A Stunning Trip Through Taiwan

Due to limitations on my basic WordPress blog, I can’t embed and re-share this awesome video on my website. BUT that shouldn’t stop you from clicking on the following link and checking out a really neat short film on traveling in Taiwan:

PassionRepublic Taiwan Trip from Dick Chua on Vimeo.

I especially love the thirty seconds on stinky tofu. I really hope that the day I finally try the stuff goes a little more smoothly…

Taichung puts the “bang” in 棒球

Yesterday I took a trip down to Taichung (2 hours away from Taipei by rail; about 3 hours by bus) and met up with my friend Singing and her older brother who live in the area.

We first went to get some culture and stopped at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts where Singing is interning for the summer. The museum is very modern and is, according to Singing, the only national fine arts museum in Taiwan–all of the others are privately owned. We checked out two exhibits: the first, the 14th Biennial Print Exhibition in the ROC and the second, a new exhibition by a French artist on Hyper-perception. Both featured, in my opinion, very dark and rather mentally twisted themes.

We jaunted next across town to a large night market to pick up dinner and snacks. One large cup of fresh watermelon juice is only $10NT there!!!!!

Finally, we 到了ed:

Baseball field in Taichung

The game featured the Sinon Bulls (the home team) versus the La New Bears (from Kaohsiung). Sadly, it was a shame for the home team; they went down 8-4 in the last inning. Of course, I didn’t really care either way–I had a great time explaining the rules of the game to my German friend and learning baseball terms in Chinese. (Did you know that “ball” and “strike” in Chinese are 壞球 and 好球–literally “bad ball” and “good ball”–haha, that makes more sense to me than the English does!). The best part was getting to observe the crowd. Never have I ever witnessed such a rowdy fan base–for both teams–at a baseball game. They are LOUD. Each team has its own cheering squad and pep band while fans chant, bang together inflatable bats and blow horns.

Check it out:

With a Taiwanese student ID, tickets were only $150NT and we could pretty much sit anywhere we wanted. We watched the game at the older baseball field in Taichung, so the stadium itself wasn’t much to look at–it reminded me more of one of the community college baseball fields back home. The field is part of the National Taiwan College of Physical Education, a school set up only for athletes. There is a newer stadium in another part of the city that is much newer and nicer, but apparently games are rarely played there unless they are really important.

This guy now plays for Kaohsiung, but he did make a short stint in the US for the LA Dodgers*

Home team in the dug-out

After the game we still had a short hour to check out a little more of the night market. I asked Singing if there was any food specific to Taichung to try and she took us here:

Popular dessert place

To eat this：

Shaved dried plum juice flavored ice with sweet baked beans and mystery flavored ice cream

The combination of salty, sweet and sour was a little too strange for my tastebuds. Though I am happy to have tried it, I think I’ll stick with my “normal” shaved ice next time.

Thanks, Singing, for showing us around! Next time, baseball game in the USA!! I will miss you

The Sun also Rises over Sun Moon Lake

日月潭

As an American expatriate…in Taiwan, I felt the title was appropriate.

Sun Moon Lake is considered to be one of Taiwan’s foremost scenic spots as well as one of Taiwan’s top tourist traps. I’d say it is a healthy combination of both:

The views and landscape are excellent…

Tranquility

But then you also get a lot of these people…

你是哪里人？

Mainland Chinese tourists who like to take multiple pictures of me and my friend, Marlies, because we are the only two white girls on the boat.

The main “downtown” area of Sun Moon Lake is really just one street with many over-priced hotels and restaurants, as well as a Starbucks, Ten Sen’s Tea House, and a 7-Eleven. Marlies and I arrived around 7:30pm on a Wednesday night (yes, we missed the sunset) and most of the places were already closing down, so we amused ourselves by going from hostel to hostel to hostel trying to negotiate the lowest price we could find. And it was amusing…one woman tried to sell us a “love” room complete with an open glass door to the restroom and heart-shaped pillows that said “I Love You” on the bed.

Ultimately, we settled on a room for $1000NTD in one nondescript hostel  (non-lake-view side and breakfast not included) after the landlady came running after us shouting “Cheap room! Cheap room! You come stay here!” Despite her forwardness–which usually turns me off from such people–she was extremely kind and helpful, offering advice about things to do around the lake and even running out to the station at nearly midnight to check the bus schedule for us. Taiwanese hospitality never fails to amaze me.

Somehow, we managed to get ourselves out of bed and down to the lake by 6am the next morning–armed with hot coffee and tea from 7-Eleven of course because that’s what you’re supposed to do at Sun Moon Lake right?

And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

And that darn sun still wouldn’t come up over the mountain.

So we talked with the locals…

夠先生

And then around 7:15am the sun finally poked its head up. But you already saw that picture.

The rest of the morning was spent taking a boat ride around the lake and then taking a short hike up to one of the tea farms. Overall, I enjoyed being on the boat; but if you go, don’t expect it to be a normal cruise. This had full-fledged tourist trap written all over it: included were ten minutes of boat ride, thirty minutes to explore a smaller island with a lot of stairs and a small temple and lot of Chinese tourists and a big group of Falun Gong members to bother those Chinese tourists, five more minutes of boat ride, ten minutes on the “floating island” which is really just some rafts with plants growing on them (innovative agricultural techniques, yes, but must I be shepherded off the lovely boat to go see it? I think not), and then about twenty more minutes back on the boat to where we started from. Yeesh.

The tea plantation was pretty cool, though.

Tea plantation

And that was the conclusion of my Sun Moon Lake trip. Roughly 18 hours in somewhere-nowhere-Taiwan.