bitan

Did something today I've been meaning to do for years: Hiking up the trail in Bitan. Poor Reiner ;-) We set out for Bitan after "breakfast" (around 2.30), crossed the bridge and basically kept on walking. And suddenly found ourselves in one of the weirdest places ever. Must have been some sort of amusement park or something. All that was left were some overgrown plastic cars, a concrete platform in the middle of nowhere, broken marble stairs and lots of rubble. Got to make a post on Forumosa, somebody there surely knows what this used to be, maybe Sandman?
Amazingly enough, it was Reiner's suggestion to keep on walking ;-) We did and had the chance to enjoy some of the Taipei wildlife: suddenly 5 or 6 squirrels were chasing each other and throwing nuts at us. We watched them for a while and then went on to the "Scenic flat-top" from where we had a nice view all over Hsintien and the south-east of Taipei including barely visible 101. As we were already on the top, we took the chance to go on even though the mention of a bus station evoked memories of that hike I did with Michele in summer and where we ended up walking for ages in the scorching sun until a nice elder Taiwanese couple took pity on us and brought us to the next bus stop. And were back at the Bitan bridge much faster than we'd expected. Tried to take some pictures of all my favorite food-stall food (fish balls, deep-fried vegetables, quail eggs) before it got too dark and then managed to cross out the next thing on my shopping list: I bought 6 bags of dried fish/shrimps/squid for Tuesday and myself to snack on at the "Local Taiwanese produce" exhibition in front of Hsintien MRT :))) (first thing I crossed out on my shopping list were the dangly cell phone thingies on the Jade Market yesterday).
On the way home, we bumped into a German guy I know, and he went: “Are you STILL here or again?”:-)))