November 7, 2025

I was expecting another depressing day, but the sun streaming into my seventh floor window tells me another story. Although knowing how things unfold for me, by the time I get out the door, it will probably be cloudy, if not raining. It does take me some time to emerge from my surprisingly nice cocoon in Keelung, my room small, the bed too hard, but the necessary comforts are present, a desk, small touches of glamour, like the large gold-framed mirror and the stylishly-tiled bathroom helping things out. There is too much noise on the floor outside, given that I am next to the elevator, but I think I have been exceptionally lucky in the past months of travel, considering how quiet the places I have stayed in have been.

I haven’t thought much about the attractions in the Keelung area yet, although I do have a total of four days booked here, so I will definitely have enough time on my hands to get a significant amount of sightseeing done. The extent to which it will work out will depend on my physical state, and that is generally not good, considering that I can hardly walk, thanks to the issue that has arisen with my right knee and my general sense of physical malaise that has a lot to do with not being able to sleep properly at night, thanks to the perennial rock hard mattresses you find in cheap hotels in this region.

Other considerations include the bus service — I have been very fortunate to travel in South Korea and Japan, which have excellent transport connections, but I am not sure how good public transport will be in rural Taiwan. Returning to the subject of the weather — this is typhoon season, and the east coast (where I plan on traveling) is the most exposed. But I won’t complain about the weather — the first two months of this trip I suffered a punishing heat that made traveling tortuous, and I think I am now only recovering from this experience.

I think I will visit Jinshan to the north of Keelung and the Dharma Drum Mountain World Center in the mountains above the town, although it may be somewhat risky, considering that reaching this place could take a lot of travel time — assuming that public transport is even available with some meaningful frequency when I arrive later in the afternoon. It turns out that I don’t have to go all the way to the bus station to catch the bus heading to the north of Keelung, although when I do reach the stop where the 790 bus passes only a few blocks from my hotel, the bus flies by without halting, since they only stop if you wave them down … now I have to now wait another 25 minutes for the next bus. Sigh …

The 790 bus is as dilapidated as the one I took yesterday to the hotel, although that doesn’t keep the driver from driving as aggressively as possible. The interior of the bus may look quite aged, but its engine certainly seems to be working well as we hurtle effortlessly around the endless serpentines. As the only person standing, I hang desperately onto the vertical bars to avoid flying unceremoniously across the bus, and wonder what the mostly elderly passengers would do if they were standing.

Or perhaps they are just used to it, judging by the philosophical expressions on some of their faces. The trip is lengthy, far longer than I would have expected, even though we are making good time and not bottlenecked in any traffic, despite the highway being narrow, serpentine, and single-lane. We weave through one settlement after the other, and only after a considerable distance has elapsed does the landscape open up around us, on one side, steep, verdant hills, and the other, the open sea.

The woman seated next to me would like to know where I am going. She approves of Jinshan, and yet when we finally arrive in Yehliu, with some considerable distance left to go to Jinshan, I decide to jump off the bus, with her in tow. She seems perplexed that I am not heading into town, but walking along the highway further out of town; given that I hadn’t planned on coming here, I am also unaware that the big attraction of the region is the geopark that lies on the promontory extending beyond Yehliu. And yet from this side of the bay, there are great photographic opportunities to be had of the harbour, the town, its Taoist temple, and the escarpment that towers above the geopark. Close by, rows of lights hang over the fishing boats moored in the harbour, used to lure squid and saury when fishing at night.

What also catches my attention is a couple of photographers, the man with a camera and enormous lens mounted on a tripod, pointed at what looks like a security camera attached to the top of the building next to us. I am curious — what are they shooting? It turns out that they are watching a bird — the Daurian redstart — a bird that overwinters in Taiwan and that is sitting complacently on the security camera’s wires, then eventually migrating to a tree next to us. Is it staying so close to us because it has a nest nearby?

The couple can’t tell me more, as they are not birders, they just like photography — although I do know that birders are quite fanatical in their pursuits. Through the tunnel and further along the highway toward Jinshan, stunning views of the mist-enshrouded coast open up to the north, the long coastline extending to my right, surf breaking on the rock shelves below, a few fishing boats slowly plying the open water in the distance, the steep escarpment of the geopark visible to my far right, and the steep, verdant hillsides soaring above.

Now on to the geopark: I return to Yehliu, then walk along the waterfront promenade with its lively views of the harbour and the many berthed fishing vessels, colour added to the panorama with the Baoan temple’s staggered eaves and flamboyant roof ridge sculptures, framed against the green hillside. The escarpment jutting out from the sea that I had viewed after disembarking from the bus is now much closer and more dramatic in scale. Past the geopark entrance to the waterfront, views of the promontory that leads to the escarpment open up, and the vast sea beyond, although the attractions of the geopark are not visible from the elevated seaside promenade. I am tempted to walk back, except that the entrance to the geopark is only NT$120, and so what could it hurt!

Once inside the geopark, an entire world of surreal geological formations opens up before me, with every possible combination of naturally-occurring sculpture resulting from the effects of wind and water erosion on rocks of varying degrees of hardness, hence eroding at different shapes, the harder rock remaining relatively intact relative to the much softer sandstone. A forest of variegated mushroom-shaped pillars sweeps across the undulating sandstone escarpment, the foaming white surf crashing where the sea meets the ochre rock.

The sandstone terrain is either level with shallow pools, or rises dramatically into hillocks or bulbous extrusions, the harder rock lodged on the sandstone pillars pockmarked as a result of the forces of erosion. Swaths of mushroom-like pillars are fully formed, while elsewhere, harder rock scarred with innumerable cavities barely emerges from the sandstone terrain.

The park and its surreal sculptural offering extends along the promontory all the way to the distant escarpment, but given that the park closes at 6 pm — and dusk is setting in anyway — it is best for me to cut my trek to the farther reaches of the geopark short. While the area of Yehliu is coated in heavy cloud cover, the skies further to the south in the direction of Keelung have opened up, the coastline illuminated in light while we remain shrouded in a dour pallor. The dramatic, uneven terrain sculpted by erosion contrasts vividly between the portions overgrown with green and the exposed rock studded with surreal formations.

The culmination of the geopark visit is the viewing of the Queen’s Head, a rock pillar so named for the manner in which it represents the Nefertiti-like regal bust of a queen, although the likeness is somewhat far fetched, and it probably didn’t help that a local some years ago apparently dislodged the stone pillar from the underlying rock. But visitors line up to take selfies, in and of itself utterly annoying, given how much time some take due to the usual ineptness at composing photos.

Leaving the geopark, I pass through the hall crammed full of vendors selling dried seafood products, then on to what I hope to be a bus stop that will allow me to return to Keelung. However, the buses don’t pass by the immediate entrance of the Geopark, so I’ll have to walk to the parking lot or somewhere beyond. I see bus stops on the map in the proximity of the entrance, but when I reach a particular stop, a local motions me to keep walking, which makes me wonder about the accuracy of Google Maps in Taiwan. The 790 bus doesn’t enter the peninsula in which the park is located, but the map seems to indicate otherwise.

I keep walking to the main road to a stop where I am assured that the 790 bus does pass by, and in fact, there are electronic displays listing oncoming buses, of which the 790 displays prominently. With only a few people at the bus stop, it becomes obvious that the hordes of visitors I saw earlier on in the park undoubtedly are not traveling by bus from Keelung — they are probably staying in Taipei, or traveling as part of a tour group.

Safely on the bus, I am so exhausted that I struggle to remain seated in any kind of proper position, although deviating too much from convention is a problem when you have limited space. I would really love to just lie down! And the journey is lengthy … What stands out on the return journey is the amount of eating establishments that line the road, many of which focus on seafood. Are there that many visitors to the area? Or are there that many people living in the area that the restaurants are intended to service? Keelung certainly does not have a groundswell of seafood restaurants, other than a few in the night market; in fact, it doesn’t really have much in the line of formal Taiwanese restaurants to begin with, as I will soon see.

The woman seated next to me in the bus communicates with me by means of a translation app; she wants to know if I am going to the night market. I had been thinking of having pizza, I tell her, which leaves her appalled, but my response wasn’t just tongue-in-cheek — I really would just like a change of pace. She disembarks at the train station and I get off several stops later, in the vicinity of my hotel and the night market. There is a pizza place en route, but over NT$200 for tiny pizzas just isn’t worth it. Since the market is so close, I may as well explore the options again this evening, although once inside, the challenges of eating in the place crystallize.

There is very little seating available at the stands at the night market, and almost all of it taken. My eyes search the site for the obvious, but in the case of most kiosks, there simply is no seating. And I don’t want to eat while standing or walking, certainly not in this crowd. In some cases, there are restaurants at the back of the food stands which have tables and chairs, but as I walk through the market, I see that the only places whose food I would consider eating don’t have seating, and the few that do serve food that doesn’t necessarily elicit a very diplomatic assessment.

Frustrated, I leave the market again, wandering aimlessly through the limited urban grid that comprises the centre of town immediately south of the waterfront. There are many casual eateries selling local fast food, but again the genera that I find too unappetizing to want to contend with at the moment. There are formal restaurants, but none of local food, almost all Japanese and Korean, and with concomitant high prices. After having passed through a sea of restaurants en route from the geopark, it strikes me as incredible that Keelung is such a desert, at least for local food.

So: I’ll make my way back to the market, but rather than the east-west leg, I’ll visit the north-south segment that is closer to the harbour, whose food I remember as being more appealing. And indeed, as I weave through the thick crowd, the food offered by the stands on this side does seem more attractive, although I’m not sure as to why. But I have the same problem as the other portion of the night market, and that is lack of places to sit.

Closer to the place I ate yesterday is another seafood establishment with a few tables, some of the items on the menu expensive, the predictable options less so. Not particularly appealing is that there is no description as to how each seafood option is prepared, so I supposed it’ll just be a question of the owner using his imagination to prepare a specific type of fish or shellfish.

I opt for a dish that is not particularly expensive but also somewhat unusual, razor clams, or more accurately, Gould’s razor shell clams, long, narrow, bamboo-shaped shells containing molluscs that are long, spindly, and chewy, presenting an interesting flavour combination stewed with onion and maitake mushroom juliennes in slightly sweetened chili sauce, offering an intriguing flavour combination.

The addition of a serving of fried dumplings from the vendor across the passage is probably not such a good idea, considering that the dumplings have been cooked some time ago, and have lost their consistency by remaining heated for extended periods of time — and may simply not have been that good to begin with, be it the gooey pastry or the relatively lacklustre filling. The lesson learned here is to go with food that is freshly prepared — and in any case, the seafood dish represented a memorable conclusion to a memorable day!