~ 22nd March 2014~
It was cold. Really cold. But I like it cold. I think it felt less than 10-degree Celsius with the chilly wind blowing. We decided to take the slow scenic ride to the station down below.
The station was almost deserted. We were three odd travelers going against the flow of human traffic. Almost all if not most of the tourists would take the scenic ride from the station. That's what normal people would do and there you would find the crowd that make your head reel and before long, you felt so suffocated that you wanted to vomit. So, it's good that the wooden nicely renovated station was deserted. Just hope that we were not standing on the wrong platform or worse, the wrong stop.
Finally, the train arrived and it was packed like sardine in a can. Who's that lady photo-bombing us from the inside of the train? Very creative that lady~! *applause* How on earth were we to get onto the train? And once the slow motion train burst its door open, the humans just spilled out like a tube of lotion crossing the sea in high altitude. They just burst out and before long, we had the whole entire train to ourselves. Serious~! Whole train with so many coaches just for the three of us~!!!
We could take our own sweet time to decorate ourselves on the train. It's a scenic ride, not a bullet train ride taking people to work. It's just one slow ride. From the outside when we first arrived, we were thinking how could anyone board such slow train. In the end, we were on board that train ourselves.
The smell on the train was actually very bad. It smelt like instead of ferrying tourists, the scenic train has been ferrying salted fish. The muskiness was so bad it's a good thing that the windows were opened. We wished the train would go faster then at least there's some good ventilation in the belly of the slow poke train. After being excited having the whole train to ourselves, we became bored.
There were so many people queuing to board this scenic ride. Then, we started to speak our thoughts out loud. We refused to get off the train and join the queue to board the train to take us back to where we started. And we have no strength to walk all the way up and elbowed our way around with so many people who were busy moving one step and stopping to take multiple photos then walked another one step and stop. It was too tiring for the uphill climb.
Some blurry moving photos that I took. It was really boring that I didn't bother to set the manual option properly. I just took one and tried to enjoy the scenic ride. There were trees and more humans, trees and more and more humans. More humans... and humans... and humans....
Finally, when we arrived at the station, Pinky went down to speak to the conductor regarding our plight not to join the crowd to purchase our tickets. While she went away, mi mama and I stayed in the train. I muttered a short prayer that Pinky would find favour in the eyes of the conductor. Prayer answered within a few minutes. We were allowed to purchase the tickets directly and before they released a sea of humans into the train for the ride up, we had the opportunity to take as many photos of us and the red train as we wanted.
We hugged the train, touched the train and did all sorts of funny things with the train. When the humans started to fill up the belly of the coaches, we went to take our seats. I think we gave up our seats for the children and elderly. Such is the way in Taiwan. Give up your seats~! But not so in Hong Kong and China. The Hongkies are not courteous at all... not courteous at all... even in China some passengers would get up and gave their seats to the elderly but not Hongkies.... I'll tell you when I meet one in future who would gave up the seat for mi mama, I will rejoice about it~!
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