Monday, November 6, 2017; Keelung Taiwan
The weather forecast is for 80 degrees and 60% chance of rain. The ship continued to churn through moderately rough seas last night. We had breakfast with two couples of ladies from Hawaii who revealed that they were all from the same tour group based out of Oahu. They have done several tours of Japan, including some land tours. They were pretty happy to have the 50% future cruise credit and fully intend to book another return cruise to Japan on Princess.
We sailed past lots of commercial traffic and smaller fishermen as we worked our way up the west and then north coast of Taiwan. Somehow, most of these vessels don’t look as seaworthy or well maintained as those we saw in the waters off Norway’s west coast. There are a lot of what could aptly be described as “rust buckets” afloat and working hard.
We sailed into Keelung harbor as we finished breakfast and were able to watch the approach from our stateroom balcony. Although the weather forecast was for 80 degrees with 60% chance of rain, it actually looked like it could be a decent day as the ship approached its berth. We were actually docked stern to stern with our sister ship, the Sapphire Princess. Standing between the two ships, it was almost like seeing a mirror image.
The ships docked in downtown Keelung. We boarded our scheduled excursion to see the north coast of Taiwan and a village called Chiufen, which was once a gold mining town. Our first stop was on the coastline, where an outcropping of sandstone has been eroded into fantastic shapes and formations. The scene of dozens of tour buses disgorging their passengers into a very tiny strip of the shoreline was reminiscent of the scene at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. There were also several wedding parties getting wedding photos shot in this location. Down on the beach, there was a ton of flotsam, including fishing floats used with fishing nets and other operations. Janet had found a similar float on the beach on Whidbey Island a few years ago, after the tsunami in Fukushima. We found one float that was 18” in diameter and another that was 12” in diameter. Too bad they wouldn’t fit in our suitcases, so we just took pictures. Ben did find some smaller plastic fishing floats that we did take as souvenirs.
From there, we headed up the mountain to Chiufen through lush forests and tunnels. The buses parked at the base of the hill. Our guide handed out maps of the town with the location of a Tea House marked, which would be where we would rendezvous at 3PM. Ben noticed that the compass rose on the map was inverted, but no-one else seemed to care. We followed our guide up a very long and narrow staircase up the hill, which is a pedestrian main-street for this town. It was very crowded and chaotic because with two cruise ships docked in town, there was a full parking lot of buses. There are also a lot of local Taiwanese and other Chinese tourists. Think of the Pike’s Market Hillclimb, and you can get an idea of the steepness of the climb. The stairs were only about 6’-8’ in width. On either side of this staircase, there are narrow (10-12’) streets paralleling the hillside lined by tiny shops and restaurants.
There was a tiny town square at the center of the town, that was our rendezvous point. From there, we entered a Tea House and had a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. We sat around round tables with lazy Susans. The servers had a large pot on a candle burning heater on the floor, and a tray on the table containing a small tea-pot made of red clay. The server spooned the tiny tea-pot full of tea leaves. This was then filled to overflowing over a matching shallow bowl with a flat rim. The hot water was also poured over the outside of the little pot, presumably to heat it. After steeping a relatively short time, the tea was then poured into small Pyrex glass pitchers, which were then distributed around the lazy Susan. There were trays on the turntable that contained wasabi peas, dried mushrooms, raisins, peanuts, and dried cherry tomatoes that tasted like something between a cranberry and strawberry. The tea was fragrant and slightly sweet with no bitterness. It was refreshing and gave us a chance to recover from climbing the first set of stairs.
From there, we were free to explore the rest of the hillside village. There are tiny gardens scattered between the buildings and walkways, but there is a surprising amount of random trash and debris like construction debris and sinks lurking amidst the lush tropical growth on the hillsides. The streets are just wide enough for a compact sedan to squeeze through if pedestrians duck into doorways. The most common mode of transportation is on scooters, which are parked on doorsteps and on side alleys less than 3’ wide. The whole place did have an exotic feel, and was fun to explore. Near the center of town is an iconic large Teahouse that was the inspiration for the teahouse in the movie “Spirited Away”. This place was crazy popular with the Japanese tourists, who all had to take selfies in front of it. We’ll have to take a closer look at the movie when we get back home. There were fabulous views of the north coast of Taiwan from the village.
Ben’s Apple Watch clocked over 2 miles of traversing the hillsides and going up and down the staircases. The buses took us back to the cruise ship pier at the heart of the city. Janet was tired and needed to use a bathroom so she retired to the ship from the bus, while Ben walked to a nearby “night market”, which was actually open during the day as well. This featured innumerable food stalls, carts and shops along a 2-3 block area. It was crowded, noisy, and full of wonderful smells and colorful sights. There were lots of locals and businessmen lining the tiny counters of shops serving noodles, soups, dumplings and all manner of other dishes. People would also zoom in on their scooters to pick up take out orders on their way home. It was exciting and exotic, and well worth the 1 mile walk from the ship to explore.
After getting cleaned up and having dinner, we tried our hands at Movie Poster Trivia, hoping for a win, but they had some really obscure movies, like Gnomeo & Juliette, Grown-ups, and Eat, Pray, Love, that threw us off. We also didn’t have our usual partners because their dinner seating conflicted with the 8PM time of this game. We paired up with Paul and Linda from Houston for the game. We ended up in second place by one point, but did have a bottle of champagne from a prior win to drink after the game with Paul and Linda. We learned that they have been to all 7 continents and like to do National Geographic trips, which are fantastically expensive, and they also raved about an outfit called “Over the Top Travel”, which as the name implied was “Over the Top” in all expectations and expense. We wondered what Paul and Linda did for a living to afford those kinds of trips. They did highly recommend seeing the Galapagos with a particular scientist that they had ventured with both to Antarctica and the Galapagos with. They also mentioned a tiger expedition in India, where they were successful in finding tigers on their 4th day of a 4 day expedition, and some fabulous African safaris to see the Great Migration. They had Ruby room cards, like ours, so they have the same experience points on Princess as we do, but they had exhausted all of the itineraries on the Holland America Cruise line and were working their way through Princess Cruises’ inventory. They have earned free drinks, laundry and internet on Holland America, amongst other perks.
The theater show as a Russian Circus put on by a Husband and wife team. The wife was extremely talented at twirling things (hoola hoops, batons, cubic steel frames) and crazy fast costume change magic tricks. Her husband did the muscle man Cirque du Soleil stuff and some crazy costume acts that we had never seen before that were quite amusing and bizarre. Together, they did muscle and finesse balancing and poses that were typical Cirque du Soleil material. The show as quite good.
After that, we hit the buffet and retired for the night. We arrive in Okinawa tomorrow afternoon. Because the entire ship has to clear customs and two ships will be arriving the same day, each cabin has an appointment to go through immigration before we can entere Okinawa. The ship is scheduled to arrive at 2PM, but our immigrations appointment is at 3:20PM. Fortunately, the all -aboard time is 10:30PM tomorrow, so we should have enough time to do some exploring ashore in Okinawa.
