Sunday, May 17, 2015

Hiking Tai Mo Shan

Couple weeks ago, I went hiking up Tai Mo Shan, the tallest peak in Hong Kong. The weather has steadily become warmer and warmer so we thought this would be the last chance before it gets unbearable. We met up in Tsuen Wan station where we got a lot of food and drinks. It took us a while to find the bus station, which was on some kind of expressway. There were a lot of people waiting at the bus stop so we abandoned this plan and hailed a taxi instead. The taxi took us up to the country park. It turns out that the road up to the peak from this side is pretty much all paved and you can taxi it all the way up. Instead we walked along the steep path. The view is really nice. You can see out to the Tai Po area as well as out to Yuen Long. You can also see Shenzhen in the distance.

 There is a nice area with benches at the end of the public road.

The public road ends after the bench area and the climb to the top begins. I think it's foggy up there all the time. At the very top, there is a large weather station that's the property of the HK Observatory. The fog was so dense that you can only see the sphere of the weather station once in a while. At some point, we were couldn't even see the people in front or behind us and only heard their voices.

The walk back down the mountain was really pleasant. I really enjoyed this part. The path was a gentle walk and the surroundings was really pretty. I think this part is one of my favorite hikes in HK so far.




We followed the path to Lead Mine Pass and then out to Tai Po. The part from Lead Mine Pass to Tai Po consisted of a lot of stairs down, which I didn't like as much. When we finally reached the road at the end of the stairs, we were pretty exhausted and it was clear that we were still some distance to the Tai Po Market area. We looked for the minibus but couldn't find where the stop was. Luckily, we found a green taxi and took that into town. 

Taiwan again

It's been a long time since I blogged. So here's a quick one about another Taiwan trip. I really like Taiwan and I was really excited to do this trip with my friend Lena. I was there for 7 days, which is the longest I've been in Taiwan continuously. We went around the entire island in 7 days! I flew into Taoyuan and met up with her in Taipei. 

Finally tried Din Tai Fung:

We headed north from Taipei to Jiufen, which is supposed to be the inspiration for Spirited Away. It turns out that most people go there to go hiking. We just walked around and ate a lot of food.

Then we head to the east coast to the Taroko Gorge. I insisted on staying inside the gorge so we managed to book a room at the Youth Activity Center. The place is not listed on the usual hotel booking websites and not many people know about it. But it's really a nice hotel. This is the view from our room.

After a good amount of hiking all over the gorge, we headed to the southern tip. We arrived in Kenting, to a really cute bed and breakfast near the Sail Rock. This part is a short distance away from the main town so it's less crowded but really difficult to get around by public transportation. The wind was strong and the waves made it too hard to swim but it was nice to just enjoy the sun.

Then we headed back up the west coast to Taichung. I didn't really get to spend much time in Taichung. We arrived on afternoon and I had to leave the first thing the next morning for the airport. It takes around 2.5 hours to get to the airport.

Not sure when my next trip to Taiwan will be!