I went to Taiwan to visit the Taipei Cycle Show, and came back mid last week after a few extra days to be spent there over the weekend.
Besides the show, I had the pleasure of visiting a skate park in the city. I rode a city-run rental bike there since I hadn’t brought mine, which set the level of achievement about half as good as can be, but it was still awesome to go there and also meet some local BMX riders and skaters.
I also took a day trip to visit an area called Jiufen.
It is a former gold mine, and famous as the location of the movie “A City of Sadness.” However I went there on Monday, when the gold mine museum is closed, which subtracted the ex-gold rush town element from the story and made the town a mere non-real tourism destination with just a large number of group tour people, since there actually is nothing that the town exclusively offers any more. So I tried to make the best out of the situation and reached a quiet spot along a local road where you can have a pretty sight of the whole of the town as above. It would have been ideal to also climb Keelung Mountain in the background, but a heavy rain started upon reaching the trail head to ruin that plan. All in all, the whole point of this particular day was that we, myself and a German tourist staying at the same hotel, made the train and bus trip to Jiufen and also to a night market back in Taipei, a very typical foreign traveling experience that turned out fun overall.
Also, just about when I came back to Japan, my back pain seemed to disappear. The two long months of very slow but at least careful healing process will hopefully be worth the while.