the shady side: stake out at hi-life

The next scooter-less trip Miss Canada and I took was to ALISHAN NATIONAL PARK, which hosts Taiwan’s highest mountain peaks. After working a full day Friday, we took a night bus down to the park, arriving to minus degree temperatures at around 2am. After about an hour of wandering through the dark and abandoned streets of the Alishan Forest Recreation Area, searching at first for a Catholic Hostel, then for anything, we realised not a single accommodation option was open - let alone available.

We decided to STAKE OUT AT HI-LIFE, a convenience store along the lines of 7-11. We settled in with a couple of beers, and some kindly donated fish-ball-soup take-away delights, which are great for vegetarians like Miss Canada. A couple more beers and it was 5am, and time to take the sunrise train. We stood on a mountain peak over deep gorges, as whirls of mist and powder-pink clouds, turned shades of gold and burnt orange beneath us. We stood on that mountain peak with five-hundred other tourists wearing 3D heart-shaped glasses, and a sunrise commentator with a megaphone, who gave a thirty-five minute monologue.

After the sun was well and blaring in the sky, and the temperature had risen to six degrees, our sleep-deprived desperation was starting to dominate. After another hike around ‘no accommodation village,’ we arrived to the Tourist Information Centre. Helpful as ever, they informed us all the accommodation options were booked, but if we wanted to pay 500nt an hour (about $20) we could check in for a few hours at the love hotel – they always had openings. By this time we were bleary-eyed, ready to cry, and beyond all point of caring - so when they offered to let us sleep in the Information Centre is seemed an un-divined luxury. We curled up under tablecloths on the floor, in every item of clothing we owned, and shivered for the next two hours.

Feeling there had to be a better option we made plans to travel to another village, but not before a hefty three hour mountain hike with our luggage. It was invigorating and surreal, and I somehow managed to obtain a beautiful batik of a flute-playing woman with two cranes. After a two hour nap on the train, and a fifteen hour siesta in a real Catholic hostel (which took us through Sunday morning mass), we were back!

Let me reiterate at this point that Lonely Planet Taiwan should be burnt along with other texts of vile mind and raging propaganda. This time it claimed: for many people, taking the train up to Alishan is the peak experience of their entire trip. Oh, was that just a clever pun on words? A great literary achievement there guys. They do however accurately claim it is: one of the only three remaining steep-alpine trains in the world … with a unique system of switchbacks allowing it to traverse slopes ordinarily too steep for trains.

The following is my appendage for Lonely Planet. Don’t forget, you will only be able to see out the window of the Alishan Forest Train if you manage to secure one of the twelve existing seats. The effort the train needs to navigate the steep track ensures every carriage (with its locked windows) fills with stench of diesel. Paired with the see-saw curves, the diesel scented air-freshener makes a lot of people high, then nauseous, and finally vomit. Sometimes they make it to the bathroom, which also stinks of warm shit, and you will probably have to sit by it, because you are an ignoramus to the Taiwanese custom of pushing, and will definitely not have one of the twelve seats.

One hour into the proposed three hour train ride, we found ourselves on the platform of a tiny station in the middle of the forest – oh, fresh mountain air! In these special travellers’ moments, I can assure you hitch-hiking is perfectly safe, and a far more sanitary option!