{"id":28085,"date":"2018-12-10T23:16:21","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T15:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=28085"},"modified":"2026-03-15T20:40:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T12:40:05","slug":"12-days-in-taiwan-day-04-xitou-nature-education-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2018\/12\/10\/12-days-in-taiwan-day-04-xitou-nature-education-area\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Days in Taiwan \u2013 Day 04 \u2013 Xitou Nature Education Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first three days of visitations in our Taiwan trip have been, for the most part, kid-centric: including places like Carton King<\/a>, strawberry<\/a> and grape picking<\/a>, Miyahara Ice-Cream<\/a>, Rainbow Village<\/a> and Shengxing Station<\/a>. As we moved to the second quarter of the trip, the places we are checking out also became more scenic. The first two of these major spots were on Day 04 \u2014 Xitou Nature Education Area in the morning, and Sun Moon Lake<\/a> in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

The Xitou Nature Education Area<\/strong> is one of the most popular national parks in the country, and the hundreds of visitors we saw already at the place when we arrived at 9:30AM pretty much proved that. Interestingly, the vast majority of visitors this Monday morning were the elderly, and from their attire, locals I think \u2014 who were intent on hiking the trails in this beautiful forest maintained by the National University of Taiwan. We also saw an almost strange scene: hundreds of the elderly hikers gathering in one part of the forest stretching to music before they actually began the hike. Got to stretch those muscles first before they get a good 3\u20134 hour workout!<\/p>\n

There were very few children about though, something I found odd \u2014 and initially concluded that perhaps this park just isn’t the kind of place that appeals to kids. Towards the end of our stay in the park when we were on our way down, we bumped into an elderly pair who called out Peter and Hannah and kindly queried how come they weren’t in school today. That was when we realized that the reason why there are so few children about is because it’s still a normal school day for Taiwanese kids this Monday of a mid-December week. We explained that we were \u5916\u56fd\u4eba (‘foreigners’, Matt!) and from Singapore.<\/span><\/p>\n

The park is indeed beautiful, and we had a wonderfully cool day to trek through it too \u2014 though skies weren’t quite getting the sea blue we’ve yet to see in our trip so far. It didn’t take long for us to realize though that we made a mistake in how much time we’d planned to set aside for Xitou. The trails that lead to the skywalk observatory and bamboo forest cannot be completed in just a few hours, and two hours was all we had to stay in the park. So, in short, I never got to achieve one of the key reasons for me to have included this place in our itinerary \u2014 a visit to the much talked-about Bamboo Forest.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, there was a smaller Bamboo Arboretum on the other side of the park, and we made do with that. The little area has different varieties, judging from the markings we saw. It’s not nearly as expansive as the Bamboo Forest, but oh well. If we ever come by here again, we’d certainly want to make doubly sure this time that we set aside the required period of time to do a full hike through the park.<\/p>\n

Oh yes; there’s an admission charge that I thought was fairly hefty for a national park: NTD160\/SGD7 for adults, and NTD80\/SGD3.50 for children. Peter was judged too young still to even need a children’s ticket, so we saved that tiny bit on him.<\/p>\n

Pictures! The Sony 16-35mm f4 was the main camera for this visit, so there are some of the expected distortions from the wide angles used.<\/p>\n

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We looked like the only visitors to the park not carrying camping backpacks, umbrellas, and walking sticks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Gingko Plantation, and roughly the center of the park. We got as far as here, then had to turn back as we only had 45 minutes left to spend in the area.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Every trip out to a place with tall trees is another opportunity for the horticulture enthusiast wife to snap photos and teach the kids.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Ooooh. Bridge = photo op.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Majestically tall trees as we walked through the well-paved and marked out trails.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Right deep, somewhere in central Taiwan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next stop: Sun Moon Lake<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first three days of visitations in our Taiwan trip have been, for the most part, kid-centric: including places like Carton King, strawberry and grape picking, Miyahara Ice-Cream, Rainbow Village and Shengxing Station. As we moved to the second quarter<\/p>\n

Read More 12 Days in Taiwan \u2013 Day 04 \u2013 Xitou Nature Education Area<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[608,612,618],"class_list":["post-28085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-sony-a7-iii","tag-sony-fe-16-35mm-f4-0","tag-taiwan-2018","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/blog-2018-taiwan-day-04-A7_00349-xitou-nature-education-center.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38574,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28085\/revisions\/38574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}