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.

It was interesting to see just how much of the port hadn’t appeared to have changed at all in the intervening decade. This was quite a contrast with our previous port, Hong Kong, where we’d seen differences in the skyline almost immediately. The buildings we saw, the temple and statue on the hillside, and even the yellow taxis in the street were all instantly familiar. The only thing that was different was the weather. Gone was the rain that we’d been drenched by previously. Instead, we had a light layer of cloud and the imminent promise of that disappearing with a noticeably rising heat and almost-tangible humidity in the air.

We’d not just booked an excursion for our day in Taiwan, we’d booked as close to the same excursion as the last time we’d visited. With the omission of a stop along the coastline we would be repeating our 2008 trip to Jiufen, the reason being that we’d enjoyed it so much on the first occasion and we just didn’t feel the lure of a drive down to Taipei strong enough.

We boarded our bus at the appropriate time for the cruise excursion and set off on a winding course through Keelung, around the coastline, then up into the hills where the former mining village was situated, a journey of around half an hour. Our guide was Olivia and she provided a running commentary of the history of Jiufen and what we could expect to see on the way there with the promise of information pertaining more to Keelung and Taiwan in general on the way back.

Jiufen, as we already knew, was once a mining town built on the hillside. Its roads are for pedestrians only and are narrow, winding, and lined with shops these days. It is the assumed (though denied) inspiration for the excellent animated film Spirited Away. The roads are connected by long sets of steep steps and traffic passes around the town on similarly steep, winding roads with a number of car parking areas surrounding the main tourist attraction. Our bus parked north of Jiufen in a dedicated parking area for tourist buses which presented us with decent views over the land north of us and down towards the coastline as well as a sight of Jiufen itself climbing higher into the hillside to our south.

We gathered in the bus parking area long enough for several of the passengers we were travelling with to use the toilets there. From the parking area there was an almost straight-up route climbing steps into the heart of Jiufen and we were free to head that way on our own if we’d wanted to, having been given the time that we needed to meet back. However, if we had done that then we would have had to pay for our own trip to the tea house that would otherwise be included as part of the excursion, and with drinking tea in a tea house in Taiwan being one of the highlights of this trip we elected to stay with Olivia.

Rather than heading directly into the town we took a more circuitous route clockwise in order to make for the Fushan Temple, a place we remembered well. While the walk was uphill the going wasn’t too strenuous but with much of this trek requiring us to walk single file along the main road and wait for stragglers this took around fifteen minutes which did at least provide plenty of opportunity to fire off random shots along the way.

The increasing ambient temperature and prolonged exertion of ascending to the temple made our arrival there quite a relief and we hunted for shade as we first waited for everyone else to gather and then to listen to our guide talk about the holy place. The temple is Taoist and still in use and was dedicated to the Earth God, one of the least important gods in the religion but one to which the miners who used to live and work in the area had a lot of faith and used to pray to regularly in order to deliver new discoveries in the hills.

Inside the temple everything was as gloriously, gorgeously garish as we remembered. If you like the colour pink and your taste in worship is as far away from the Lutheran ideal as it’s possible to get then this is the temple for you. There was barely a flat surface in the building’s interior with decorations everywhere you looked. Although it would have been nice to take a closer look at some of the carvings there were people in the temple lighting incense and praying and we quietly and quickly took just a few photos before stepping back out into the sunshine.

In the next post from our day in Taiwan I’ll cover the narrow, curving alleys and the bustling life inside Jiufen itself.

It was nice to be able to see Keelung under better weather conditions than either we’d experienced in the morning or on our previous visit ten years earlier.

Keelung From The Top Deck

Until this point our visual experience of the port of Keelung had been all facing roughly eastwards as that was the direction our balcony looked out on. Heading up to the top deck gave us a chance to see the western side of the port which included some small passenger ship terminals, a ship alongside us, and a view of the hill in that direction on which there was a landmark sign reminding us which city we were in.

We became quite distracted looking down in the port basin alongside Diamond Princess as we noticed birds skimming slowly over the water’s surface then soaring around and repeating the task. They were clearly after food just below or on the surface but what really caught our attention was that they were raptors rather than seabirds and this was behaviour we hadn’t expected to see in birds of this type. It’s probably a very common act for them but I don’t know much about birds. A little investigation says that they’re most likely to be a Taiwan-specific family of black kites.

Following the top deck of the cruise ship around I took more photos of the more-familiar views of Keelung that we’d been able to see from our balcony. My excuse for taking as many photos as I do – not that I need one or that you care – is that the higher elevation of the shots and constantly changing light makes every shot different even if there’s little to immediately distinguish one from the other. I’m also immensely drawn to architecture and as much so whether that’s the ancient sort such as the prominent Zhupu Altar or modern buildings with their patterns of windows and repetitive structures creating geometric interest, both types of which we could see in this direction.

We continued our circuit of the top deck, snapping more photos of Keelung’s buildings. As we made our way forwards the most noticeable sight on the landscape surrounding the ship was the statue of Guanyin (the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion) in Zhongzheng Park. The statue is over twenty metres in height.

We started back down around midships and passed a very serene-looking main swimming pool devoid of anyone in or around it.

Our reason for heading down was to catch the afternoon trivia, something of a rarity for us on a port day as we’re most often ashore on a cruise excursion. I’m pleased to say that we won a bottle of fizz for the second time in three days. We would end up skipping the last formal night of the cruise in favour of room service, a few movies on demand, and our two alcoholic prizes a few days later.

Departure From Keelung

With everyone aboard Diamond Princess it was time to cast off and we spent this time out on our balcony. The sun dipping towards the horizon completely transformed the views of Keelung we had, casting warm light and long shadows across the buildings along the waterfront and the landmarks on the hills.

As our cruise ship started to make its slow northbound exit out of Keelung we passed a fair number of Taiwanese naval ships – American-design frigates for the most part – with some having been built specifically for Taiwan under licence and others being modified former US Navy vessels. We were reminded of our overnight cruise into Portsmouth of only one month earlier and passing by all the naval ships in our city as we arrived home.

The local pilot boat kept up the slow pace with us as we left the residential area of Keelung behind and passed the commercial outskirts lined with warehouses, cargo vessels, and large cranes for loading and unloading containers.

As the harbour entrance opened up we were treated to some lovely pastel colours in the evening sky with the sun having just dipped below the horizon on the port side of the ship. On one of the nearest bits of land there was an interesting tower with offsetting circular levels and beyond it, out to sea, we could see the pyramidal and clearly volcanic form of Keelung Islet, these days a tourist destination but formerly a military training spot and historically sacred, said to be haunted by a female ghost.

The final connection to the main island of Taiwan that we passed on the starboard side was a green navigation marker with which I spent far too long trying to time photos with its flash.

The wind had picked up quite a bit as we left the shelter of Keelung and the heat of the day had very quickly become a very cold wind of the post-sunset evening. There was just enough light left in the sky to make our parting rear view of Taiwan a very attractive one and we shivered ourselves back into our room to plan our evening’s entertainment.

Evening Aboard Diamond Princess

Our evening on Diamond Princess after leaving Taiwan turned out to be quite interesting. When we’d got into our room after our excursion in Jiufen there was a letter awaiting us in our room. On one of the previous days we’d noticed that somewhere around the promenade deck there had been a bit of a pong. It wasn’t nice but it was fleeting and we didn’t pay it too much attention until a few days after that when someone else mentioned that they knew people on the same deck as us, forward like us, but on the port side, who’d had the smell near their cabin for a few days. Again, we shrugged, said it was an occasional issue you could get from the vacuum toilet systems on cruise ships, and paid it no mind again. The letter, though, brought it all back because Princess admitted the smell was unacceptable and as a goodwill gesture was refunding cabins in the affected area $250 per person plus offering a 10% discount on any already-booked future cruise or any cruise booked within a couple of years. So, for something that hadn’t bothered us in the slightest we ended up with a hefty onboard credit plus the knowledge that we’d be getting a bargain on our next cruise too. The credit lasted right up until the Effy shop opened once the ship was out to sea and my wife spent it all on a black and white diamond necklace. Well, it was money we weren’t expecting.

Photos from a very acceptable dinner in the main dining room that evening.

We finished the night in Skywalkers, as is our way. On our arrival at the base of the escalator leading up to the club we were shocked to hear the sounds of lots of voices of people enjoying themselves, this being a completely unexpected thing on the ship. A typical night would involve maybe half a dozen of us sitting around, enjoying the music, enjoying the drinks, enjoying the occasional wander outside to stare at the night view from the aft of the ship, enjoying the exclusivity of the venue. In addition to the strange people there were plenty of decorations up and as we looked confused and concerned that we’d stumbled upon something we shouldn’t have a steward explained that this was the staff’s halloween party, mostly for the benefit of the show dancers as it turned out, but that it would be finishing right then so we’d be fine to take our normal seats and get drinks. We did so.

There then followed a battle between us and the DJ. He saw us and worriedly said he hadn’t realised that was the time and that he would stop. We then insisted he didn’t and that he let everyone carry on enjoying themselves because we were enjoying watching them. Oh no, I can’t do that. Oh yes, yes you can, we’re the passengers – the only passengers in this entire place – and you’re supposed to do what makes us happy. Thus it was that we managed to wring an additional half an hour’s entertainment out for the staff and for ourselves, fending off numerous attempts to get us (barely able to walk straight most of the time) to join them (professional dancers) on the floor. The video below (temporarily removed) shows off some of the synchronised fun we avoided taking part in, although my phone struggled to record the video very well in the venue.

That concluded our day in Taiwan. The following day would see us in Okinawa ahead of two sea days to bring this Asian cruise aboard Diamond Princess to an end.