most of them had to raise their rods in response.

And in the background, notice the temple dedicated to fishermen?

This Taiwanese version of the Pinyin is confusing at best. Went on Zhonghua Rd (also labelled Jhonghua here) after emerging from the Zhongshan tunnel and went north west wards towards Waimushan. There are quite a number of cyclists here and they mainly ride mountain or touring bikes with straight bars but the trend now seems to be big bikes with small wheels. Looks to me like riding mules. Not my cup of tea. So I continue the walk and turned into Siehe Rd onto the coast. In front of 2 big fuel tanks there’s a small fishing village with a temple, roughly the typical taiwanese village. There is a little area for swimming as well. Plenty of weekenders swimming. After a while shooting fishing boats it started to rain and the sky is starting to turn dark and I set -3 stops on my M2′s sunny f16 setting.

A local motorcycle attempts to talk to a mural fish

Old and gritty, I just love pictures like these about Taiwan

On the outskirts of Keelung City

A few minutes rest (must have walked a few km in the hot sun) its time to walk back to Keelung. The shops are mainly closed this saturday except for the occasional beetlenut shop with bright neon lights and motorcycle repair shops.

Walked back to the main train station at 1645hrs and its time for a little ice mocha and catch up with a little blog writing at Starbucks.

End of train tracks in Keelung, this is the line that leads back to Taipei

View of Keelung Harbour at the center of the city

Because next would be a night out at the night market at Dianji Temple!! And so the warm rain of an almost tropical island started dripping, and now I’m glad I brought an umbrella with me! First off an oyster omellette (60NTD) egg on top, small oyster and lettuce inside and gelatinous paste at the bottom and topped with sweet sauce and something that looks like chilli but tastes like sweet red sauce.

Next up: starchy rice with mushrooms and a bowl of pork and viscous soup (70NTD). I think its enough, not going to stuff myself solid tonight.

Food!

And more food

On the way back to the train station, realised I have sun burn on my shoulder and sandal strap marks on my feet. Body all sticky from the sweat and its time to take a 30 min nap in the train and go back to Taipei main train station. Time check 1826hrs, a good 8 hrs out walking and exploring Keelung. Fine fine hiking day today, though a little hot, next trip will require me to cycle to cover longer distances.

Got to go back to Taipei now on my yacht... ciao!

*End of post*

Keelung Harbour

Wikipedia opens the article for Keelung as a major port city situated in the northeastern part of Taiwan. Fine. That is not the reason I wanted to check out the town during the idle weekend in Taipei, but more because the town has nice rocky coastlines and most importantly food. More on that later. Being close enough from Taipei, it doesn’t require a long commute to get there, and from what I can see it looks like a different world altogether from the capital city. Do-able in a day, nice coastlines, and food. That seals it for me!

This is why I'm here...

... And this.

All great leap starts with a small step. Finding how to get to Keelung from Neihu is not that difficult. Its not fair, I know, but that starts by asking a secretary in the local office. After a few minutes the email came in and it is simple enough. Although it is possible to catch a train, the easiest solution would be to go over to the bus stop on the main road close to Miramar Neihu (look for the out of place giant ferris wheel) and catch a “Capital Star” bus (http://www.capital-bus.com.tw/). And if you have seen the buses in Taiwan, they are usually nice buses with ultra tacky colours, graphic designs and an interior only a pimp could love. Hope I don’t get that in the golden star!

Started off the day early, 6am and having soya milk and buns at a popular 24 hour local corner shop near Miramar. It is one of those place I never remember the name, nor do I care, but I can tell where it is on the map. For Taiwanese out there, maybe you know where it is when I tell you a couple years back some gangster got gunned down. Tofu? Get it?

Inside the Capital Star Keelung express

So back to the point. Capital star bus that goes to Keelung is easy enough to find. It stops at the first bus stop below the new elevated metro line just in front of the Miramar. Price to get all the way to the end at Keelung train station would be 41 NTD. That is also sometimes called “dirt cheap”. The frequency for this bus is frequent enough. Let’s say it seems to come often enough not to worry at all. This is a slightly better version of a public bus, not the tacky pimp-mobile. LEDs, LCDs, it has all the 3 letter acronyms!

Pilot boats at Keelung harbour

Keelung. Just like Hollywood!

Fast forward, the trip is basically leaving Taipei, go through a small mountain range, and end up in Keelung. Quick enough to be uneventful and unworthy of any transit photographs. The final stop is at the train station. And since it is still early in the morning, and a Starbucks is in sight, nothing better than a hot cup of coffee while waiting for the darn rain to stop. And the forecast today is not that great. Drizzle at best all day long. Armed with a hotel umbrella, it doesn’t matter. And so before I move on, the arsenal today is a move-light pack filled with a Ricoh GRD (all colour photos are coming from this little wonder) and a Leica M6 with a Leica 50mm f1.4 Summilux ASPH loaded with ERA 100 film. Shall I say the Summilux is the best 50mm out there? Maybe I should. But everyone already knows.

When you see plenty of yellow taxis like these, you know you're in Taiwan.

After the morning coffee, and a little finger to the weather which continues to drizzle, its time to walk around the train station looking for bus to get to the coast. There is a tourist center here that speaks reasonable english and helpful people manning the place. What would you expect from a tourist center, I mean. The plan was to see the rock formations at Heping island, but was told its closed. No reasons, maybe too early in the morning, or maybe because of the weather.

Location of bus stop, Start of today’s walking trip.

Nothing stops me, not the rain, not the closure of the original destination. Picked a route and jumped onto a local bus and before long got off at a stop which is not too far from the town, but still about 10km away. Far enough to walk back along the coast, which will be the adventure for the day.

Concrete breakwater

And now why would someone want to construct something in the sea?

The bus dropped us in the middle of what looked like nowhere, and it is time to track back. There are breakwaters everywhere and anglers fishing away in the stormy seas. The rain continues and the wind whips up large waves in the sea. Perfect time to catch a photo or two of the tempestuous seas while walking along highway 2 (Beining Rd) towards Keelung. I had my google maps on my E71 active at all time and it was possible to see that in front of me is a peninsular called coastal park called Ba Dou Zi. I’m sure it has an English name but I will follow whatever is on the map.

Fishing boats

Fishing boats...

... and more.

On there way there, I would pass a safe harbour filled with fishing boats. The gmap shows the location. The only thing strange about these fishing boats are the numerous lamps that seems to line the wires above the boat. Now, common sense would tell me that this would be useful for nighttime fishing for some marine creature that loves light. I’ve seen fishing documentaries on Discovery and I’m sure this is not for the Alaskan crabs! Doesn’t matter. Looks strange, so deserves a picture or two. There are some sailors hanging around the deck of some of the boats, and they are quite clearly Indonesians, given away by the language they speak.

Coastal park facilities

... just no one here...

... except for an anonymous someone that popped into my pictures once in a while (sorry bui!)

Am I the only one to see the sign asking us to just point at the bin?

And so on to the park. There are not that many people in this weather, just me and a colleague. Cliffs are all around us and after a while we realised it is not possible to walk around the to the other side of the peninsular and we had to turn around. But enough photos showing the strange what-nots at this peninsular.

Fish market at the seafood center

And of course, it is possible to go cheap and eat al-fresco

Time now to walk back to Keelung along the coast. The bus took a nice 30 minutes including all stops to get to where we got off, and it will take almost the whole day to walk back to the town. And so we continue back on highway 2 stopping over for lunch in a small local eatery, nothing much to remember. And before long, and by that I mean a few kilometers, stumbled upon a large seafood food. GPS locations are stored in my Nokia E71. This look like the type of place where you select your live fish and they cook for you in the restaurant nearby. The only issue is there are a lot of the same restaurants lining the place so when you have plenty, you have annoying touts. Since we had lunch before we got here, no food for us here. It is one of those place that you know is built for the tourist, bus loads of them.

One of the curios along the way: a portable temple.

One of the many workshops that repair lamps and stuffs used on the fleet of fishing boats.

Going off for the long walk back to Keelung we passed a university, and a generally sleepy town. It was a nice walk, on a rainy day. Along the way there were ancient French cemeteries and relics from the past, but I won’t go on and describe them all, I’m sure a search on the internet on Keelung would reveal more than what I will type here. That’s beside the point anyway. And before long, containers were in sight, signalling that the port is close. From the satellite photos I could see that there is a container port just before hitting the harbour proper. The harbour is at the end of an inlet, which probably how the port of Keelung is protected from the typhoons and storms.

Keelung container port

At the container port, two large ships were visible. First was a large submarine cable-laying ship with a Norwegian name, which I cannot now recall. It’s not that difficult to tell its purpose, the rear of the giant ship has 2 strange looking channel where the cables exit. The second ship is a large, huge, no… giant colossal passenger liner. Could see clearly it’s called the Diamond Princess.

Street in Keelung with the Diamond Princess in the distance

Diamond Princess: Doors closing portside

Steaming away into the distance

A quick on site googling tells me that it is one of the largest passenger ship around, owned by P&O liner. So, this is what people on cruises do. They land in foreign land, then they dressed up as tourists and go ransack the whole town. There is a little micro economy, nay, micro town set up around the ship landing site just to cater to their needs. So we stood there admiring the ship from outside, and just at the right time the door started to close, quite impressive really. And before long it was pushed sideways, and it was quite obvious there are side propulsion system on the ship. The impressive thing about this ship is the speed it was able to move. After getting pushed starboard side, it started disappearing away from sight. We stood there in awe. Like a local seeing a giant ship move for the first time, which is the case for me. It’s one of those moments, like seeing a plane take off and wondering how something that big was able to take off.

Miaokou Night Market

Food...

More food....

And yet more food...

And the grand finale.

Check on the watch, and its close to 6pm and that can only mean one thing. Taiwan, famous for one thing, and that’s food and no where better to try it than the night market. Obviously this was researched well before we were in Keelung, and Miaokou Night Market is where we wanted to go for dinner. The good thing about walking 10km is to be able to eat as much as we wanted without worrying about the side effects. The best way we thought to do this would be to try one small dish in every store. At the end of the night we stopped in at least 5 stalls, all different dishes. Well satisfied. And with the full stomach, it was time to take a short walk back to the train station, and taking a train back to Taipei, leaving the station at around 8pm.

This trip was well worth the day. Now that we are a little more ambitious, the next trip will involve more of the coast. An idea in my mind involves biking the coasts. But hopefully next time the weather would be a lot better than this weekend!

Cycling the coast just like this, but with a Colnago road bike.

*end of post*