Fenchihu

We left Kenting National Park by ‘express’ bus back to Fangliao, where we bought tickets on the first train to Chiayi. This gave us about 90 minutes to relax, eat breakfast, and get on our train without any stress. The train ride north was good, though the scenery wasn’t as good as on the east coast. Once in Chiayi we bought our train tickets for the next day then checked into our hotel, which was directly across the road from the station. Then it was off to find an ATM to get some more cash, buy some food for the next few days, have a great hotpot dinner in a restaurant filled with locals (always a good sign), and that was it for Chiayi.

The next morning we walked across the road to the station to get our 0900 Alishan Forest Railway train to Fenchihu (or Fen Chi Hu or Fenqihu). This railway is a narrow gauge line built by the Japanese in 1912 for their logging operations. Today it is a tourist thing, but fun nonetheless. This is train travel as I like it; rocking and swaying accompanied by the rhythmic click clack of wheels over the gaps in the rails. We wound our way through the forest and several tunnels for just under 46 kilometres, often with trees brushing the sides of the carriages.

There were nine stops at stations along the way and at one point we made an unscheduled stop so the train crew could move a large rock off the line. The weather started as overcast then went through various stages of drizzle, heavy drizzle, and steady rain. After 2½ hours, and climbing from 30 m to 1,403 m above sea level, we arrived in Fenchihu. The train used to go up to Alishan, but a typhoon happened. We walked to our hostel at the Catholic Church, descending 50 m in the process.

Later on I had a chat with the priest, a nice Vietnamese chap. He has been in Fenchihu for 4½ years, and doesn’t know how long he will stay, that is up to the missionary society. He told me the christian/catholic churches in Taiwan have few parishioners, but he still holds mass every morning.

 

After some lunch we went to explore the village. We walked back to the station to have a look at the small museum there which includes two old steam locomotives. Continuing our wandering we found ourselves at the start of the ‘Cedar Forest Boardwalk’ so we decided to give it a go. It was great. The forest is beautiful and the mist made it very atmospheric. The walk took us in a big loop around the north and west of the village and almost back to our hostel.

The hostel is very basic but adequate, and a lot cheaper than anything else in the area (and certainly cheaper than Alishan). Our room came with a dehumidifier, which I had to empty several times; as good an indicator of the weather as any. We had arrived with the rain, which was a month late. The temperature dropped and it actually got a bit chilly (17° according to the thermometer), the coldest we have been in Taiwan.

The next morning we had steady rain. It didn’t look good for doing much, but after breakfast the rain stopped and the cloud lifted. Having spoken to the priest about some local hikes we headed off on a walk that took us through a bamboo forest. The walk, like the previous day, was over wooden boardwalks with countless stairs, except today we were accompanied by a local dog who wanted to be in my photos. The bamboo forest was fantastic. We walked through it in awe, following the boardwalk from the bamboo into the cedar forest. Along the way we saw a couple of sacred trees, the remains of a Japanese Shintu shrine, and a nice lookout overlooking the train station.

The boardwalk eventually brought us to the station, where we waited to watch the train arrive. Just before it did the weather closed in again, and as the train pulled up visibility quickly dropped to about 30 metres. So we headed back to the hostel to have lunch. It rained the rest of the day, although the visibility improved.

The weather was changeable during our stay. The cloud would come down and reduce visibility to 30 or 40 metres, then suddenly it would be gone. It could be raining one minute, drizzling the next, and then no precipitation would fall for a few hours. Despite the weather, we liked Fenchihu very much.

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