Taiwan: Day 7 and 8 (Taipei!)

Here it is, my friends: the end of this endless journey through Taiwan. David and I had planned to spend our last night (Friday) in Taiwan's capital city in order to visit the LDS temple there and to be closer to the airport for our Saturday evening departure. We rolled into the city around 2 o'clock in the afternoon and checked into the Cosmos Hotel which was situated smack dab in the center of Taipei, next to the Taipei Main Station.

It was a nice hotel, our rooms were clean and comfortable, though a bit on the small side, but perfect for our one night stay. My biggest complaint was that even though we'd had access to several English channels at our hotels in Yuanlin and Sun Moon Lake, our hotel in Taipei had about 3 English channels. Go figure.

This is the busy city street our hotel was located on. After freshening up a bit, David and I walked over to McDonalds to enjoy a nice lunch. (Have I ever mentioned my all-consuming love for potatoes? French fries are like manna from heaven to me.) We hadn't really intended to do much sight-seeing in Taipei, but it was still light enough outside to venture out to see Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, just a short walk from our hotel.

I wasn't expecting the area to be as large and grandiose as it was. But it sure was pretty. Here is the ceremonial gateway leading to the complex.

Inside the large park and memorial is the National Theater and the National Concert Hall.

I don't remember which is which. Oh well.

At the center of it all, is this monument to Taiwan's erstwhile leader Chiang Kai-shek. (Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan from China when Mao and his forces gained control. Chiang then instituted marital law in Taiwan and ruled Taiwan with an iron fist as he plotted to take back China. He died in Taiwan in 1975). Taiwan, obviously, has a bit of a love/hate relationship with the man and they attempted to rename this memorial the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall but it was reversed last year. Taiwan also considers themselves an independent nation, but China has other things to say about that.

Here's the view of the entire complex from the top of the stairs of the memorial. There are guards inside, standing watch over the statue of Chiang Kai-shek and at 5 o'clock, while we were there, they had a changing of the guards ceremony and marched toward the center of the square to lower the flags.

Inside the memorial are several floors of exhibition and gallery space which we wandered through aimlessly before heading back to our hotel. We then decided to head to the Shilin Night Market to check out their wares.

Night markets are a big thing in Asian countries and a maze of alleyways and side streets are filled with things to buy and eat. We wandered through many different areas, selling anything from socks, clothes, purses, street foods, and puppies. (Yes, there was a whole section of pet stores.) There were even some arcade games available to play. We walked through the night market for quite some time, but didn't find anything worth purchasing. (I had really wanted to buy a wok in Taiwan, but we didn't pass by any housewares, just lots of clothing and hair accessories.)

We were quite hungry by this time and after wandering through rows and rows of food stalls, David eventually decided on some chicken meal that he liked while I could only turn up my nose. So on our way back to our hotel, I stopped at McDonald's for the second time that day. Even though I've seen Super Size Me, I still wanted more McDonald's again. But I'm here to tell you that it's never a good idea to eat there twice in one day. (But French Fries! They call to me.)

The next day, Saturday, was our last day in Taiwan. We planned to check out of our hotel in the morning and get to the temple to attend the 10 a.m. session. But between packing our bags, eating our breakfast and checking out, we were missed our window of opportunity. The next session wasn't until 1 p.m. so we had a few hours to kill. I suggested that we drive to Taipei 101, formerly the world's tallest building. (Stupid Dubai.) It wasn't very far away and I love big, beautiful architectural masterpieces.
It really is a stunning building. It's designed to look like a stalk of bamboo. There are offices in there, obviously, but there's also a large and fancy mall as well.

By this time, it was just a little after 10 a.m. and the mall hadn't opened yet and so the whole place was deserted. But the observation deck at the top of the building was open already (the ticket booth is in the mall) and after debating whether or not we wanted to pay that much money to ride an elevator 90 stories, we finally decided that we would. (I seem to remember that the tickets were in the neighborhood of $12 each.) I'm so glad that we decided to go up.

The views from the observation deck were extraordinary, like seeing this rainbow over Taiwan.

It really is amazing to be so high up in the sky and to see so much of a city. Luckily, the recent rains had cleared the skies giving us clear views and it was still early enough in the day that the deck was not very crowded. You receive an audio guide for free (in English) which then takes you through the construction and history of the building. We were also able to go up to the open-air observation deck which is only open on certain days. It really was really cool. And money well-spent, in my opinion.

After spending about an hour at the top of the building, we took the elevator down to ground level. We still had some time, so we went down to the food court to eat some lunch before heading to the temple. David ate more Chinese food, while I ate Subway. (I eat a lot of Subway these days.) We left with what I thought was plenty of time to get to the temple in time for the 1 o'clock session. After all, the temple was only a mile away from Taipei 101.

It took us 45 minutes. There was a lot of construction on the main road that we were trying to take and we somehow got stuck in a bus lane going the right direction while the rest of the traffic was going in the opposite direction. So there was no way we could exit the bus lane without risking life and limb, which we finally attempted to do, but we still arrived at the temple a few minutes past 1 p.m. We'd have to wait until the 2 p.m. session. I was quite anxious by this time because a) I hate traffic and have no patience for it and b) the 2 p.m. session would mean we'd get out of the temple around 4 p.m. which would make it impossible for us to get to the airport by 4:30 p.m. (when we needed to return our rental car or be charged for an extra day) and put us on a tight schedule for our 6:50 p.m. departure.

But we decided to go ahead and risk it and so we parked and decided to wait outside the tiny temple until the next session started. As fate would have it, as we came out of the big stake center next door, we saw Shuqi and Aaron sitting on a low wall in front of the temple. They had come from Yuanlin (about a 2 hour drive) for the 1 p.m. session but they had arrived too late as well. We waited together until it was time to go in for the 2 o'clock session.

I was very lucky to have Shuqi with me because she was able to help me rent my clothes and get everything I needed, which I don't think I could have done without her. Although it stressed me out, it really was a blessing that we didn't make the 1 o'clock. It's always so nice to have friends with you in the temple.

After the session was over, David and I quickly got this photograph of us with Aaron and Shuqi in front of the temple, said our hasty good-byes and high-tailed it to our car. We luckily found a quick way out of the city (the Taipei airport is about 45 minutes away from the city) and were on our way to the airport. We ended up taking surface streets to the airport, instead of the quicker freeway (we got off on the wrong exit) but we still managed to make it to the airport by 5 p.m. (we luckily did not get charged for another day on our rental) and checked in with plenty of time.

While I was quite happy to be heading home to Seoul, David was very sad to be leaving Taiwan, as demonstrated by his very, very sad face. He called all his friends one last time from a pay phone to thank them for hanging out with us (and often, for paying for our food too) and we were finally able to board our flight.

While the Korean flight attendants on our Korean Air flight were later serving our dinners, they spoke to David in Korean. And David had to ask them to repeat themselves about 3 times. Apparently, one week was all that it took to make David forget Korean and embrace Chinese completely. (But he's always preferred Chinese.) His Korean has slowly come back but he still misses Taiwan a lot.

I have to say that Taiwan is a beautiful country filled with very friendly people. I think it almost ruined Korea for me. Seoul is a rather uninspiring city. There are very few architectural and historic wonders and the city lacks a lot in aesthetic beauty. After the ravages of the Korean War, Seoul re-built itself very quickly and it just didn't have time to plan a beautiful capital city. It went for quick, utilitarian buildings and a boring sameness to their designs. There are pockets of beauty to be found, but Taipei reminded me what a real capital city should be like: wide avenues, parks, monuments and memorials, theaters and beauty. The thing that Seoul lacks the most is a feeling of history. Too many of their palaces and buildings were destroyed either by the Japanese or during the war and they lost a great deal of their history. Koreans spend all their time looking toward the future and very little time remembering their past. And though they have massive amounts of pride in their country, they always seem to want to be something that they are not (American, for example) and their entire culture is entirely focused on getting ahead and being the best. But the Taiwanese were more relaxed, much more easy-going and infinitely more friendly. But I think once we leave Seoul, we might discover a very different Korea.

Taiwan: Day 6 and 7 (Sun Moon Lake and Puli)

I know what you're thinking. I'm thinking the same thing. She's still not done talking about Taiwan?!? I know, I know. I've been a huge blog slacker and I have things I want to talk about that are not related to Taiwan but if I don't chronicle our vacation here, it'll never get done so I'm going to push through and finish our trip to Taiwan as quickly as possible.....that is, if I can still remember what we actually did.

We drove to Sun Moon Lake on Wednesday night, checked into the Full House Resort Hotel, and woke up Thursday morning, prepared to enjoy the beauty and scenery of Taiwan's most famous tourist spot. After eating a normal breakfast at our hotel (eggs, ham, and toast), we decided to drive around the lake and stop at any interesting spots along the way.

Our first stop was the Tutingzai Trail, a short trail that led through forest to the water's edge, and Taiwan's tiniest lighthouse. (Not as impressive as it sounds.)

This was the trail. Luckily, we were the only people on it. Along the trail, they had signs which explained some aspects of Thao culture.

After that brief excursion, our next stop was Syuanzang and Syuanguang Temples, nestled on mountain outlooks that offered a beautiful view of the lake.

That tiny little island in the center of the lake is called Lalu island.


Self-timers on cameras are a wonderful things. Otherwise, David and I would have no pictures of ourselves together.

Again, a view of the lake (and us). It had rained during the night (hence why it's so gray and overcast) but it was still a nice day and we were luckily spared from any residual rainfall.

At yet another stop, we saw more statues of the zodiac beasts (tiger, dragon, rabbit, monkey, etc.) and this sign which apparently says Sun Moon Lake in Chinese. All I know is that many people were trying to snap pictures of themselves next to this rock.

There wasn't much else there besides the statues and rocks and so we kept on driving. We'd already seen half the lake that morning and I certainly hoped that the other side of the lake would have more to entertain us with, otherwise it was going to be a short day.

This is near the village of Shueishe at the Longfong Temple. I'll probably get this wrong (since David is the Chinese-speaker in our family) but longfong means twins and is often represented by the dragon (above) and the phoenix (below).


Our next stop was Wunwu Temple, a very large and beautiful Buddhist temple that, again, offered great views of the lake. David was right when he said that after awhile all Buddhist temples would begin to look alike, but the Wunwu was a very interesting temple and probably my second favorite that we visited, after the one in Lukang.


The steps leading up the main entrance of the temple.

There were a ton of these golden balls hanging all around the temple. I believe they are used as a way to represent a wish or a prayer. I really liked them and so David asked one of the workers at the temple if we could buy one to keep even though we are not Buddhist and they kindly agreed. Now it's going to be an ornament on next year's Christmas tree. David and I like to collect ornaments from all the places we've visited and we hadn't found one in Taiwan yet so this was the perfect solution.

One of the cool things about this temple is that you could climb to the roof of one of the buildings to look out over the lake.

A man visiting from China took this picture for us. When he asked David how he came to speak Chinese, he explained that he was had been a missionary for the LDS Church in Taiwan and the Chinese man nodded his head and said, "Oh yes, the Mormons." We were both a bit excited that the Chinese are growing more aware of our religion even though we're not allowed to actively proselytize in their country......yet. But soon enough, I hope.


On our way back to our car, we passed this tour bus (one of many) but which I had to take a picture of because of all the tours I'd want to be a part of, it would definitely be the Cat's Family. Also, the cat looks like Suyom (who was I missing quite a bit by this point, crazy beast).

Wunwu was our last stop before heading back to our village and hotel. It didn't make for a very long day (we arrived home around 3 or 4pm) and we had no idea what to do with ourselves for the remainder of the day.

We walked around the little village and the docks but that only held our interest for so long before we returned to our room and started to watch one of the four English channels available to us. I ended up falling asleep at 8 o'clock that night and slept for a whole 12 hours. But hey, that's what vacations are for, right?

The next morning (Friday), we checked out of our cute little hotel, and drove to Puli to visit the Chung Tai Chan Montasery, a behemoth building tucked into a mountainside devoted to the study of Buddha.

Part of the monastery and the pretty pond beside it.

When David was a missionary in Taiwan, some missionaries got in good with some Buddhist monks and they were able to tour the entire building. But most visitors--like us--only get to see the first two floors which are mainly filled with various statues of Buddha and the history of Buddhism.


There's a museum next to the monastery as well, but we opted to not go in.

Inside the main entrance hall are four massive statues with four heads each that guard the entrance. We had a brief tour from a nice volunteer. Unfortunately, she only spoke Chinese so David had to translate for me.

After our visit to the Monastery was over, we got back into the car to head to our final destination, Taipei. Those exciting adventures--and the end of this dang trip--will be the last post.....hopefully coming up soon.

Taiwan: Day 5 (Lukang)

These Taiwan blog posts are boring even me (hence why it's taking me so long to post each one) but I want to document our trip so we don't forget everything we did. You can skip over the boring parts.

Wednesday dawned damp and rainy, the perfect weather for our trip to an old historic town in which everything is outdoors. We checked out of our hotel in Yuan-lin (of our three hotels, it turned out to be our favorite hotel during our trip) and drove about 45 minutes north to Lukang, another town in which David had served in for a short while. Lukang is home to some of Taiwan's oldest and most famous Buddhist temples and is also known for its old historic district filled with artisans keeping alive many old Asian crafts.

Our first stop was to Matsu Temple (also called Tianhou Gong), an old wooden temple built in the 1600's (according to the few sketchy sources I could find) and renovated in 1936. David promised me that once I saw this temple, all others would seem boring by comparison and he was mostly right.

This is the inner courtyard with stairs leading up to more rooms (I don't know the purpose of most rooms in the temples) and a fountain full of koi.



I loved these circular doorways.

This is the memorial arch welcoming you to the temple.

Dragons are a common motif. Go figure.

The fountain.

Like any good Buddhist temple, there were lots of statues, lots of gold, and lots of burning incense.

After visiting the Matsu temple, David and I wandered around the town a bit, killing time until we were scheduled to meet his friend Suman (Susan) for lunch. I tried my first bing sha (basically a fruit slushie) and it was absolutely delicious. However, it made me very cold.

As we walked down the street, we came upon these two cats, chilling on someone's scooter.
Once we met up with Susan, we went into a very eclectic little restaurant which served an odd conglomeration of Asian, American, and Italian food. While David and Susan stuck with the Chinese food, I ordered what they called spaghetti but whose sauce had very little resemblance to tomato sauce. I was, unfortunately, not feeling so chipper by this point and so David and Susan had a nice long conversation in Chinese while I stared into space and dreamed of taking a nap.

By the time we left the restaurant, the rain had cleared up a bit, and we walked down an old artists' street, filled with old shops. David and I had walked down the street before, but most of the shops had been closed. Now that the rain had ceased, the shops were opening up.
The small street was full of interesting buildings with old wooden doors and locks. It was quite picturesque.

David and I had hoped that we'd be able to purchase a large Chinese fan in Lukang. While we did find a few fan shops, none had the large fans we were looking for. We did, however, happen upon one fan maker/artist who had a large board full of pictures of Mormon missionaries. I don't think that he was actually a member of the church, but a large group of missionaries had visited his fan shop and had brought him pictures of the various temples which he used as inspiration for some of the paintings he drew on his fans. He showed us a few with what I thought was the Taipei temple on them and even some with pictures of Jesus. If his fans hadn't been so costly (about $40 for a medium sized one), I might have purchased one of the smaller ones, but we have our heart set on a big fan to hang on our wall. I guess we'll just have to find one in China.

We did, however, end up purchasing a paper lantern at another shop. It has birds and purple flowers drawn on it, along with a bunch of Chinese characters but David has no idea what they say. He thinks it's a proverb or something. Once I take the lantern out of its box, and figure out where to hang it, I'll take a picture of it. I'm just too lazy to do it right now. (Also, it's late, and I need to be done with this post or I'll never finish documenting this trip.)

When I finally couldn't stand walking around anymore, David and I said our good-byes to Susan and headed back to our car. (I sound like such a spoil sport but I was really cranky by this point, having spent most of the day in the rain while dealing with some fun problems I won't document here.)

From Lukang, we drove east about an hour or so to Sun Moon Lake, a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains in the center of Taiwan. It's one of Taiwan's most famous and beautiful locations and huge tourist magnet. Luckily, we were hitting it at off-tourist time and we reached the lake just as the sun was setting. Sun Moon Lake has several very ritzy resorts (which we couldn't afford to stay at) but the majority of the hotels and restaurants congregate around two small outposts: Shuishe Village, at the northwest corner of the lake, and Itashao Village, which sits on the southeast corner. Our hotel, the Full House Resort Hotel, was located in Itashao Village, which is the smaller and more intimate of the two, and boasts a lot of stores dedicated to the arts and crafts of Taiwan's aboriginal natives, who mostly still reside in the mountains.

I was very excited to stay at our hotel, having read many favorable reviews and seen pictures of the absolutely gorgeous all-wood bed and breakfast. It was a small hotel, with just a hanful of rooms, with rustic charm and filled with the artwork of the owner's artist wife. It took us quite some time to actually find our hotel, since, it being off-tourist season, most of the roads in the village were in various states of disrepair and we couldn't take a direct route. We eventually found our hotel, sitting near the water's edge and went inside to check in. The hotel was just as gorgeous as I had pictured and I was excited to see our rooms, so imagine my surprise when they led us out of the hotel, up the hill, and into some little faraway little rooms that reminded me of the cabins we sometimes used to stay in during Girl's Camp. I was very disappointed.

David questioned why we were being stuck out in the boondocks and we learned that when we had made our online reservations, we had selected these rooms (being the cheapest). Luckily, they still had rooms available in the main house and so we were transferred to a room on the second floor with a deck facing the lake. After bringing in all our luggage, David and I walked around the small village and finding nothing we really wanted to eat, we bought two bowls of ramen noodles at the 7-11 and went back to our room to eat them while watching TV. (Luckily, there were 5 English channels which showed either news or a random assortment of movies.)
The exterior of the hotel. It had a lovely garden fulled with all sorts of animal statues, tables and candles which they lit at night. Unfortunately, it rained through much of our stay so no one ever ventured out. During the summer, this is probably a happening place.

A side view. I love all-wood buildings. They have such charm.

Our deck.

And then view from our room.

Inside the hotel, on the second floor. There were three floors. The first floor is the restaurant and cafe, and the second and third are the rooms.

While the hotel itself was beautiful and charming, the rooms were nothing special. The second night, a very large and noisy party checked in to the room right above us and since everything is wood, we heard every step and creak. The beds were hard (but all our beds in Taiwan were hard) and the bathroom left much to be desired, especially the too short tub and the shower head which was the perfect height for people under 5 feet. You know that scene in Elf where Buddy (Will Ferrell) is trying to take a shower in the North Pole and he has to splash water onto his face and shoulders? That's kind of what showering there was like (though the shower head was detachable).

Still, I enjoyed our stay in our hotel, if only because it was so peaceful, quiet and charming there. But best of all was our breakfast: two heart-shaped eggs with ham, toast and passionfruit juice. Real food is so good.

Up next: Our Day at Sun Moon Lake.

Taiwan: Days 3 and 4 (Monday and Tuesday)

Monday was an adventurous day for us though we certainly didn't intend for it to be so. We started out the morning by driving to Douliou, one of the small towns that David had served in on his mission. Apparently, Douliou is home to many crazy people, but we had no fun run-ins. We drove through the town, and stopped at the church building there and I was once again regaled with missionary stories (which is fun the first day, but after a week, it gets a little old :-).

We didn't really stop and explore in Douliou--not much to see anyway--so we decided to head elsewhere. I suggested we poke around the little mountain town of Rueili, which my tour book
described as a scenic little outpost famous for its fireflies, waterfalls, and hiking trails. None of the maps we had were very clear about how to actually get to Rueili, but we set off anyway, confident that it wouldn't be that difficult to find.

Well, we missed the road we should have taken for a direct shot at the town (which we wouldn't have seen anyway since we were on the highway, and the only way to access the road we really did need was from a local road) so we decided to head on to Alishan National Scenic Area and take the smaller country roads to reach Rueili from the back way. It sounded like a good plan at the time.

A short while into our trip, we stopped at Chukou, a small mountain town boasting a small Buddhist temple and a suspension bridge over a dried-out river bed. It was a picturesque place, so we decided to stop and check it out.

The little towns were always the most fun to stop in because we got lots of strange looks. Not many white people come through these parts, I'm sure.

We'd eaten a big breakfast that morning, and we weren't hungry yet but we bought some mountain apples at a roadside stand and bought a few snacks inside a 7-11 and then continued on our way.


The first hour of the journey was very scenic and beautiful as we climbed up twisty mountain roads. (Though not very pleasant on our stomachs as both David and I have a tendency to get carsick.)

Most of the land up in the mountains is used to grow tea. All those rows and rows of green bushes are all tea bushes and most people travel to this area to sample teas at various tea houses along the road to Alishan National Forest.

By this point, we'd been driving for awhile and had seen no signs for Rueili, so we contemplated just turning around. But David asked a few locals for directions and learned that the turn-off for the road to Rueili wasn't very far away so we decided to continue on our journey.

As we pressed on, the roads grew much more narrow and in some places, whole lanes had been washed away by recent heavy rain and landslides.

But even though we passed whole houses still sliding down mountains.....

.....and a strip of crushed buildings, we still didn't stop.

We had finally found the road to Rueili and seeing no indication that we couldn't still access the roads, we pressed on, though we saw fewer and fewer cars.

And then we came to this. The whole road was completely wiped out. And you know what? It still didn't stop us.

Because there were signs pointing to a small dirt road that promised access to Rueili. We'd come this far, it seemed like a shame to stop now. So down muddy dirt roads we went, climbing up and down mountains, driving through big muddy puddles and squeezing through impossibly narrow spots. Our rental car was not cut out for this kind of abuse. At one point, we took a wrong turn and ended up on some guy's chicken farm. We couldn't turn around so we had to back up the hill. I was growing more and more panicked (and hungry and cranky, since we hadn't stopped for lunch) and eventually we finally decided to admit defeat and turn around.

Our poor rental car after the journey out of the bowels of the mountain valleys. It wasn't a great car to begin with but it made a lot more noises after our off-roading adventure. It was about 2 p.m. when we turned around and started to make our long journey back to our hotel. We eventually made it back about two and a half hours later and I begged David to go to McDonald's for dinner since I wanted real food after our harrowing adventure. He kindly obliged. French fries have never tasted so good.

Tuesday, by comparison, was a much calmer day. After a relaxing morning, the Qiu family picked us up at our hotel to take us out to lunch. Brother Qiu, his wife, daughter, and a family friend took us to a Japanese restaurant in Yuan-lin. (The restaurant that they had originally wanted to take us to was closed on Tuesdays.) Brother Qiu was the Branch President in Yuan-lin when David served in that area eight years ago. They were incredibly nice and friendly people and we enjoyed our lunch immensely though I didn't get to partake in much of the conversation since only the daughter spoke much English.

The food--what I did eat--was quite delicious, though there was a lot a shrimp and fish heads mixed into things. Asians just fry up whole fish and eat it, bones and scales and all. I couldn't even handle all the tiny shrimp in the fried rice. Luckily there was fried rice with chicken as well. I eat a lot more seafood than I used to, but I can't eat it the way Asians do. Also, the Taiwanese don't drink anything with their meals, except for maybe tea, and they never drink cold water since they think it messes with their digestive systems.

After our lunch, David and I headed north to Taichung, the largest city in the area. David served in the Taichung Mission which comprised the central portion of Taiwan (there used to be 3 missions in Taiwan, but now there are only 2 so Taichung now includes all of the southern half of Taiwan). We drove to the mission home which is right next to a church building and a massive department store in central Taichung. Unfortunately, most of the missionaries were not in at the time, but we talked to one Senior Missionary married couple who were there and David bought some of their new language materials. He's very determined to keep his Chinese up.

After chatting with the Senior Missionaries for awhile, David and I went to check out this massive department store before we met another of David's friends for dinner. Kevin, who lives in Taichung, was a recent convert when David first served in Taichung. Luckily, he speaks great English so I actually got to participate in this conversation. Kevin took us to a "hot pot" restaurant. Basically, each person is given a pot of boiling broth and then you can select a variety of meats, vegetables, seafood, and noodles to boil in your pot. It was quite tasty. (Plus I'm always a fan of getting to cook my own food, especially meat, to my desired doneness, which is probably why I like Korean BBQ so much.) They even had "desserts" but Asians really don't like very sweet things and so their desserts always taste bland and flavorless to me. After a good meal, we said our good-byes to Kevin and headed back to Yuan-lin for our last night there.

Next up: the old town of Lukang and Sun Moon Lake.