But as soon as you reach the foot of the mountain range you are in a very different place. The flat populated plains change to precipitous forested ranges. The mountains are sliced by deeply cut valleys created by typhoon fed rivers.

The brief two months of Southern Taiwan’s mild winter have now past. In a few weeks the tropical rains will start and the stifling humidity will have people searching for cool relief. These last two years we have found that relief in the many pools and waterfalls accessible along the mountain range. Here are some of our favorites and directions on how to find them.

Chingtang waterfall(欽堂瀑布). This is a gem of a spot. It is a short walk up an overgrown and rock fallen path off the Southern Cross Island highway at one of the last places you can reach the main river before the road rises above the river bed. It is not sign posted which makes it quiet and secluded. Of the 5 or so times we have stoppped we’ve always had the place to ourselves. Its great for a cool swim or a BBQ. Park on the side of the road opposite the huge rock scree. Use the Google map below to help find it.

The same waterfall immediately after a typhoon

Meiya waterfall (美雅) This is one of a number of waterfalls in the Maolin National Scenic area. Not ideal for swimming and the walk up to the waterfall itself requires some scrambling over rocks since the suspension bridge and path was washed away in a typhoon a couple of years ago. One of the bridge’s main pillars can be seen under the pile of rocks below.

On one of the two cold weekends a year it is worthwhile visiting the Duona hot springs (多納) deep inside the Maolin National Scenic Area. Though not glamorous, the half dozen concrete baths have varying temperatures and there is always a friendly crowd.

If the water is not too high, walk up river a little to find hot water seeping from the riverbed.

There are a couple of other waterfalls at Maolin like this one at Lovers Valley. Not so great for swimming though.

Dajin waterfall (大津瀑布) This is close to the Maolin National Scenic Area and a short climb up an incredibly wide and well made path. It is well signposted and quite popular.  China Post published a great article on Dajin waterfall last year.

Rainbow waterfall(彩虹瀑布) is an all day adventure to reach. Firstly you need to enter the Sandimen police check point which means you will require some ID and 10yuan along with a reason you wish to enter. This is probably the last roadside checkpoint police station that remains along the mountains. I wouldn’t be surprised if it too is closed down shortly.

Follow Pingtung county road 31 to the very end. Even through the narrow laned Dashe (大社) village. Be prepared to wait as the locals park and chat on the road and aren’t in any hurry to move along.

Follow the small narrow road to the point where you are comfortable you can still drive back then follow the track on foot until you reach the river bed. Follow the river bed until you find a waterfall. From the police station it is probably 40mins drive, 20 mins walk on the track then 30 mins walk up the river bed. Not ideal after rain as you need to wade across the river a few times. Great for seclusion, swimming or a BBQ. There are a number of other great waterfalls and trails inside the Sandimen area that are well worth visiting.

Liangshan waterfall (涼山瀑布) is actually a series of pools and waterfalls with a covered BBQ area and clean toilets. The main pool is mostly shallow and safe for kids. It is a great spot and very popular on the weekends. Make sure you walk the 20 minute path from the main swimming area to the large waterfall at the end. About halfway along the trail are a series of steps that lead down to a great little swimming hole.

Anping water hole (安平) This is our favorite local BBQ destination as it is the quickest and easiest to reach from Daliao and Kaohsiung. It has a great swimming area for kids with large flat shallow areas. It is reasonably popular but we always meet the nicest people there. One guy told me you can avoid paying the 50yuan parking fee by continuing along the road past the parking area and walking down a small path. I say pay the parking and enjoy the amenities. Well, those that remain after a typhoon in 2007!

Laiyi(來義) is another of our favorites. Follow the rough old road to the very end and pay the 50 yuan parking fee. Don’t stop at the beautiful pool immediately under the KTV slot machine station, unless you have a penchant for listening to woeful karaoke. Walk up river a little and stop by one of the many pools. We have occasionally seen river tracing groups here as the river is great for tracing.  China Post wrote on a waterfall immediately behind the closed police post in Laiyi though we have never visited it.

Nanhe river (南和) is yet another of our favorites. There is no waterfall and the river can be a bit rapid. But the point we visit is the joining of two rivers with a suspension bridge over the top. There are plenty of pools and places to BBQ.

Make use of the Google map to find your way. Be warned, the Pingtung county roads are windy and its very easy to get lost. It is worth noting that many of the places I describe above were found while getting lost trying to find something else!

View Larger Map

If you have any questions, suggestions or corrections please leave a comment.

But the majority of rubbish is recycled one way or another. Between recycle trucks, local recycle yards and old women collectors, nothing with any residual value is placed in the ground.

Six days a week the yellow rubbish truck winds its way through the lanes and streets playing The Maidens Prayer or Fur Elise in a distorted polyphonic ringtone. Upon the tune the whole neighborhood scuttle out of their homes with their bags of rubbish.

The truck has two barrels to collect food scraps. The meal of some happy (or unhappy) pigs somewhere.

Each Monday and Thursday a recycle truck follows close behind to collect paper, plastics, glass and metals.

I’m not sure when these musical trucks were introduced but I do recall the days when people would throw their rubbish into communal heaps where they were later collected. Though it can be inconvenient to make sure you reach the truck on time, it is far preferable than the old corner heaps.

There is a great recycle industry here that works through small local collection yards. There are 4 such yards within a short walk of our place. Here they pay by weight. Not a lot but enough that the twice-weekly recycle truck doesn’t collect that much.

They are messy places but interesting none-the-less. People busily break up and separate out the pieces.

They are sorted and recycled into something new.

Another part of the recycle chain are the old women and men who make a pittance living collecting and transporting stuff to these yards. Here a large hoard of rubbish sits by our road waiting to be sorted. Its been waiting a long time!

The end result is that Taiwan has a remarkable recycling record. There are however some things for which there is no recycle market. It is quite common to see old porcelain toilets and basins dumped on the roadsides and wastelands.

Perhaps more people should try recycling them like our relatives in Shanshang(山上).

There is such a huge range of fish, crustaceans and shellfish. Nothing it seems is left behind or wasted. Indeed, there is no bycatch from a Taiwanese fishing boat.

The dock area is used by fishermen to unwind their nets for repair. As you can see from the size of the final catcher these nets don’t let anything escape.

Occasionally there are large containers of small fish being weighed and freighted to become fish stock in something. They are not well chilled, have the smell of sitting in the sun and are already attracting flies. Something to think about next time you slurp some fish-ball soup.

Crabs of all sizes and shapes are for sale.

Shellfish too; nothing from the ocean is short of a Taiwanese recipe.

One of the changes I have noticed over the years is the increasing abundance of large open water fish such as tuna and swordfish. The efficiency with which these are harvested bodes badly for the world’s tuna fish stock. On our recent habour tour we saw as many as 15 of the Pacific tuna fleet in dock. These are huge boats along with there large tenders used to haul the nets around tuna schools. Also below a large supply and store vessel that runs with the fleet.

While sashimi is plentiful and cheap today I suspect that will not be case for much longer.

So while all the fish that are caught are efficiently used, fishermen are also very efficiently catching all the fish available. Admirable and shameful at the same time.

Out in the country side or mountains are the best place to find them. But you can also discover them in the city parks and household streets too. Like the giant grasshopper, wasp moth,weevil and water skimmer below.

Around dusk you are often drowned out by the piercing cicadas as they siren through the trees.

There are lots of different dragonflies too. My favourite is the red winged one but the big blue and red/black river ones are pretty special too.

Beetles are everywhere. All shapes, colours and sizes.

And lots of interesting caterpillars as well.

And here is an incredibly long earthworm we discovered on a rainy mountain road past Sandimen just recently. (I know. Earthworms aren’t insects!)

If you are interested in Taiwan insects here are some links you might enjoy.

• A range of interesting reference book at the useful Books from Taiwan
• An incredible photo collection of the huge variety of Insects in Taiwan
• The Daily Bubble Tea’s growing butterfly collection
• My small collection of insect in the photo gallery. It contains lots of butterflies that I skipped for this post.

If you click on any picture you should see a slide show of all the pictures in full resolution.

When I first arrived in 1989 Taiwan had just lifted martial law. Air raid drills were still common and the military had a very strong presence. You would often see movements of army vehicles and troops and there was a continual coastal watch. I remember being moved off the beach one evening by a couple of soldiers as well as being cautioned, though not badly, for taking photos of the Kaohsiung harbour entrance.

There are still plenty of signs of the military. With a two year national service for all men and an incredibly dispersed military infrastructure no one travels far without seeing an army base or a young uniformed soldier.

But even that is changing. The army may soon be voluntary, the newly elected KMT are making wishful overtures of conciliation with China and military spending has been stalled as the two sides of government bicker over Tiawan’s future.

Koahsiung harbour is Taiwan’s largest ocean port. It was well fortified during the Qing Dynasty, briefly coveted by the Dutch and English, occupied by the Japanese and then concrete reinforced by the Nationalists.

A few favourites of the Nationalist era were a string of coastal lookouts and pill boxes. Every bridge and major rail route had small fortified checkpoints. You can occasionally see the remnants of these today.

Like many in Taiwan we live close to a military base. This is a large area that today is more often used by elderly gardeners and hikers. They weed and shuffle between old tanks, overgrown razor wire, trenches and spent mortar casings.

The future of Taiwan is no more certain today than it was 60 years ago. But hopefully that future will be shaped by diplomacy and strong international economics rather than the military concrete and iron of the past.

It seems that each essential service is responsible for connecting to any new development. And these services typically run down the middle of the road. Most streets are a patchwork of different service entry scars, even the recently paved ones.

A road not far from us is having high speed data cables excavated into it on both sides. Apart from the disruption to traffic, the final surface now has motor scooter hazardous bumps all over it.

During digging they cover the trench with large steel plates. These were always recycled ship hulls but more often these days appear to be raw steel plate. In the 60′s Kaohsiung had a large ship dismantling industry and old ship steel can be found quite often around Kaohsiung.

Here in Fengshan not far from us a major works is under-way that has consumed half the road and part of the intersection. The adjacent clothing store make good of a inconvenient situation.

The Koahsiung-Pingtung bridge over the Goaping river is having two new sections added. A span of the current bridge apparently collapsed a few years ago. They started building the new bridge then ran out of funds and construction halted for a year or so. It is now proceeding quite fast and should be complete soon.

And here the road-side mannequin with articulated arms warns motorists to slowdown. I suspect he is as effective as a real person and no-one takes any notice.

Update:

The road badly repaired after being excavated down both sides was resurfaced in June 2008. They smoothed out all the bumps and now make motorscootering as easy as prior to the roadworks. (Picture below)

Ma Ying-jeou and running mate on the left. KMT, red and blue, number (2). Frank Shieh and running mate on the right. DPP, green, number(1)

The voting was very well organised. The rules have been honed over the last 3 elections and now make for an incredibly smooth process. There is no campaigning allowed on election day. No overt display of campaign material within 30 metres of the ballot area. There were lots of police officers and volunteers to help out. The venue was the local school. Also, no photos inside the voting room.

And the result was quick to come through. Once public announcement was allowed all television stations showed a running tally. By 5pm the outcome was pretty clear. KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou, (2) will be president of Taiwan for the next four years. A result the majority of people in Taiwan are, by implication, happy with.

I wandered to the local DPP office, (green incumbent party, now opposition) to see how the die-hard supporters were taking the result. Pretty subdued actually.

Though there is a lot at stake with the outcome of this election, there is a lot to be very positive about. Recent changes to the legislature and terms of office will ensure a more stable and less partisan politicking. Politics in Taiwan has been hamstrung by the extreme partisan nature of the opposing parties. Unfortunately the party bickering was the reason there were two referendum questions rather than one. And also why so many voters boycotted both referendum questions and without the required 50% threshold of voters, they were declared failed.

If you are particularly interested in the outcome or commentary on the results please check these links.

• Taiwan Matters. A group blog on politics in Taiwan.
• Taipei Times election results
• A View from Taiwan Taiwan’s die-hard green blogger.
• Thirsty Ghosts A great analysis on the two referendum questions.

The open-air switchboard of a street-side food store. Here the free form wiring is starkly contrasted by the accumulation of cooking oil and street dust.

Above our kitchen sink is an added power point. It is a classic homespun addition. The extension wire consists of two short pieces joined together with colour-coordinated insulation tape. Notice the 5 degree to vertical slant on the wall enclosure. Very artistic.

At the barbers where I get my haircut a single extension lead wanders across to roof to power the fan, lights and a dangling lead is used to connect the cutters.

The local fish markets where each vendor is responsible for the space above and below their stand. Better to stick to the fishing I think.

Now here is a real Christmas tree of connections. Inside the heaven and hell exhibit at a temple. This hell-like connection is in the heaven section.

Inside a railway carriage at a children’s festival electrical power and an extra electrical appliance were hastily added to this converted railway carriage. No power plug available? No problem, just insert the wires directly. That should do it.

In a large clothing store there was obviously not quite enough light in this section. The solution, some fencing wire, florescent fixtures and some conduit. Seven fixtures are held up by a single wire strand above these shoppers heads.

When I was in Koahsiung in 1989 there was a major building fire somewhere in the city almost every week. Though fires don’t seem as regular now, wirings such as these always present a hazard.

At one end of the spectrum are the pampered poodles. These are the lap dogs you see groomed, scented, clothed and sometimes even with a colour wash. There are plenty of this category here in Taiwan. You see them with their owners almost everywhere you go. These are the lucky dogs of Taiwan.

Then there are the dogs who wound up with owners that just don’t care or don’t know how to care for them.

One such dog lives next door to us. I caught him here in front of his cage during his monthly wash. For the rest of the month he is caged at the back of the garage and keeps fit by barking; He is a fit dog! I do not know what purpose this dog exists for our neighbours. If it were for play, work, security or even eating I could understand. But it simply eats, barks and defecates.

One of the problems is that there seems to be very little public policing of stray dogs. It is common to find a small pack of mangy stray dogs living off street scraps. There is certainly no local registration of dogs.

There are common old black dogs and the mottled local dog as well.

But to see a good variety of cared for dogs you need to go to the Cultural Centre park in Kaohsiung on a Sunday afternoon. Here you will find pedigree dogs and proud owners strutting their stuff.

And dogs doing what dogs will do.

For more dog photos visit the Cats and Dogs album in the photos section.

If you click on any picture you should see a slide show of all the pictures in full resolution.