I’ll admit it up front: I’ve misled you. This post is not just about Sandiaoling, but also about my weekend overall. I’ve settled into a routine of writing recaps every-other week, so I don’t have much to share from last week. However, I did have a super fun weekend, which I thought I should record here.
Friday
My weekend started with a busy Friday morning. I got up early to study for an exam in the afternoon, which I thought went poorly but actually went better than my first exam. Woohoo! After my exam, I was totally beat and went home to relax for about an hour before heading out to meet my Chinese class for dinner and karaoke. We ate hot pot for our post-exam meal, which some will know is not my favorite thing in the world. I never trust myself to cook the meat all the way through, so hot pot makes me very nervous. However, I had lots of fun with my classmates, and the vegetables they gave us to boil were delicious. I ate so many things I couldn’t identify (I’ve had positive experiences with this in the past… still thinking about that eel from Beijing).
After hot pot, we walked over to the bar where one of my classmates works to sing some karaoke. On the way, two of my classmates were debating whether I look more like Keira Knightley or Bella from Twilight, and they decided on Bella because of my background (from Arizona, loves reading). Personally, I don’t think I resemble either, but I’ve definitely gotten Bella before. Anyway! When we got to the bar, we were ushered into a private room where we ordered drinks and then started singing. Unlike last semester, we did not try to translate English songs into Mandarin. That’s part 38741 of me not missing the Middlebury language pledge!
I brought my digital camera, which we had a lot of fun playing around with. At the end of the night, I took the subway home and actually ran into six CET classmates who were headed to a club. They were polite enough to invite me, which I declined, but it was fun to run into them in a part of Taipei I don’t frequent.
Saturday
On Saturday, I took a day trip to a city called Sandiaoling with two of my roommates, Anika and Marlea. We started by taking a 2-hour train out of Taipei, and as soon as we disembarked, we immediately pulled out our umbrellas, which we used every second of the day from that moment on. It was a super rainy day, but I think that made the sights even more beautiful. I mean, look at the view we were greeted by right outside of the train station:
From the train station, we poked around until we came across the city center, which is where the trailhead was. Our purpose in Sandiaoling was to hike to three different waterfalls along a connected trail, so we started by finding that trail, which was hidden among some buildings. It always blows my mind how blended urban and natural areas are here.
Once we found what we thought was the trailhead, we started hiking up a series of about 500 stairs leading us to the actual trailhead. (So far, Taiwan is not beating the allegations about not having real hikes and instead just having staircases in the forest.) From there, our hike was actually pretty simple. We were totally in awe of our surroundings and stopped frequently to take photos. Although the pictures can’t possibly do it justice, I think you should see for yourself.
Digital Camera Photos
The hike up to the three waterfalls was uncomplicated, and we reached the last one within about three hours. I had found a blog that suggested continuing hiking beyond the end of the waterfall trail to a path that would eventually lead to the next city, Dahua, so we chose to do that. Word to the wise: do not believe blogs. (I say this confidently as the author of a sort-of blog.) The biggest mistake I’ve made in Taiwan so far was believing the dang blog that said it would be easy to continue to Dahua!
Long story short, the path was completely unmarked, it only passed through civilization once (where we asked two people for directions and still went the wrong way), and we ended up back-tracking three times. Additionally, the last section of the hike to Dahua was all staircases, and it was raining so hard that it was essentially a death trap. Within two staircases, I had fallen twice (and bruised my entire back, for the record) and Anika had fallen once, so we resorted to sliding down the stairs on our butts. That is not a joke – we literally scooted down stairs for 45 minutes. If the hike itself was about three hours, the walk/hike/willful endangerment to Dahua was at least four hours. By the time we got to the train station, we were totally soaked, shocked that we had made it out of the forest at all, and literally ran to catch the last train of the day. We were so muddy that the sea of other passengers parted so that no one would have to touch us. What an experience!
I’m not going to lie, this was the best day of my study abroad experience so far. Being with roommates who stayed cheerful throughout the journey helped a lot, and the natural beauty was unreal. I rounded out the night by hopping in the shower before heading to a night market with a few friends (where I most notably tried green bean juice – I’d give it three out of ten stars) and then finally collapsing into bed for the best sleep of my life.
Sandiaoling Excursion Recap:
Highlight: The waterfalls!! Honorable mention to a night on the town with my Chinese class.
Lowlight: Getting lost and fearing we were doomed to become forest dwellers.
That’s all for now! See you next time. 🙂
很想你们，
婉婷
