Harbour-side Visitations

Here I am back in the Sydney Sky Palace (where, incidentally, this whole blogging business began). All here is pretty much as it was before. Which is rather pleasing.

The main difference is that we have a daily, twice daily or sometimes even thrice daily visitation from the creature above. As least, I think its from him (or her). There may also be guest appearances by cousins and other tribe members. I haven't got to know them well enough to tell them apart, yet.

Thus far he or she has limited himself to a restrained tapping on the window to alert when I have fallen down in my responsibilities and allowed the window- ledge to become bereft of seed. S/he has been very polite. There is a restrained maliciousness in the glint of that beady black eye, however, that suggests any failure to fulfill my duties will be met with rapid and gleeful retribution.  Though our acquaintance has been brief, cockatoos in general seem to me the kind of beasts that would find destroying the power lines or eating the locks, or, horror of horrors, coming in the window and eating the landlords beloved vinyls hugely amusing.

I am therefore strenuously resisting falling into demand feeding.  Lines are drawn in the battle of wills.

The Butterflies of Sun Moon Lake

Sun Moon Lake is the largest lake in Taiwan. Nestled up the highlands where the air is cooler and the humidity is low, it is surrounded by layer upon layer of steep hills that recede away into misty nothingness in the distance. Dawn casts an orange glow across the still waters. If you have a generous budget and a bit of luck, you can stay at The Lalu Hotel and watch the light shift and change from your private balcony, or slide back the walls and soak up the view from the bath.

It was apparently Chiang Kai-shek's favorite holiday retreat, and The Lalu is on the site of his former holiday residence. The newly constructed wing - designed by Australian Kerry Hill Architects - nestles unobtrusively into the surrounding greenery, and is simply the most gorgeous, tranquil and generally lovely hotel I have ever seen. Unfortunately, there are a number of high-rise monstrosities nearby. Still, if you are looking out at the lake, or strolling around the well maintained boardwalk that rings the lake's edge, you can forget they exist altogether.

On the weekends couples drape themselves decorously around the paths and groves, big powerpuff creations of white organza and sharp suits being snapped by wedding photographers among the bamboo, as massive butterflies gambol about overhead.

"We don't have many butterflies here," said the Hotel Guy. Was he mad? Spectacular flutter-bys were everywhere. "Oh, in Taiwan we do," he explained. "We are called the Kingdom of the Butterfly. But not so much here. Much more in the South"

The mind boggles. Its hard to imagine better butterfly action than we were getting at Sun Moon Lake.The highlights were probably the massive creature of black filigree with fillings of white, red, orange and yellow. This one took the prize for sheer gaudiness. It was flopping around amongst the Morning Glory Flowers, big as a dinner plate and frames by the azure waters of Sun Moon Lake like a little gravity-defying stained glass window.

The dull brown one liked having his photo taken. The rest insisted on hopping about in a very un-photogenic manner.My particular favorites were the huge black ones, as big as your hand, with metallic blue on lower wings fringed with a lovely rococco flourish of fiddly-bits. We had seen a number of these big black beasts, but I struggled to catch one on film. They flitted around in the shadows, hid behind ferns, pretended to be falling leaves and generally acted compulsively camera-shy.

We were at the end of our last walk before leaving for Taipei, and I had abandoned all hope of getting one on film when suddenly there it was, jet black a with dark green and bright blue splashes flashing in the sunlight. This particular one was lazier than all its cousins, and actually stopped on the lantana occasionally. All that fast-finger practice of playing arcade games on the plane came to the fore as I snapped away maniacally, though the rather blurry splash to your left is the best I could manage.

The Path of Enlightenment

"Master, when can I call myself 'Traveller'?"
"When Grasshopper, you have found The Other Way"
"To where?"
"To the Path. To Nirvana."
"As in, 'Teen Spirit'?"
"No, Grasshopper. Not that Nirvana."

I was take The Green Bus. So it was written. From Exit 4, Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT. And yet, there I went and Green Bus found I none. Waiting for me in the mountains was respite from all wordly cares, bliss and comfort. Not to mention a 60 metre infinity pool. But how to reach it?

"O Reception, I beseech thee most humbly. The Green Bus is not more.How can I get to Sun Moon Lake?"
"Go to the bus station."
"And how to I get there?"
"By taxi." (subtext: 'Of course. Dummy.')"Give them this." She scribbles characters on to a note and hands them to me. I hope that they say 'Sun Moon Lake'.

"I am Leo." said the driver. "I take you to airport."
"But I need to go to the bus station."
"There, too."
I farewell Leo at Taipei Bus Station, and sentries at the gate point me to a Ticket Keeper. She frowns and points me back out the door. On the way, I pause at the Pool of Information & Enlightenment.

"No! Wrong station. Go this one." She hands me a little pamplet on a map and circles a yellow splodge a few blocks away. I wave feebly to the right, and she instructs me with elegant swipes of her ballpoint across the little printed map: right out the door, over the supermarket, down to he shopping mall,right again....

The wheels of my carry-on clickety clack on the tiles.Why do I insist on buying books? On the overpass, I give the bobbing man with no legs $50 NTD (about £1) for luck as our paths cross above a six lane freeway. Descending back to earth, taxi drivers call from left or right, but I can see no bus stop. Round the building site, past the front end loader, two blue-clad maidens swim into view from a brown cloud of billowing building dust.

"Bus to Sun Moon Lake?"
"Yes, madam. This way." I am not sure exactly when I became a madam. I think it was about the same time I turned 40.

The air clears to reveal another blue clad vision, an oasis of cool and calm, with perfect English. I can't even remember how to say "hello" in her language, though by now I am well into day 2.

"O Learned One, I seek a Bus. To Sun Moon Lake. There my lover waits, with a massive hole in his credit card."

With a beatific smile, a Timetable was summoned, but Alas, the next bus to Nirvana was not until 15:30. Happy as I was to bask in the glow of the Lady of the Buses, I was not sure that three and a half hours in her Linoleum House of Worship was quite what I had in mind. And it meant that I would not get to Nirvana before eight. This would verily speed me on the Path of Disgruntlement, when I sorely needed the Path of Delight.

"Is there no Other Way?"

"There are Two Ways you can choose. You can take bus to Sun Moon Lake at 15:30. Or, there is a bus to Puli. From There you get local bus to Sun Moon Lake."

Verily then did I "Woo hoo". The Bus to Puli arrived within 10 minutes. Lengthy discussion did the Lady of the Buses have with the driver have, telling him all. She also inscribed a parchment with rows of characters, strange and square, and handed it to me.

"Take this. Cross the road to the stop when The Driver says. Give them this. They will tell you the bus." The Driver did as he was bid, his mind as free and clear as the seats of the bus: I was the only passenger for three out of the three and a half hours of the journey.

I enter the Puli Bus station and pass the Holy Parchment beneath the glass. She reads, she frowns. She points at me, points at the clock,writes 15.45 on the paper.
I sit among strangers, in the highlands of Taiwan. Bhuddist nuns (apologies if that's the wrong term) with shaved heads pass in and out, on and off the buses. The loudspeaker calls names I can't understand. A tiny girl of about two is the only one that stares at my funny face and skin. I wait.

Next thing I know I am called by the Gatekeeper. She is waving a telephone receiver, gesturing to me. Who on earth is calling me at Puli bus station?

"Hello, Miss Weller. This is the Lalu Hotel. You are to take the 15.45 from Puli? The bus will take about 40 minutes. We will send a car to meet you at the station in Sun Moon Lake. It is a black wagon. You wait. It will bring you to the hotel."

Already the big hole in the credit card seems worth it. And so it comes to pass. The Gatekeeper and the Ticket Seller and a third woman who happens to be sharing my bench start waving at me madly when my bus arrives. Once again lengthy instructions are issued on my behalf. Along with a large bag of persimmons, notes are passed, bearing numbers and signs. Forty minutes further on, the driver waves me off, pointing to the numbers, the note and holding thumb to ear, pinky to mouth in the universal gesture of "calling" as he pats himself on the chest. I sit on my suitcase. He ends his call, and thumb and finger join in an circle of 'OK'. I reply with the thumbs up. We wave to eachother, and off he goes.

Within five minutew the car arrives, and the bag is whisked away. Within ten, I am seated in deep couches, a fruit juice in my hand and the lake stretched out before me, ringed in layers of steep misty hills

"So what have we learned today, Grasshopper?"
"That the very fast train to Taichung and a bus from there would have been quicker?"
"True. But no."
"That its the journey not the destination?"
"Mmmm.No bad, Grasshopper. But a little unoriginal."
"That I am finally 'Traveller?'"
"Hardly. What did you actually do, Grasshopper?"
"Fair point. How about 'Never to under-estimate the kindness of strangers?'"
"That'll do."