國際志工第七週來台心得

My second last weekend in Taiwan was spent in Taipei. I followed a teacher back to her home in Taipei by bus on Friday. By the time we reached Zhongshan, Taipei, it was already late at night and so we just rested at her house. The next morning, I woke up, had breakfast prepared by the teacher and left the house at 7:30 a.m., taking a bus to Taipei Main Station. At the station, we waited for about half an hour for the MRT train to head to Shifen - our first stop on the Pingxi Line. We reached around 10:00 a.m. which was rather early as there were not many people around. The stalls near the MRT station at Shifen were mostly selling things related to lanterns. I was told that this is because Shifen and Pingxi is known for burning lanterns where one writes their wish on the lantern and then burn the lantern to let it fly up into the sky. The higher the lantern flies, the higher the chance of the wish being fulfilled or come true. We walked along the street and then took around half an hour walk under the hot sun before reaching the famous Shifen Waterfall. I had to pay $80 to enter but it was worth it. That was the first natural waterfall I've seen in my life. It was beautiful watching how something as simple as water could create such an amazing sight. After that, we took the MRT to Pingxi to have lunch - sausage, steamed bun (pao) and glutinous rice balls (tang yuen). We then walked to the next stop which is only 15 minutes away because waiting for the MRT trains takes a long time as they usually reach every one hour. We reached Jingtung to have a look at one of the oldest train stations. Also, this place has lots of bamboo sticks with wishes written on them hanging on various spots throughout the whole area. Afterwards, we went to Keelung to see the famous rubber duck. Taiwan had made a few large rubber ducks that float on the water with the intention to attract more tourists into Taiwan. This idea originated from a Western artist who then sells the idea to other countries. We then had dinner at Miaokou Night Market also in Keelung before taking the bus back to her house in Zhongshan. On Sunday, after getting all washed up, both of us took a bus at the Taipei Main Station to head to Yangmingshan. We strolled around the mountain, also looking at the Flower Clock and Datun Waterfall. After that, we took the shuttle bus further up to Qingtiangang. The ride up was extremely bumpy with the sharp turns only making it worse for those standing up holding the handrails and rubber straps inside the bus. That made the trip felt longer than one hour but finally we reached and started walking the circular trail. We only wanted to have a look at the wide grassland filled with cows initially. However, we ended up walking the whole circular trail because by the time we realise that, we were halfway through and so there was not much of a point in turning back. I had to brace myself to walk up and down the slippery rocks on the ground and my Vans shoes only made it worse. It was like Dulishan all over again. I almost slipped a few times which made me really afraid that I would actually slip. I had to walk really slow and with extreme caution that it was a little torturing and tiring. The fact that it was drizzling made the floor even more slippery. I was really glad when we had finally reached the end of the trail, which was the point where we started. After all that, we took another shuttle bus and went through the bumpy ride again - a shorter one this time - down to Shilin. We had steamboat for lunch in one of the restaurants nearby before going to the famous National Palace Museum to look at the collection of Asian art such as bronze, artifacts, jades and lacquerware. It is really big - there were three floors and each floor is full of these collections. We did not have time to look at all the exhibitions even though we were in there for three hours. Later on, we went back to her house, packed up, had dinner and went back to Dalin.