Bucket lists, all travelers have them. There are always those things you HAVE to do before you leave a place. You have to eat deep dish in Chicago, BBQ in KC, go to a game at Fenway in Boston, ect. Every city or country has them. Well, I checked off one near the top of my list this weekend. Sun Moon Lake is famous around the world for it's beauty and uniqueness. I was not disappointed.
I spent my first month in Taiwan trapped in the city, surrounded by concrete, breathing in scooter exhaust, smothered by people. (who all stare at me) I have loved it. Every day a new adventure, around every corner something I have never experienced before. But, I was getting a little claustrophobic. I dont have a scooter, or a phone. Taxis suck. I'm not confident enough in my Chinese skills to navigate the bus system. So the most nature I got was the drained pond at Chung Hsing University.
But this week, my roommate Nika asked me if I wanted to go to Sun Moon Lake with her and her students family from the year before. A free trip, with locals, to a destination high on my must-do list, umm Yes!
We left around 8am (very early considering the previous nights events) and headed to the mountains. I didn't really know what the plans were, and didn't really care. I was just along for the ride. We started at an Aboriginal village amusement park. Weird, i know. Imagine the renaissance festival merged with worlds of fun in the middle of a jungle/mountains. But it was very cool and extremely Taiwanese. Our first ride(after a bad "Damn Foreigner moment") was a free fall ride. We spun all the way to the top of a tower, where we got an incredible view of the mountains. Then we had a true free fall for 5 seconds. Lemme just say, the Detinator aint got nothing on this ride. So awesome!
Then we took a gondola to Sun Moon Lake. The views, spectacular. The air, crisp. The smells, earthy. This is what I have been missing for the last month. We walked around the village on the edge of the lake. They had a ton of great streets for street food. I ate several very interesting foods. I took pictures of some(below). Several things I ate, I had no clue what I was actually eating. There were tastes I cant explain, or even compare to anything I have ever had before. These are the moments that make living halfway around the world awesome. I would walk down the street and a random vendor would push food into my hands and tell me to "try". So I do. (Spoiler alert: I ate multiple fish heads, yummm!) After a lot of good food, a nice boat ride, and some exploring, we decided to head back to the Aboriginal park.
This is the interesting part. So we watched them do some of their chants/dances/I don't really know what the hell they were doing. All was normal enough, ya know, as far as aboriginal stuff goes. That is, until the second act. Eight barely, and I mean barely, clothed men went out on stage and did....ummm lets just say it would be considered bad hazing at Mizzou. Moving on... Anyways, I found this incredibly funny. I was giggling like my 2nd grade girls. But I looked up at the rest of the crowd, about 150 people, and not another soul is as much as cracking a grin. They are all dead serious, and very interested in this act. I cant help it, I am nearly losing it at what I am watching. It was one of those moments where you wonder where you went wrong in life. But I made it through. And I learned something about myself, I am the most immature person in Taiwan. Good to know.
Overall I would say this is one of the best days I have had since I have been here. Only one more 50 hour work week, then my schedule gets insanely easier. "I can do it, I can do it" But I will go into this last week refreshed.
We may try again to go to the Night market tomorrow so I will post more pictures if we don't get rained out. Below are some pictures from today.
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| View from my apartment |
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| Awesome sky |
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| Unsure what this is, but it was at an amusement park but Sun Moon Lake. |
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| From the amusement park we took a couple gondolas over 2 mountains to get to Sun moon lake. |
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| This is a small section of the stairs to climb over the mountain, uhh no thanks. Ill take the Gondola. |
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| Sun Moon Lake. As the Taiwanese would say, "Saaoo Bu ta ful" |
Some guy was playing with bees. He was trying to get me to pick some up. Yeah, Im going to go ahead and pass on that one.
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| Me and the roomies on a boardwalk to go to the village by the lake. |
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| The leaf was bigger than me. |
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| Mystery meat #1 |
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| #2 |
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| #3 |
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| Fried whole fish. More on this later. |
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| Passion Fruit. Real good |
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| That is me....eating a fish head. Yeah, I had at least 6. Not bad! |
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| Sarah being weird |
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| BRIGHT COLORS! |
Ultra slow motion video of a butterfly flying. My camera does it so I might as well use it. I wouldnt waste your time watching it haha.
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| First gong I have seen in Asia. Weird! I thought they were supposed to be all over the place. |
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| Tea Eggs. Cha je dain in Chinese. They were basically really salty hard boiled eggs. Taiwanese eat these things like they're candy. |
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| Those are betel nut trees. Very odd looking. Betel nut is basically a way worse version of chewing tobacco. Im going to do an entire blog post about this industry some day. Very interesting subject. |
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| Eating tea eggs |
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| The water is Emerald |
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| Apparently they number their toilets. Hmmmm |
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| This is the family that took us to Sun Moon Lake. The little kiddo is going to be a 1st grader at Cornel. Lets just say I have never seen a kid with more energy. Wow. Super nice family. I have no clue how much money they spent on us, but it had to be a lot. |
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| Busy market street |
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| Death by shrimp |
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| Looked super yummy, but I was too full. |
