Lærdal Tunnel

To get to the church from where we were there were two options: either go over the mountains or go through the mountains. But with Princess Cruises we didn’t have to choose; there was no splitting of passengers into the group that wanted to go underground and the group that wanted to go over the top and the group that didn’t really care so long as a decision was made and they were back on the cruise ship in time for pre-dinner snacking at the buffet; no fights to the death or passionate arguments about the virtues of one route over another. We could do both. Our excursion would take us over the mountains on the way back but our journey to Borgund would go through them and that involved a trip through the Lærdal Tunnel, the longest road tunnel in the world. When we’re travelling we always like to try to do something that is the longest or highest or oldest or largest, etc. and this was it for us on this holiday. The tunnel was 24.51 kilometres long with occasional breaks in the monotony of the road for more open, blue-lit, cave sections. We were told that these were to simulate daylight and provide something to keep drivers alert. I took some video so you can see for yourself just how alert it makes you feel too.

Borgund Stave Church

We arrived at Borgund under deep, grey skies and torrential rain. That’s Norwegian weather for you. It didn’t dampen our enthusiasm for the structure and it lent the area around the church an air of menace as befits most religious buildings. That is their primary purpose and don’t argue with me otherwise. The drenched, black wood of the church’s exterior, however, caused a few problems with getting decent photographs against the sky but even in silhouette form the stave church looked fantastic.

We’d been told in the coach on the trip through the tunnel that we couldn’t use flash photography inside the stave church and again, as the coach arrived at Borgund and a dedicated church guide welcomed us, we were reminded that the use of flash photography was not permitted. She then took us around the building before letting us inside where, again, we were reminded that photography of the inside of the church was fine – she would illuminate areas of the pitch black interior with her torch – so long as we didn’t use flash photography. I think you probably know where I’m going with this but I’ll say it anyway. Despite three very clear instructions in English to our English-speaking group of British and American people some self-entitled arses (older American people, naturally) started taking flash photos inside the church. The guide was too polite to say anything and I wish that I had at the time but my wife and I satisfied ourselves somewhat by standing in front of those who had taken flash photos when they went to take others. All accidentally, like. The photographs of Borgund stave church that I took, naturally, didn’t use flash because when you’re told not to then that’s what you do. It’s called respect.

We finished off our visit to Borgund stave church with a walk around its graveyard and a quick look at the nearby museum which was small but with some interesting historical objects inside. Our next stop would be Lærdal village.

Stegastein Lookout

The Stegastein Lookout is a viewing platform jutting out 30 metres from the cliff edge and situated 650 metres above sea level. I won’t lie: the name Stegastein really appealed to me. I think the combination of dinosaurs and robots from 2000 A.D. comics I read when I was younger just works well to make me instantly like a place. As luck would have it, though, the view was fabulous regardless of the awesome name although, as you can tell from the photos below, it was absolutely throwing it down with rain when we hit the location. I always find it amazing just how many people will stay on the bus in circumstances like that. We never do; rain can make for some truly atmospheric pictures and always helps with memories – “Do you remember that time we got utterly drenched stepping out onto that viewing platform?” – and in this case the sight of low cloud in the fjord valleys was breathtaking.

Aurlandsvangen

At Aurlandsvangen we had a short stop to wander around at our own leisure. Many people headed straight for the souvenir shops but we made our way instantly for the Vangen Church, the largest of the medieval stone churches in its county in Norway, having a free-standing, wooden, bell tower. It’s not that we don’t like buying souvenirs but when you have the choice between a historical monument and a store selling soft moose toys in red and blue jumpers we just find ourselves leaning in favour of the former option. We’re weird like that.

Outside the Aurlandsvangen church we braved the Norwegian drizzle for a little while longer, grabbing a final photo, but coming to the conclusion that there wasn’t a whole lot of things to see or do in this village. Of course, if soft moose toys in red and blue jumpers are your thing then you’re probably covered.

Our day trip concluded with a return to the ship at the village and cruise port of Flåm.

Grey skies blended with grey seas but the humidity and general strangeness of a reasonably quiet cruise past rocky islands and the man-made harbour area, coupled with the ghostly feeling accompanying the near-complete lack of seeing anyone else around made for a wonderful experience nonetheless.

You know you’re not far from the port when the pilot boat comes alongside the cruise ship to allow the local expert to guide the huge vessel to its dock.

Keelung is typical of the industrial ports that cruise ships tend to dock at because of their size. Cranes, containers, towers, warehouse buildings, and other ships and boats made up most of the view from the ship as it passed from the open sea into close proximity to the city. I don’t actually mind these views because there are lots of patterns and repetitive shapes that help to form decent imagery for photographs and I have a fondness for the raw power in brutalist design anyway which you tend to see in some form or another around the world in docks.

I liked the attempt to brighten up some of the industrial elements of the port with imagery, even if it didn’t quite bring the splash of colour that perhaps was intended with the decidedly grey conditions of the day on which we approached Keelung.

Coming in closer to the city of Keelung it was interesting to see the the modern buildings, dirty-looking from the dampness in the air and the grime from the industrial location, contrasted with the clean, bright yellows of the taxis and buses waiting for tourists, as well as the ancient temple structures on the hillsides around.

The commentary on the bus ride to this destination was particularly good, explaining not only the history of the place (it was the location of Iceland’s first parliament to limit the power of the country’s chieftains) but also the fascinating geology. We stopped several times so that we could look down on gaps along the road where the Earth’s crust was splitting apart or where large variations in the surface level were located.

The bus eventually took us to Almannagjá, where the land simply seemed to suddenly step up tens of metres in the middle of nowhere. There was a path that could be walked to a tourism information point at the top of the canyon and we were offered the option of walking it to meet the bus there or staying on the bus. As you might guess, we walked. Many people stayed on the bus and the perfectly understandable reason for that along with the lack of photos from the bus was because of the torrential rain that was coming down at the time. It was without a doubt the most rain I’ve ever been drenched by in my life and the photographs of the walk up the canyon in Þingvellir below do not do the conditions any justice at all; the water was running off my coat like a waterfall and it was all I could do to keep my camera just dry enough with a cloth every now and then to shoot any pictures at all (the LCD took days to get the moisture out).

In the previous part of this travelogue series (see: Taiwan: Northern Coast And Fushan Temple) I covered how Princess Cruises filled out this excursion by first taking us to a scenic viewing spot on the coastline, then stopping en route to Jiufen with a look at quite possibly the most garish temple on the planet, both of which were in constant, heavy, soaking-you-to-the-bone rain. Our look around the tourist hotspot, despite its altitude in the hills, did not escape the deluge.

We weren’t to be treated to a tour of Jiufen on this excursion. Instead, we were led by our guide to roughly the centre of the village and a general indication of what lie in each direction was given. Then, before we were let off the leash to explore on our own, we were taken to one of the many buildings now serving as a tea house. We were served green tea – a first experience for us and very nice indeed – but there was also coffee available because the tea house knew that Americans made up the bulk of our tour group and you know Americans! “Oh, what a lovely tea house. I love the wooden beams and the smells. Oh, those tea pots look amazing. This is all so quaint. Do you do coffee? I’ll have a coffee.”

 Our excellent tea consumed we had some free time to set off and wander around. Jiufen was only navigable on foot; the streets were narrow and often stepped, lined on either side by shops catering to visitors and locals with food stalls next to soap stalls and places selling souvenirs or antiques. In areas where the awnings and close buildings would blot out the already dingy light it felt like walking around at night. The darkness, the shop smells and noises and lights, and the ever-present rain tumbling out of the sky gave everything a Blade Runner feeling. We loved it.

We started off by heading towards the top of the former-mining village.

There was only one way to go from the uppermost reaches of Jiufen so, like the rain which had become a waterfall in several locations, we made our way back down into the bustling heart of the village. It became clear why there was no guided portion to this visit; the narrow streets would’ve made keeping everyone together and capable of hearing anything difficult enough, but there wasn’t a huge amount to see anyway. Shops, shops, and more shops. But don’t let that put you off if shops aren’t your thing. Jiufen has a feeling to it. It’s an experience just to be there, even if there’s not a lot to sate your thirst for knowledge.

We ate up all our allocated time completing a circuit of Jiufen, enjoying the views despite the weather, absorbing the atmosphere of the place, before starting on the downwards stretch towards the car park where our bus and the rest of our tour group would be waiting.

Jiufen is a wonderful place. There’s not a lot to do there but it’s worth visiting, it’s worth having some tea in a tea house, and we’d like to have some more time so that we could go on a food-tasting tour of the stalls through its many streets. You wouldn’t need to spend a long time here, but if you’re in the northern part of Taiwan then it’s a place that gets a big thumbs up from us.

You can imagine our sense of disappointment, therefore, when we opened up the curtains in our room early in the morning on our approach to Ha Long Bay to discover rain and total cloud cover greeting us. It’s a very humid area of the world so rain should probably be expected but we’ve generally been incredibly lucky with the weather when we’ve travelled and our Princess Patter guide delivered to our room the night before had indicated nothing of the sort for our second day ashore in Vietnam. We quickly realised, though, that we were still some way out from land and there was still some considerable time before we’d be able to leave the ship so we mixed a little bit of hope that the increasing strength of the sun would burn off the clouds tempered with the acceptance that even if it didn’t we’d just get wet and still enjoy the experience.

The cloud and rain washed out a lot of colour from the impressive seascape we cruised slowly through and the more distant limestone formations were little more than ghostly shadows. The slow cruising speed of Diamond Princess added to that ethereal calm feeling that the views imbued upon us. It’s arguable as to whether what we saw would have been more impressive had the sun been shining.

You can get a feel for the gentle speed our cruise ship was undertaking in this short bit of video (temporarily removed) taken from our balcony. You’ll also be able to hear the ship’s horn sounding and echoing back off those gorgeous islets in Ha Long Bay.

Something that surprised us was the number of other ships in the area. While we were the only cruise ship approaching Ha Long this turned out to be a busy stretch of water for cargo vessels; the region has traditionally mined a lot of coal although the economy is shifting towards tourism. We’d discover once we got to land that the water in and around the bay wasn’t particularly clean at all with evidence of both the past and present big industries at fault and it’s a place that in our opinion could really do with some tender loving care.

So while we wouldn’t want to swim in the waters around Ha Long Bay we could still enjoy the pleasing sights of the many islands and their many forms – small, tall, short, long – and it’s certainly worth visiting this part of Vietnam for that alone. Even better, as hoped, the heavier clouds started to thin noticeably as the populated land of the bay started to come more into view and the rain eased off first to a light spitting before stopping altogether.

Closer to shore it was the smaller boats and local fishing vessels in particular that became more apparent. For the most part they seemed indifferent to the approach of our huge cruise ship, even to the point of one of them needing a friendly blast of the ship’s horn as it made little attempt to move more than a few metres away from the advancing prow of Diamond Princess.

Visibility increased with the brightening sky and lack of rain and we began to see the various structures along Ha Long Bay. If you take a look at a map of Ha Long you’ll see that the mainland is split into two areas: West Ha Long (Bãi Cháy) connects to East Ha Long (Hong Gai) by a cable-stayed bridge. The bridge as well as the cable car and large wheel that formed part of the Dragon Park theme park were very obvious draws for the eyes. It is worth noting as you look at the following photos that the land mass on the right of the photos, East Ha Long, is where most things of interest for the casual visitor are located but it’s West Ha Long where the tender boats from the ship drop passengers ashore. A free shuttle bus crossing the bridge was provided by Princess Cruises.

We finally felt the gentle rumble as the anchor dropped and Diamond Princess came to a stop in Ha Long Bay. There then proceeded a short wait while very little happened – at least from what we could see from the starboard side of the ship where our balcony was located – and we spent the time simply observing the other ships at rest in the bay or setting out from the mainland on some business, tourist-based or otherwise. We also spotted a large white structure in the distance between some of the islets that we at first thought was another cruise ship or possibly some kind of super-expensive yacht. We’d later discover it was nothing of the sort.

The wait was for Vietnamese immigration officials to make their way onboard.

With the officials on the ship and everything set up to let people start leaving we then spotted a number of small, local boats making for midships along the starboard side of the ship. There was obviously some coordination between them as they seemed to be moving in formation at first but the resulting squeeze as they all came together alongside us was almost comical with its near-frantic pushing and jostling for position. We hadn’t been certain what the boats were initially but we soon guessed they must be for organised excursions around the islands.

We wouldn’t be boarding any of those boats, instead planning to go ashore by tender boat to do our own thing, and that is covered in the next post from Vietnam and Ha Long Bay.

Hahahahaha, no, no the rain didn’t stop at all. It just kept raining. And raining. Then raining a bit more just to remind us it was raining, in case we’d forgotten it was raining. Heavy drops in warm temperatures. So, so humid. We would spend the entire day drenched. But, you know what? We didn’t mind a bit. We were in Taiwan! Do you know how many people we knew had been to Taiwan? None! You’ll take rain in that situation.

Nanya Shore And Rock Formations

The northern coast of Taiwan has many scenic viewpoints along its shoreline, and it was to one of these, Nanya, roughly twenty kilometres along the coastal road running east from Keelung, that our Princess Cruises bus took us first in order to get out and take some photos if we wanted. Quite a few people on the bus didn’t want to get off on account of the aforementioned rain but most did, and we were among that mass. As you could have guessed from the fact that this post isn’t called Views Of Rocks Through A Rainy Bus Window.

The Nanya Rock Formations are considered a natural garden to the people of Taiwan. The geology of the region is sandstone, and the constant battering of the rock from the sea, from winds, and from monsoons that blow in has over the millenia sculpted the rocks into attractive, abstract shapes with holes and coloured stripes offering snapshots of different levels of hardness of the rock and oxidisation in the atmosphere when it was all first laid down.

Pareidolia. Human beings are wired to identify patterns in things and ascribe some definition or meaning to them even when it’s all natural, a result of physics, or just random. It’s why we see dogs in cloud formations. It’s why religion was invented. It’s why we dream. It’s why many of the weathered rocks in Nanya have been given names. It’s why the sandstone formation in the photo below looks like Pac-Man had an affair with a giant fish, the child of which, unwanted by either parent, left home to become a beachcomber, eking out a living selling flotsam and jetsam to tourists.

We didn’t stay too long at Nanya; ten or fifteen minutes to wander around and get soaked through to the underwear mostly. I’d never consider myself a landscape photographer, favouring architecture and people more often than not, but this northern Taiwanese coastline offers some spectacular, raw views if you’re that way inclined. There was something here for everyone, really: the sea, rough, carried in on a decent-strength wind to pound the rocks; the sandstone artwork, sculpted by nature and ready to be whatever you see in them; the hills and cliffs inland, covered in green, verdant, lush from the regional climate.

If you ever find yourself on a cruise ship excursion then there’s a chance that you’ll be on one in which a film crew will accompany you. The ships like to produce video mementos of cruises which we’ve always steered clear of based on the price, but it’s a shame that they don’t make these videos orderable years later because we’ve found as time has gone on that we wouldn’t have minded seeing some of the sights we’d missed or forgotten about. For this Taiwan excursion our bus was host to one of the ship’s video teams who would set up panning shots of the scenery and conduct short interviews with the local guides every time we stopped somewhere.

Fushan Temple, Jiufen

The village to which we were heading was called Jiufen (or Chiufen, according to the literature we had at the time) and our time there will be covered in the next post from this travelogue series in Taiwan. We would have one more short stop for photos before reaching the village itself, and that was on the walk to Jiufen from where the bus parked up.

The Fushan Temple was dedicated to the Earth God in Taoism, and if you’ve never heard of the Earth God in Taoism then welcome to the club. In fact, the Earth God is one of the minor deities in the religion, but since Jiufen grew from a late-nineteenth century gold rush you can also say that the Earth God that the inhabitants sought protection from was a miner deity too. Yes, I went there.

The exterior of the temple was covered in sculptures and reliefs of heroic and religious and historical figures, plus typically fantastical and representative creatures like dragons, all from a grey rock that contrasted acutely with the bright reds, golds, and blues painted and lacquered over the flatter surfaces. The detail in the faces was exquisite, reflecting a lot of skill and local wealth from the mining operations.

The interior of the temple, however, was something we weren’t prepared for. Calm, peaceful reflection was not the theme here. Barbara Cartland would have loved this place, and if you’ve got a fondness for pink that knows no bounds too then you’d probably feel at home as well. Personally, phrases like “explosion in a bubble gum factory” and “remember, don’t visit here while on LSD” flew through my mind.

Anyway, feast your eyeballs on this subjective beauty.

That concluded the bits of our excursion prior to the main reason for picking this trip. In the next post you can take a look around the place that’s been claimed is the inspiration for the animation classic, Spirited Away, Jiufen.

When you travel to the Norwegian fjords you have to be prepared for any kind of weather. You can’t be one of those people who hit Facebook groups and says “We’re going to Norway in June so what will the weather be like?” because nobody knows. You can only hope for the best, but prepare for the somewhat less good than that.

It was raining in Skjolden. Some of that rain was coming from the clouds above us, but some seemed to be coming from the clouds that had decided it was nicer down near the water and had descended to save themselves some time and effort in getting people damp. That’s laziness from the clouds, but it did make for some interesting scenic views, even if they weren’t the ones we might have wanted.

We particularly enjoyed the views from the top deck as we came back from breakfast, not of Skjolden itself, but of the fjords around the ship and the way the clouds pushed fingers of themselves around the landscape. Something delightfully mildly threatening about it all.

Our day in the port of Skjolden was one with an excursion booked. We like excursions and will almost always book one if it’s our first time anywhere, and that was certainly the case here.

Our trip would eventually take us far from the fjords towards Lom, and the route would lead up over mountain passes, quite some height up. To break up the journey we had a few stops for photos on the way. While it’s true that you can’t guarantee the weather in Norway, you can at least guarantee some stunning views and old, impressive landscapes, and…

Ah.

The first stop was at the Nedre Oscarshaug Viewpoint. Perhaps on a clear day it would be a place from where you could see for tens of kilometres and bask in the sense of scale of the world around and your smallness within it. We simply got up and personal with more cloud. Many people didn’t bother getting off the tour bus, but I’m pleased to say that the majority of us laughed and headed outside for that chilly, drizzly experience you can see in the photographs below. There was a lovely dullness to the sound; the cloud really smothered the ambient noises.

A more interesting photo stop on the drive from Skjolden to Lom occurred next, both in terms of what could be seen and in terms of what the place represented.

In March 1813, six men with ages ranging from 20 to 57 from the Boverdalen valley, along with horses, tried to cross the mountains in search of grain. They didn’t succeed and succumbed to death by freezing. Memorial stones were erected at the Mefjell crossing for them.

The highest point of this mountain pass in Norway is almost one and half kilometres and we were still seeing snow and packed ice on the ground in late June, so it’s not hard to imagine what those men were facing towards the end of winter two centuries earlier. Arguably, the low visibility and quiet, chilled air lent this point of interest even more solemnity than it already had. The Mefjell Crossing Memorial Stones proved to be a very poignant stop on this excursion.

In the next post in this travelogue series we’ll continue through Lom to see a stave church, museum, and controversial column.