Day 16

On Thursday, I planned to take the MRT all the way up the red line again to Guandu, located on the South China Sea like Tamsui and see a temple built for Matzu. I had read a few reviews saying it was not to be missed. As I left, Sonny reminded me that I needed to be at the lab "no later than 5:45" as the lab's year-end party (featuring karaoke!) was that night.

When I arrived at the Guandu MRT station, I saw, directly upon exiting, the strings of red lanterns I had read would lead me to the temple. They made navigation very easy.

Upon reaching the temple, I was very very very glad I came. It was amazing! The temple complex is huge, and set into a mountain. There are beautiful gardens and a park behind the temple on the mountain. The main temple is devoted to Matzu, a Taoist goddess of the sea, but like most other temples in Taiwan, there is also an alter to Guanyin. However, unlike most other temples, here that alter is reached by traveling through a tunnel which bores through the mountain and emerges to a whole new temple building carved into the other side of the mountain. I had so much fun wandering around the area, and with the new year approaching the temple was busy. I took way too many pictures, and with my time crunch I am just going to throw them all up here. Enjoy! I will try to edit this post in the future with more of the story of my day and details of each picture.

I talked for a short while with a woman who asked me where I was from and what I was doing here. She was very nice and spoke pretty good English. She strongly recommended I go see the Guandu Nature Park which is a very huge section of mangrove and freshwater wetlands and forest that was set aside for conservation purposes and is crisscrossed with trails and bridges. I still had four hours before I needed to be at the lab so I said sure. She explained that there was a shuttle bus that I could catch from right outside the temple, and that it ran every 15 minutes and I would be able to catch it back to the MRT from the nature park. I caught the bus now problem and headed off to the park. It was indeed very beautiful and I wandered around, but kept a close eye on the time as I did not want to be late.

Cool art made from leaves in the entrance hall of the information center

When it was two hours before I needed to be back I left the park and went to stand at the bus stop. I waited. and waited. and waited. When 20 minutes had passed I started to get worried. When 35 minutes passed I was freaking out. Where is my every 15 minute bus? And of course because it was all in Chinese I could not read any of the signs. I was at the bus stop across from the one where I was dropped off though, and I could see the symbol and characters that had been on the bus. But no bus. I headed back into the park and tried to ask the ticket lady if she knew where the bus was, but she did not speak enough English to understand me, and my translation app requires an internet connection which I did not have. It was very frustrating, and I was mainly just upset because I was worried about being late. At this point I decided that waiting for the bus any longer would just make me later so I decided to walk. Luckily I have a Lonely Planet eBook on my iPhone, and so I used that map to get a rough idea of where I was and where the MRT was and with the help of my phone's compass (I have been using that WAY more than I ever thought I would), I navigated my way back to the MRT station. It took about 30 minutes walking, and so I was left with only an hour to get back, when one half of my journey, Taipei Main Station to Nangang Exhibition Center usually takes the MRT 30 minutes. I hate hate hate being late, so I was quite worried and frustrated. I tried taking a short-cut and changing to the orange line then to blue, as it cuts down on one station and avoids the insanity that is Main Station. However, in my rush to catch a train that was waiting with doors open, I miss-read a sign and went the wrong direction! Disembarking and catching the line the other direction fixed that but added time. I finally got to Nangang Exhibition Center at 5:30 on the dot, and still with a 20 minute walk ahead of me! I ran the whole way and made it to the lab panting and out of breath by 45 minutes past, only to find that half the colleagues were late as well finishing up their work for the day. Whew! 

It was not a nice experience though, and really reminded me how hard and scary it is when you are alone and don't speak the language and more importantly have people depending on you. However, it was now time to eat and drink and sing (not in my case:)