Day 19 - Inner Doubts, A Mazu Temple Festival And Sightseeing Around Lukang, The Long Walk South In Taiwan

 

Day 19 - Inner Doubts, A Mazu Temple Festival And Sightseeing Around Lukang, The Long Walk South In Taiwan 

We stayed in a motel last night, which does not serve breakfast.

The night before, we bought some bread, avocado and cucumbers, to eat for breakfast with some tea.

Then we caught the bus back to Lukang, where we had stopped walking yesterday.

We had booked two nights’ stay in Lukang, one for seeing the sights of the city and the second day to walk forwards towards our next destination.

Luckily, we arrived in Lukang on the weekend, when everything was open and we could spend the day enjoying the sights in a lively environment.

We prepared for a hot and sunny day.  

Now that the typhoon was behind us, the temperatures rose back to the mid 90’s and the days became extremely hot.

We asked our guesthouse for an early check in, or at least to be able to drop off our backpacks at noon, so we could walk the narrow streets of the old city unencumbered by our bulky backpacks.

They agreed.

We arrived in Lukang still too early for check in, so we went to the nearby Starbucks to have tea and pass the time in an air conditioned cafe.  

The Starbucks was packed with people, but we were able to get comfortable seats.

Jules went to place our tea order, and came back with a friendly cyclist named Steven.

Jules said that Steven approached him to chat about what we were doing in Taiwan, since there are so few western tourists in this part of the island.  

He joined us at our table, and we had a lovely long conversation about cycling, long distance walking and other many shared experiences we had in common.

Then we talked about the importance of looking for the eternal meaning to the question of Life, instead of just enjoying the temporary pleasures of life.  

For those who don’t know that there is more to life than just living and breathing, eating and sleeping, making love, raising children and devotion to a family, life passes by too quickly and the world becomes sad and disappointing, as they become bent with age.

Instead of seeking love, money and happiness, we need to discover our true Nature and Real Powers, and learn about our Eternal Nature.

Steven was fun to talk to, because his English was excellent and I didn’t need to simplify my speech in order to make myself understood by non English speakers.

He had worked for a company that was manufacturing Apple iPhones and iPads, and now he was working for a startup company that makes an application to fit into cars to turn them into smart cars.

After he left to cycle back to Taichung to eat lunch with his wife, we walked over to our guesthouse to drop off our backpacks.

We were delighted to see that the guesthouse was modern and tastefully designed.

Our room was spacious and comfortable and with some tech touches.

The owner also left us a gift of local snacks that Lukang was famous for, like “beef tongue pastry”, which is vegetarian, and has nothing to do with beef, except for the shape of the pastry.

We walked over to the old town, which was lively and full of visiting people. 

There were many stalls offering local street food, homemade drinks made from Karambola Starfruit or from the citrus called “Buddha’s Fingers”.

We bought a homemade candy made from Buddha Fingers mixed with star anise, Jujubes, dates and kumquats.

Lukang is one of the oldest and most traditional towns in Taiwan, and the first Historic Preservation Area in Taiwan. 

The city alone has over 200 temples, and has done well maintaining the original architectures of these buildings and streets.

There were many shops selling rice based traditional candy, wood carvings and all kinds of souvenirs.

Vendors with bicycle stands as shops sold pineapple smoothies and ice teas.

A few atmospheric tea houses offered a traditional roasted wheat flour tea. It’s called a “tea”, but it’s actually more like a drinkable toasted porridge dessert. Traditionally eaten hot, this 

classic Taiwanese drink blends  roasted rice and black sesame seeds with slowly roasted wheat flour into a hardy tea to nourish the hard working farmers in the winter.

The town has beautiful temples, but the most stunning one is the Lukang Tianhou Temple, also known as the Lukang Mazu Temple.

It is dedicated to the Goddess Mazu, the Goddess of the Sea and Patron Deity of fishermen, sailors and all occupations related to the sea and the ocean.

We made a donation and got fake money with gold leaf to burn as an offering, along with seven incense sticks each, to light in the big incense burner.

We said a prayer for Shirley, Jules’s mother who passed away twenty years ago on this day, at the age of 85.

We also said a prayer for my mother, who is very much alive but has been having some health issues recently.

Suddenly we heard drums and gongs and bells and a large procession of people came carrying Mazu on a palanquin.

There were guys dressed in cow outfits, and other guys who were “beating” them into submission with wooden sticks.

There were dances and all kinds of ceremonial movements.

It was fantastic, and both of us felt that this was one of our best sightseeing days on this pilgrimage.  

Afterwards, we continued our walk through the old narrow streets and sat down to eat lunch in an old house that had been turned into a cafe.

After lunch, we walked over to a museum, situated inside the mansion of what used to be the wealthiest family in Taiwan, built in the 18th century.

It was a beautiful mansion, and on display, we saw traditional clothing and jewelry, crowns, hats, shoes, and arts and crafts.  

It was very enjoyable to see the airy rooms and the old red bed chambers. (Red is considered an imperial color).  

It was possible to get a much better idea of how people lived from day to day, centuries ago.  

The streets around the temple are full of vendors making fresh food.  This area is very well known for its street food.  

The choices were overwhelming, but we finally chose to try a flat bread made with scallions and cheese.

We saw how they made it by folding layers of scallions and dough, and it was delicious.

We then returned to our room to take much needed showers and to gather all our clothes to do our laundry.  

At night the streets were much quieter, as the day’s tour buses had  left the city.

The laundromat had one of those modern machines that does both washing and drying without needing to change the machine, so we had some time to walk around the area, maybe finding something to eat for dinner.

The vegan restaurants in this town all close early, and all the places we passed did not have one vegetarian dish on the menu.

We ended up eating at a convenience store, boiled corn and a sweet potato for Jules, and soy sauce cooked daikon radish and cooked bamboo shoots for me.

For dessert, we each ate a banana.

The food was perfectly good and even tasty, but I felt a little sad.

It seems to me that we were making a pilgrimage from one convenience store to the next, from one Starbucks to the next.

Yes, we did get to see a fabulous festival today, and we do meet kind people every day…

We have gotten some inner insights and occasionally even prophetic dreams, but overall the walk is so hot and steamy and difficult, and instead of the great vegan gourmet food that we were able to get in Taipei, we have to eat a potato or a rice ball or a dumpling…

Only yesterday, when we got ready to leave yet another convenience store that we were resting at, we put on our backpacks and hats, and I was aware of the pitying eyes of a young man who was sitting next to us.

He got into his shiny black Lexus and turned on the air conditioning.

He looked at us as if we were poor foreigners, who can only afford to travel on foot.

I saw a mixture of pity and bafflement in his eyes, as he viewed us as living rough, yet why would poor people with no money travel overseas?...

I felt a surge of arrogance rise inside me like an ugly serpent.

I thought of our new luxury vehicle that cost double his shiny Lexus, that is safely parked in our garage in our multi million dollars house while we walk in the extreme heat.

I thought of the conversation that we had with the nice cyclist Steven that we had met earlier today.

He mentioned that he has an aluminum high-end bicycle, because the cost of a Titanium frame bicycle (that Jules has at home), and of a carbon-fiber bicycle, (that I have at home) are simply too high in Taiwan.

I admitted that both our bicycles, cost today the price of a luxury car.

But here we are now, carrying all of our possessions in backpacks, just another change of clothes and minimum toiletries, sleeping in whatever we can find along the route.

Sometimes it is an ugly motel, sometimes a nice guesthouse.

The prices are not cheap, and it is never as nice as Bali or Bangkok, and the food barely sustains us, and I desperately crave the flavors of Indonesia and Thailand, and to drink a tall glass of fresh fruit juice….

What is the use of having money if you live like a walking wandering pilgrim?

Day after day walking in the intense heat, grateful for every cold drink, for an air conditioned convenience store….

But what are my options?

Forgo this stage of initiation into mastery?

And become like many aging mortals, using the wealth they accumulated in life in order to make their lives easier and more comfortable, only to find out that their bodies no longer feel comfortable in any position and their minds fail them because they haven’t developed the ability to bring their bodies under the control of their Will and Mind?….

Today I have no answers…. Only more questions….

With love and questions,

Tali

Today’s Stats:

Steps - 12,534

Daily Distance -  8 km.  

Total Distance To Date - 295 km