I've visited 二水(Ershui) four times since moving to Taiwan. That probably makes it my #2 tourist destination after Taipei. 二水 is mostly known for being the junction between the main Taiwanese rail line and a smaller rail line that was originally used for transporting lumber from the interior. A few of the stops on the small rail line are tourist traps or are cradled by amazing scenery so they get the bulk of the attention; this leaves poor 二水 under appreciated as a number of tourists don't even leave the train station before heading on to the more well known towns further down the line.
Immediately after exiting the train station you can see 二水's bike path which leads you past temples and rice paddies and eventually to a Formosan Macaque protected habitat. After nearly an hour on a rented bike I hiked around the habitat looking for some friendly monkeys but to no avail. The monkeys like mornings and I don't so we missed each other again. There were a lot of work crews throughout the habitat as well- they seemed amused at the solitary foreigner sweating through his shirt looking for monkeys at the wrong time of day. One of them pretended to console me and said that at least I'd brought the jungle mosquitoes a snack. I'm inconsistent with when I reveal that I can understand Chinese but this time I did and after some initial shock we they advised me to wear a brighter colored shirt next time- so the monkeys would be more entertained by my appearance.
Another three hours of biking brought me through a few small villages and past an unusually tall pagoda. My first time through the area we didn't rent bikes at all and instead hiked up a mountain to a village whose sole economic activities seemed to be selling tea and inviting visitors into an expansive temple complex- I'd thought about trying to repeat the hike but decided to save it for next time and with 二水 just an hour away by train there will probably be one more next time before I head home.
I stopped in 彰化 (Zhanghua) on the way home for shrimp, fried rice, and beer with a couple friends. I was exhausted and my face was caked with sweat and dust but 彰化 foreigners are the rural type and don't much care about hygiene.
Catching the last train home allowed me to talk with an obviously inebriated Taiwanese gentleman who complained that too many foreign English teachers were lying about being American. He jokingly commented that because Americans could be white, black, brown, or any other color of skin Taiwanese couldn't always tell if someone was a real American or a 假的 American. It was the first time I'd heard a complaint about America being a racially diverse country that I couldn't dismiss as racism- he was just pointing out that the age old way of figuring out what someone was didn't work anymore and with crooked smile he blamed my people for it.* He hopped off the train at the stop before mine and I spent the rest of the ride reading Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler (review forthcoming).
I'll probably be buying a camera this week so some of my future travel blogs will have some images.
I hope your Sunday were as good as mine!
*For extra commentary on this issue please check out previous blog entry "Who you are and what you do."
