My friends and I decided just last week to go to Alishan, which is a mountain region famous for its sunrises because of its altitude, high up above the clouds. I've discovered that Taiwan doesn't make it easy to travel to its "must see" destinations like the U.S. does ... to get to Alishan from Taipei, you have a couple of options, all of which include some type of train ride (ranging from 1.5 hours to 5 hours), followed by a winding (and often queasy) 2.5 hour bus ride up the mountain.

Everyone warned me to bring all my heaviest winter clothing because it would be COLD up in the mountains. So, armed with a wool sweater, tights, lots of socks, sucking candy and Coke, I nervously boarded the 4-hour regional train (about $20) headed to Chiayi (or Jiayi), where I would board a bus ($7.50) up to Alishan.

I really liked Chiayi, from what I saw of it. I'd been told that there is nothing of note to do there, but I found the city to be really clean and airy, completely unlike Taipei in many ways. The biggest difference I noticed was the lack of crowds on the streets. During our wait for our bus, we had a light lunch of turkey rice, which is a Chiayi specialty. For just $1, we had this delicious dish:

And the bus ride up was not at all bad. After I asked the bus driver if we could sit up front (they had earlier sat us further in the back), the driver became very friendly and even offered us the seat next to his. There were originally 5 people on board the bus, but as it was a local bus, after a few stops, just us three girls remained for the long ride to Alishan. He gave us lots of tips on what to do while up there, and told us that it hadn't rained in weeks and weeks, but guess what? It was raining, and we'd probably brought it with us from Taipei.


When we finally arrived at Alishan, it was completely and utterly misty and we were exhausted. But we decided to make use of the afternoon and walk one of the trails anyway. Here are some photos from that misty afternoon:




For dinner, the hotel recommended a place called Shan Bin for dinner. We had the restaurant's specialty, stone hot pot with fried pork of some sort ($7.50/per person and considered somewhat expensive). I've never been a big fan of pork, but this was the least pork-y tasting pork I've ever had, so it wasn't bad. By this point in the night, the mist combined with the sun having set made for a very chilly evening, so the soup from the hot pot (another "cuisine" I'm not usually too fond of) was just what we needed. To my delight, the restaurant's soundtrack was a mish-mosh of songs from the late 80s through the late 90s, so we had fun seeing who could guess the song the fastest, as well as singing along to the music. There was a lot of Whitney, a lot of songs from soundtracks, and Sixpence None The Richer, Aerosmith and LeAnn Rimes.

The next morning, we were woken up bright and early at 5 a.m. by the hotel so we could board the train to see the sun rise. The train ride is supposedly legendary because it's part of the Alishan Forest Railway, which was originally constructed by the Japanese Colonial Government (from when Taiwan was under Japanese rule) in 1912. Though it wasn't raining, it was just cloudy enough that we couldn't see the sun actually rising. (Click here to see what it's "supposed" to look like.)


After checking out, we headed towards the 7-11 to buy bus tickets heading back to Chiayi. While walking, we were accosted by a man who offered to take us on a tour ($10) of Fenchihu, a town nearby, and a suspension bridge before bringing us back to Chiayi. Me being me (skeptical and a New Yorker, born and raised), I immediately said no, but my two other friends overruled me, so off we were with this guy to a town I had never heard of before.

The man was a nightmarish driver. All my nightmares about riding the bus on the mountain came true with the guy, except for the part where I got sick, because thank goodness, I didn't. But a little boy sitting behind my friend did. The driver seemed to take pity on the boy for about 5 minutes before resuming his maniacal ways. (By that, I mean passing 6 cars at a time on a winding mountain road at about 60-70 mph. And speeding through fog with visibility of about 3-5 feet. And driving on the side of oncoming traffic while making turns on the mountain.)

We had lunch in Fenchihu, which apparently is famous for its bento boxes ($3.33). It was only okay. We walked the markets for a little bit, sampled a few more specialties (tea eggs and brown sugar ginger tea), checked out their famous old train depot and station, then boarded the bus once again. That's when the little boy got sick, and we still went to the suspension bridge. I was really in no mood to cross a bouncy bridge on foot, but I did anyway. And then, thankfully, we returned to the bus and to Chiayi not long afterwards. I took the high-speed rail back to Taipei, which took about 1.5 hours and cost about $32, and slept almost the entire ride.