I just finished winter break and will be starting book three tomorrow of Mandarin Chinese. I am happy to say I will have my teacher from the first semester again at 10:20 which is perfect because these next 10 weeks there are sign ups for students to join the dragon boat racing crew with morning practice from 6:30-7:30 and I plan to join. They plan on having three teams race at the end and I want to be on the water. I believe it will help with my judo too since they don't meet everyday and I don't get that intensive exercise often.
I want to share a selection of some of my favorite photos between myself and my 11 friends who went on vacation together to the middle section of Taiwan which has some of the most beautiful sights you will ever see. We had planned this trip for a good three days before leaving and when I went with a few friends two days before we planned to leave to buy our tickets to go from Taibei to Sun Moon Lake we found that buses were completely booked. So we instantly, reversed the trip route to the opposite order starting with Chiayi 嘉義 on Saturday morning at 9 am since no one seemed to be going in that direction and from Chiayi we worked our way back up to Taibei. From Chiayi we took another bus early Sunday to get to Alishan. Our plan had been to rent bikes and drive up there to see the sunrise over the mountain tops because the view is spectacular at dawn. It was a great thought but we were too tired from the night before at the night market and in the park. We had eaten dinner at our friends uncle's restaurant for a really good deal with a great assortment of food before going to the night market and the park. The park reminded me of home because it was so green and unlike most city parks. The only difference from home would be that there was a group of elderly people practicing their Taichi on a platform while kids were playing soccer. We were sitting on a hill hanging out and some kids came over to us and we started talking in Chinese. They ended up talking about Judo somehow which led to the boys daring one of their crew to compete against me. haha! They were funny because they were all scared and tried to act like tough guys by saying they weren't that good but that they weren't scared either. Nothing ended up happening with that. We ended up playing frisbee with the boys though for a bit until one of our friends' cousins drove over on their bike to bring us to a bar to hang out before getting ready for the next day.
We woke up around 5:30am on Sunday to take the bus up the mountains into Alishan 阿裡山 and it was a gorgeous ride. Everytime I opened my eyes from my nap I tried to take a picture or two of the tropical vegetation on the slopes. They reminded me of the Dominican Republic when I was in Naranjito. We had had unusually warm weather so far and as we climbed the mountain, I felt like bundling up. As I had prepared for the cold mountains, I had packed plenty of warm wear. But unfortunately I didn't use any or it for more than half the trip. At the top of the mountain the sun beat down and we all stripped down to t-shirts. The mountain of Alishan is known for it's spectacular mountain views and sea of clouds in the morning. Moreover, they have a famous train ride that takes you through the mountains but it was put out of service after the Typhoon that had hit Taiwan in the fall season so we had taken the bus instead. We did get to take another train once we got to the visitors center that led us to the top. We also got to take a hike through a trail of trees that put me into the elven wood in the Lord of the Rings. Some trees dated back to 2000 years old. They were all marked and some were named for their peculiar shapes.
From Alishan we thought we would have to take another bus back to Chiayi in order to work our way into the middle from the coast towards Sun Moon Lake. Their are no direct bus lines that go between the two. BUT we were 12 and just so happened to come across drivers doing their private business driving vans with groups of tourists. We were able to get a van from there straight to our hostel in Sun Moon Lake with out the round about bus route. Plus, the nice driver stopped for us to take pictures of 玉山 or Jade Mountain. It's the tallest Mountain in Taiwan and is taller than MT Fuji in Japan. We saw snow on the peaks of Jade Mountain and we passed several monkeys (Saruu in Japanese 猴子 in Chinese) chilling on the rocks around the side of the road.
We stayed in Sun Moon Lake 日月潭 for two nights and two full days. We visited the night market for our dinner and had breakfast at the hostel. The first morning we spent on bikes going around the lake. Again, none of us prepared for the hot weather so we found the bike riding to be really hard and hilly. We first went to see the famous pagoda beside the lake up on a huge hill and then from there we tried finding the pier where we could go kayaking. It just so happened that there were a ton of piers and the first one only had big tour boats. We asked about the others because the maps didn't mark out the one we wanted. We were told to go back around to the opposite side so after some debating we took our bikes on a hikers trail to make a short cut of the trip. As we started, many tourists shook their heads and said we couldn't do it. I asked them in Chinese if it we could get through or was it a just a matter of the intensity. They said we could pass through but we would be exhausted. They were right! I was dead exhausted but we made cut the bike trail in half by going that way. The boys helped the girls carry the bikes up the parts with stairs so we made it alright. We ended up going and returning the bikes to the hostel's bike stand and renting battery powered bikes instead that would last 24 hours. We had to change the bikes pretty often because they ran out of battery quick but it was worth the switch from bike riding. In this manner we found another pier were the captain 船長 refused to rent out her kayaks to use because of the 'waves' that were supposedly very dangerous from the tourist boats and offered to take us on a bigger boat. We ended up taking up her offer the next day although we thought we would do the kayaks since it would be more fun. It was still fun being on the boat but we all agreed that the Taiwanese are overly cautious in situations that we would never consider to be a problem. There were really no waves on the lake. We spent most of our time getting around the lake on the battery powered bikes and the only thing we didn't get to do that we wanted to was ride the fast gondolas up the mountains. It was fine though because we still got many scenic views from the Pagoda, Temple and the boat.
Tuesday afternoon we took taxis from Sun Moon Lake to Taizhong 台中 only because the taxis were about the same price as a bus and they would bring us to two spots in the city that we wanted to go see before taking a bus back to Taibei. At Taizhong we went to see the biggest Buddha in Taiwan and bigger than the one in Hong Kong. After quickly taking pictures of the grounds we got back in the taxis to go to the city and the biggest night market in Taiwan. At the night market we had an array of different foods for dinner. Walking from stall to stall trying each other's 點心 snacks. They have a plethora of new tastes in Taizhong that I haven't seen in Taibei. I tried black tea mixed with mango ice cream, shrimp flavored fried cakes, the usual favorite onion cake with bacon 蔥餅, fresh strawberries 草莓，flan, toast with chocolate filling etc. The night market at Sun Moon Lake also had great 小籠包 and 日式南瓜包 (Japanese Style squash with meat and cheese and spices in a bun)。 In fact I waited in a long line for the last one which was well worth the wait. It was fun trying so many new local foods for a cheap dinner. That pretty much ended our vacation as we took a bus from their to Taibei and home.
