On top of the world...

Looking down on creation, and the only explanation I can find... ok enough of the Carpenters for a while. Ni hao ma everyone! The reason for my title is very simple. Today we hiked up onto the top of the mountain (called monkey mountain by the locals) to get a good view of Kaohsiung by night. The entire experience was quite different from what I had expected. We packed light (water, mosquito repellant, camera etc) and met up with the hiking club at 7pm (Tristan, Andreas, David and I)... (Oh by the way, the sun goes down at 7pm here and after that its dark... yes dark... we had flashlights... but it was still freakin dark!). We set off in groups of about 8 and a grand total of about 30 people. The hike to the top was easy at first but quickly turned tricky as we were grapling and clinging onto vines and branches to get up the steep rock. The hike took about one hour and we broke every single recommendation about hiking according to the "lonely planet guide book". Tall grass, thin trails and complete darkness are the things to avoid the most as Taiwan houses 200,000 different types of snakes of which only 100,000 are poisonous (all of them deadly :D) Fortunatly there were no accidents though. Once at the top we admired the beautiful view and enjoyed some beijing grilled duck (with pancakes, sauce and spring onions) which was by far the best thing I have eaten in a long while. We also ate the rest of the ducks and as foreigners got the honours of the speciality... duck brains (tastes like bad paté). Alright we thought, were done, let's go... but no, for you see some of the happy campers had decided to carry guitars with them and we all sat down for a sing-song. Ofcourse the words were in chinese so we couldn't sing along but it was mostly along the lines of "cumbaya my lord". We were histarical with laughter (which we kept inside) as the wailing sounds from the not so musically gifted locals hit (and i mean hit) our eardrums. Finally we headed back down again for a cold shower.

All in all a great bit of excerise and a good time! I have some histarical videos from the sing-song which i will share with you when i get home to Finland.

We have now had two lessons in chinese and this is also a hilarious experience. To begin with we have to learn all the sounds and tones. This means we sit for two hours per day saying, a,aa,aaa,a,aaa,aa,aaa,ch,chi,cho,che,chee,shii,sh,shi and so on. This is great because sometimes we get it right and the teacher quickly draws stars on the board and says hen hao and claps and other times (the times you thought you got it right) she shakes her head and repeats the tone you thought you said. I have some great video fotage of her having a go at Martin, Vincent and Andreas in frustration :D. I think i am getting the hang of things quickly and i am picking up new words and phrases all the time. I also learned my name in chinese and learned how to spell it in characters. It is Shao bo te and it refers to a type of strong tree which indicates wisdom and a long life. I included a picture of the characters done very poorly in "paint". :D enjoy!

We have decided to head down to Kenting over the weekend (tropical paradise for snorkling and diving) which will most probably rock!