Final Day in Fenqihu and the Journey to Tainan

Another day, another difang (place) and here I am at 6:25 am scrambling to get out the adventures before the kids are up and we're off to more, putting me another day behind.

Fenqihu is the village below.

Because Alishan gets crowded and more expensive on the weekends, we planned to head out Friday. The return train from Fenqihu to Chiayi was at 2pm, giving us the morning in Fenqihu to explore. The original plan HAD been to stay in Fenqihu, but compared to Alishan, it was quite backwater. When the rail line is complete, if that ever happens, I wonder if Fenqihu will die. I didn't realize any of this when making our plans, of course. I was lured by description of some pretty fun hikes. But the other thing I didn't count on was how sick of hiking we might feel on Friday after 5 hours of hiking around Alishan on Thursday.

Still, it seemed that was about all there might be to do. So we packed our luggage and found Father William and Sister Wu to ask if we might leave it at the hostel while we explored. Of course, they were accommodating. Our first stop was for breakfast because we were experiencing not a few kid melt-downs from hunger, Stew's being the most severe.

Despite their frustration with waiting for parents, and despite our frustration with THEIRS, the kids have been quite amazing, everything considered. Imagine how you might feel if every other day when you want to leave the house, you first need to clean and put away every little thing you own. Remember, you are leaving because your home has NO food. Then imagine that you have been walking for 3, 4, or 5 hours and you finally reach your car and can DRIVE. But before you CAN drive, before you can go anywhere, it takes you 20 minutes to find a route. This is what the kids have to wade and wait through. Such exhaustion, hunger, and all the waiting on top of it is a tall order for them, and mostly, they are great.

As fast as we were able we got their favorite, danbing (egg burritos) in them, and for good measure, more of the egg soy milk, just to make them really happy. It seemed to work so we were able to trudge the rest of the way uphill without waking the village with Stew's screams of torture.

Rachel turn 18 while she is in Taiwan!

Our first stop was the train garage/museum. It was right at the tracks, and at first, it seemed about all we could muster energy for. There was a cool model of the mountain track in the back, but the model train on it wasn't running and most of the info was in Chinese, so this didn't engage anyone for nearly as long as I had hoped. Plan B was more hiking. We went with it.

Lost fans, anyone else thinking Dharma Initiative?

Across from the museum was a logging trail which the Japanese had built to slide sledges full of lumber down. I think this was the easier and shorter of the two trails that would loop us around back to the general neighborhood of the tracks, Still, there were SO MANY STAIRS. The kids and Q are all saying my calves are looking more defined. I might say the same of all of them, but they all had pretty great calves to begin with! Anyway, here is that trail.

Us on the old tracks!

More stairs!

Feeling SO buff from conquering the stairs

The trail's outlet was a bit to the opposite side of the hostel than the one we had accessed it from, so we took a few moments to wander through a part of the village we hadn't seen. There were signs touting a "traditional grocery store." I had no idea what that might be, aside from a market, so we either found the old market before the railroad came in and things moved up to it, or we didn't find it at all. Either way, it was Big Bro and I doing the hunting while the rest rested their legs at a beautiful, old Japanese home converted into a tea house. (The kids are going crazy with all the things they can't eat or drink for their tea content. The Taiwanese are truly tea-obsessed!)

Japanese Tea house

Traditional Chinese Grocery Store?

Me and the cutie, Sis Wu

When we returned with our report that the grocery store was a no-go, we all (you guessed it!) hiked up another set of stairs and discovered ourselves at the rear of the hostel! The kids wanted to play with Tutu again, but Sister thought he had wandered back to the village for lunch. She told Q that keeping a dog here is very convenient. Everyone just lets their dogs wander. It's true. It seems we've seen many wild dogs, or at least dogs without leashes, prowling around. There are also plenty of dogs ON leashes prowling around too. Q keeps marveling that EATING dog isn't a thing like it is in Korea, because the meat source seems to abound. Anyway, the kids had amuse themselves on a very old playground while Q and I grabbed the luggage. When we had all loaded on our back-packs, and said good-bye to sister (Father William had also gone to lunch) we trudged back UP the same hill and got another round of box lunches.

We got fewer than we had, since 2 days before we had more than a box left over when I had purchased 6. This time we were able to pack away all 4, and when lunch was done, we STILL had an hour to kill.

This pic was of our meal here on the first day. LOVED the ambiance!

This is the food.

Even the food is a piece of history!

This was a picture from the train museum. See, it's just like it was back in the good ol' days!

Nothing makes waiting a little more bearable than a treat, so we were able to hit the doughnut shop when it was OPEN and everyone who wanted one got their OWN doughnut! The shop was so sweet, giving us their doughnuts hot off the press. They even song'ed (Chinglish for gave) us a FREE doughnut, though we had only purchased half as many as the "free doughnut" number required.

Q didn't join us on THIS doughnut run. He had opted to hang back in the box lunch place with our stuff - it had shelves for our luggage - so we were feeling fancy free. When we wandered onto a stage, Rachel and I sat while the kids entertained us (and not a few passers by) with their ballet and interpretive dance. Big Bro even whipped out a few ballet variations, though he seemed much more willing to do so, the bigger the audience was.

I love the motion of this pic!

Finally, it was back to the train for the ride home. I was anticipating this for simply SITTING for over 2 hours in air conditioned comfort. I WANTED to take in all the loveliness on the way back, but my exhaustion caught up with me and I slept with Stew in my arms most of the way back.

From the train station in Chiayi, we walked strait to the car. Eloise found in the lot the umbrella that she had left, and we were OFF! Only not at all so fast. First we tried to call our Airbnb host in the next city to tell him we were on our way. When the number I'd recorded for him was wrong, we opted just to head for the Tainan train station and figure it out from there. At this point it was Friday night. It started raining AFTER we got in the car. I hoped the light rain and it being only about 5pm would keep traffic down a bit, but if it did, we didn't notice it.

Due to navigation issues and heavy traffic, the one hour drive stretched to an hour and a half. The plan had been to eat once we arrived, so the stretch was painful, but it was about to get worse. In about an hour and 45 minutes, we were within a block or two of our destination (we only discovered the next day) but STILL couldn't find it. It doesn't help that multiple streets in Taiwan, in the SAME city, and in the same area of town all have the same name. More than once, I'd ask someone who could read the address to show me where to go. The would literally point to the house next to theirs, which was WHY I was at THEIR doorstep - I was clearly in the wrong place. I had to ask them to REALLY LOOK at the address and give me a second opinion. The trouble with their second opinions is that they were hard for me to understand. I kept only finding older folks around, and their heavy Taiwanese accents were a struggle for me to follow. So I would repeat what I thought they said until it seemed we both thought I had understood.

We'd head down the street one way, flip a u-turn and head back to turn at a light, then find we'd turned wrong and needed another u-turn. All the while, I could NOT get airbnb to pull up on my phone so I could access THEIR map. (I haven't downloaded their app and their site is especially unfriendly to mobiles.) When I was finally able to pull up their site, I found a second number for our host, only the recording of his name was so garbled, I wasn't sure if the very frustrated message I'd left was for him or some other, completely unrelated person. And still it was a MESSAGE! So even if I HAD confirmed I at least had the correct number AND we were able to find the place, we still would not have been able to get in.

At this point we abandoned our plan to get there before eating. Everyone was STARVING. The trouble was we were in a van in the thick of the city with no parking. Finally, inspired by the lawlessness of a driver behind us, Q pulled up at a 90 degree angle to the street where there was room for us by width and we piled out to hit the 7-11. We got food, but everyone needed to pee, and THIS 7-11 had no bathrooms. The very unhelpful cashier suggested we might walk down the road about 5 minutes and find one there. When I translated all of this for the kids, Q wanted to snap back, "Oh really? Is that what YOU do when you need to go the bathroom at work!?" but we needed to save energy and time so we simply began the trudge.

Two doors down from the 7-11 there was a nice hotel, and as we hadn't made contact with our host, I figured I'd kill a handful of birds with a stop off there. We marched our crew of 7 into the lobby and I told the woman behind the desk that I had many questions for her, but the first was "Is there a bathroom and can we use it?"

She smiled, pointed the way, and I translated and sent Q with our host that direction. Next, I asked how much her rooms were. They were less than $100/night, but of course, didn't sleep more than 4. Still 2 rooms weren't THAT much more expensive. But we had already payed for our Airbnb place, so my final question was about the phone numbers. I couldn't quite make out what the operator messages were and asked her to listen and explain them for me. She confirmed that the first number was wrong (or in Chinese, an empty number.) Then I dialed the next number. Suddenly, she was talking to a LIVE person and handed me the phone. "Are you an Airbnb host?" I asked in desperation. He WAS! I told him we were in Tainan but couldn't find his place. He told us there was a hotel out front and to wait for him there. Of course, that wasn't especially helpful, but I had the sweet hotel lady in front of me still, so I hung up with "Alex," showed her the address, and was told it was just around the corner. It was still tricky to find, but at last the NEXT person I asked said that the empty place where number 128 SHOULD be WAS our destination and that I could walk in through the gap in buildings to speak with the door man inside.

This is just one section of the complex. (Taken the next morning.

I discovered the gap was a driveway that opened into a large apartment complex and rather than park in front of the hotel, the guanliren (doorman) offered that he could move the barriers placed to only allow scooters and foot traffic through and we would be able to pull the van in all the way to the base of the elevator. As we were talking, our host Alex arrived, and though I wished to take a bit of my frustration out on him for listing a bad number and not answering my other 2 calls, I was too relieved at the moment to do anything but smile and tell him we were happy to finally find where we were supposed to be.

I think this whole process took the better part of 3 hours, if not ALL of 3 hours or more. We unloaded the entire car because I had laundry and re-packing to accomplish during our 2 day, 2 night Tainan stay. Once we got everything into the 3 bdrm apt and Alex showed us the ropes, the kids settled in to watch Star Wars, episode 4 under Rachel's supervision, and Alex guided Q and me down the street a few blocks to a free parking lot where we could leave the van. Then he walked back with us, recommending a noodle shop for dinner (which didn't hit the spot for me) and took us to the neighborhood drug store for mosquito repellent.

The couch from which a few movies were watched. When we arrived in Tainan, Q told me he thought I was pushing us too hard, so we dialed back the pace and were able to take in Star Wars, part of Sahara, part of Incredibles in Chinese! and part of We Bought a Zoo

All the while we chatted, and his English was pretty good, so Q was in on the action too. We found out he had met with the Mormon missionaries about 5 years ago and knew where the church was. He told us it was in Anping, which was one of the places we wanted to go. He said Anping was about 20 minutes away by bus, so I decided we'd hit Anping after church on Sunday. He then expressed interest in GOING to church with us and told us he would be happy to show us around Anping Sunday, and offered to take us around Saturday evening as well. He was extremely kind and I was very glad I hadn't been snappy about the 3 hour adventure we'd had to find his place.

And after our camping experience at the hostel, his place seemed like heaven! I started a batch of laundry even before we headed out to park the car, so I was able to hang it up when we got back! The AC was divine, and Q and I had our OWN bed, which was a REAL mattress. The other mattresses were the Taiwan box springs, BUT the boys slept in their own room, and the girls had theirs with their OWN bathroom! At the end of a very LONG day, we had a soft bed waiting and all was well!

When Chinese people here count the kids, they tell me I'm "lihai" (awesome) for having so many. Doing a week's worth of laundry and hanging it to dry because NO ONE has dryers helps me understand why they must think 4 kids is an amazing feat!

Then again, if these are the LARGEST closets we've seen in our stay (and in many bedrooms there isn't even room for a closet at all, how many clothes could one possibly own? No wonder women go to market dressed to the nines. Who has room for "grubbies"?

The girls room

The parent's room with a REAL bed!

The boys room, complete with a tent! (probably making up in cool-factor for no exterior windows)

Another factor in why I must be awesome to have 4 kids - who can cook for anyone in this standard Chinese kitchen. Note the lack of anything to even cook ON! No stove, not even a microwave. The "cabinet" on the right is a desk placed for more counter space.

And the fridge is in the living room to the left of Q. Note it's size. For Taiwan, it's pretty big.