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Saumen has been telling Hui-Chen and I about his old stomping grounds ever since we met him. He used to live in this community complex up on a mountain top in Yangmei, and today we decided to go up there and see it for ourselves, since we are in the market for a new place to live. Saumen is right - its a wonderful community with many amenities for fine living. The range of available homes is wide and the facilities are open to any resident, whether a home owner or temporary renter.

We are walking around the area where Saumen used to live.

This stairwell in the building across from Saumen’s old apartment offers quite a view of Yangmei and surrounding towns. Here Saumen is telling Hui-Chen about the temple behind this building.

This is the view from the rooftop. You can see quite far, as this mountain is roughly 350 meters high to begin with. Rooftop level is nearly 400 meters above sea level.

Another shot from the rooftop.

Saumen is pointing out some features of the area.

I was having a good time, hanging back watching these 2 talk about objects in the distance.

Cool animation, lol.

After we left Yangmei, we stopped by Laohukou (Old Hukou) on the way home.

In many ways, the Old Streets area of Laohukou reminded me of Dasi.

The one thing that bothered me was the unabashed commercial nature of the Old Streets area. It seemed to me that unlike Dasi (which certainly is commercial, too) there did not appear to be much sense of cultural preservation. I could be wrong and totally missed the point on this quick visit, but at least Dasi is known for woodworking and also for its famous togun. I’m not sure what Laohukou is known for, except being the place where the Hukou train station was not located.

Apparently this is a famous restaurant that is advertised on cable televsion in our area. It was closed.

That’s ok because we found this cool Hakka place.

The dish of the day was shark meat. Absolutely delicious, with scallions and a dash of red chilli pepper. It went down smooth with some Taiwan beer!

I leave you with one more photo of the Laohukou Old Streets area…. gleaming in the setting sun. Its worth a visit and we plan to go back there and spend more time, soon.

technorati tags:Taiwan, Yangmei, Laohukou, Hakka, Hui-Chen, thenhbushman, Saumen, Sharkmeat

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