Day 16 - Walking Through The City Of Taichung, Mostly Closed Down For An Approaching Typhoon, The Long Walk South In Taiwan
Day 16 - Walking Through The City Of Taichung, Mostly Closed Down For An Approaching Typhoon, The Long Walk South In Taiwan
We booked three nights in the city of Taichung, in order to get ahead on our walk without needing backpacks, and to visit the sites in this area.
Some of the cities and villages that we are walking through, we will probably never see again, and it makes perfect sense to take extra time to visit the markets, cultural places, museums and other “points of life and beauty” in these areas.
We also wanted to walk about halfway to our next destination, in order to walk without our backpacks.
The approaching typhoon meant that lots of wind and rain were coming, and if we can walk without our backpacks, it would be so much easier for us to carry on.
We have two days to see the city and to walk farther.
Both days are scheduled to be rainy, but today the wind was scheduled to blow stronger and the temperature was forecast to be higher than tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be rainy, but pleasantly cooler and calmer, so we decided to see the sites today and walk tomorrow.
We left the hotel after breakfast and walked to the Cultural Heritage Park in the center of Taichung.
The Cultural park is said to showcase arts and crafts and works of contemporary architects and designers, all in a group of repurposed factory buildings.
The restoration of the buildings into an art center with nice grounds was beautiful.
But nothing was open.
A few homeless men with their bicycles sat around eating noodles.
Some of the galleries looked like they had not been open in months.
A sign showed an exhibition about scuba diving in Taiwan in a big hall, but it too was closed.
We walked around, a little baffled, thinking that we could go see the city museum of art, but I had the foresight to call ahead to see if they were open.
The woman who answered said that the museum was closed.
We finally realized what was happening.
The city was closed down for the approaching typhoon.
All government buildings, museums, banks, schools, and even private businesses like restaurants, shops and garages, were all closed.
It wasn’t the weekend, and the streets would not normally be so quiet and empty.
Businesses were closed and their metal shutters were down and locked.
We decided that we should walk the ten kilometers today instead, since everything was closed anyway.
We started walking from there.
It was indeed very windy and the streets we walked on were not the most scenic.
Most businesses were closed down and nobody was walking around.
In the few shops that were open, we could see the proprietors looking at the path of the typhoon on TV.
The wind was blowing sand in my face, and I regretted not bringing sunglasses to protect my eyes.
But after all, we hadn’t even planned to walk today.
We stopped at a convenience store to buy a bottle of water for our walk, and maybe a few things we could eat for lunch.
An hour later we walked by a Starbucks and sat to drink Matcha lattes with almond milk, and get out of the drizzling rain.
It wasn’t really raining much, just a light drizzle that didn’t even require us to open our umbrellas.
As we walk, people either stare at us or cheer us on.
There are not many foreigners in Taiwan these days, and none who walk on the non-touristy streets.
We are an oddity and people notice us everywhere.
The heavy rain never materialized and we finished our walk and returned to the city by train.
What took us two and a half hours on foot, was only 12 minutes by train.
The city was busier than in the morning, but still a lot of businesses like banks, offices and government agencies were closed down.
We went to a big mall that was all open and spent the afternoon in the busy Starbucks until dinner.
We ate dinner in the mall at a sushi restaurant and then returned to the hotel, collected our laundry and walked to a nearby laundromat to wash our clothes.
While our laundry was in the machine, we walked to the nearby night market to check it out.
Most vendors were open and there were a fair amount of people walking around.
It was a food night market, so there were no stalls of arts and crafts.
The food choices were in great abundance:
A lot of grilled skewers of innards and meat, along with fried tofu and vegetables; fried sweet potato balls; hot pots, sweets, ice tea drinks and desserts.
We didn’t get anything because we were too full from dinner.
But to be honest, nothing really appealed to me besides the very long and narrow fresh cucumbers that looked like coiled snakes.
They looked so fresh and delicious.
We finished another day of walking despite the wind and the weather, and my neck and shoulders were feeling a bit better today from walking without my backpack.
As we shut the lights of the room at night and I laid my head on the pillows, I thought about how much we can accomplish in small steps.
Not just physically, by covering long distances in small steps, but in our search for Enlightenment.
Small increments of understanding of great Truths and small increments in dropping away our ignorance and adherence to illusions, can achieve a great distance towards embracing and embodying the Light.
With love,
Tali
Today’s Stats:
Steps - 22,089
Daily Distance - 15 km.
Total Distance To Date - 255 km
