Alright, it's already December, and it certainly feels like it today as well. In fact, this is the first day we've had in Shanghai since the spring that I've had to wear a coat! But on with the story!
As mentioned in our last episode, in our last trip as a family to Taiwan, we didn't get the opportunity to do much in the way of tourism. Even though we were only going to be here for a few days this time around, we decided to go ahead and make sure we did some more sightseeing, even though we were still recovering from our week and change in Japan. We spent a day in Taipei - for our next Taiwan adventure, we would visit one of the most famous locations in Taiwan - the Sun Moon Lake!
Sun Moon Lake is a fair bus ride away from the city of Taichung, aptly named due to its location roughly halfway down the island between Taipei and Tainan (Chung, or zhong in modern pinyin, means "Middle" - it's the same "zhong" as in "zhong guo" or China). So, the first order of business was to get over to Taichung - and what better way to hop across a third of the island than by high speed rail?
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| Some views from the train |
Taiwan's high speed rail looks quite similar to the Shinkansen of Japan and the high speed trains of China, and operates at a similar speed of around 250 - 300 kilometers per hour.. Of course, Taiwan is quite a bit smaller than China or even Japan, so the high speed rail trip was a quite short. Before long, we were on the bus, and an hour or so later, we had arrived at Sun Moon Lake.
There are hree primary ways to explore the Sun Moon Lake - by sea... er... water, by land, and by air (via cable car). Our tour package (purchased at the HSR station in Taichung) included tickets for the tour boat, so we decided to do that first.
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| One of the many ferries that tourists can take to travel to the various ports on Sun Moon Lake |
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| Our first day at Sun Moon Lake was kind of a dreary, grey day, but you can still see he beautiful water |
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| This used to be one slightly larger island, but after some volcanic activity several years ago, it's now several tiny islands collectively called Lala Island (if memory serves...) |
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| Xuan Guang Pavilion, a small temple one the northernmost bank of the lake |
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| A nice sunset by the port |
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| Roast mountain pork. Sadly, this looked a lot tastier than it was. |
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| A very strange piece of indigenous craft... |
Based on the first day, we didn't really see what the hubbub about Sun Moon Lake was. The sights at the three ports of call were really very small and had very little in the way of tourist value, despite being hailed as a reservation for a particularly small indigenous tribe in Taiwan.
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| We didn't know where to go for dinner so we settled on instant noodles... again. The good thing about instant noodles is that, in Taiwan, they are really quite tasty and often include pieces of real, vacuum packed meat! |
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| The sleepy little town where most of the visitors to Sun Moon Lake stay |
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| An artsy shot of the boats tied up for the night |
On our second day, however, we took the land route. It was similar to the boat route in that you got on and off the buses at your convenience along the trail. But undoubtedly the views from the land over the lake were better than the ones from the lake towards the land. Plus, the nicer weather on Day 2 definitely helped as well! But our first stop was to take the third exploration method - Sun Moon Lake from the air, via cable car!
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| The Cable Car Station |
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| Going up! |
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| This part of the lake is the "Moon" part as it vaguely resembles a crescent moon. Over to the right is the round part that resembles the sun, hence the name of the lake. |
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| From the sky you can really see the nice green water of the lake |
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| Drama queen |
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| The lush scenery combining mountains with water - two key elements to any classical Chinese landscape painting! |
On the other side of the cable car, there is an amusement park of sorts, but we decided to skip it in order to save time for more natural sightseeing.
Back on the ground, we visited some of the other more famous spots one by one, including the Xuan Zang temple, which is dedicated to the very monk that traveled to India to retrieve the Buddhist Scriptures during the Tang Dynasty and whose legacy is forever captured in the Chinese classic novel "Journey to the West". In fact, the monk's remains are actually in this temple. It turns out that Japanese soldiers took the remains of the monk from China during the Sino-Japanese Wars and they ended up here in Taiwan after some years...
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| Xuan Zang Temple |
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| A lotus - one of the symbols of Buddhism |
Towards the end of the afternoon, we ended up near Ci'en Tower. The story goes that Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek had this tower built to honor his mother. It's roof sits exactly 1000 meters above sea level, making it the tallest point on the lake. Since the path to it had hundreds of steps, I decided to go it alone and ran the last kilometer or so up to the tower and back in around 30 minutes - not bad considering all of the stairs and the steep grade if I may say so myself! To commemorate, I took a panoramic photo from the top of the tower, but much to my dismay, it didn't save. I didn't realize this until I was already back at the bottom with the family...
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| There it is, about a kilometer away at this point |
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| The family was too tired to go on... |
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| So I ran up myself! Clearly, most people thought it was too much of a trek to get up here as I was the only person present... |
After scaling the mountain to the tower, our last stop was the largest temple on the lake - Wen Wu Temple.
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| Rawr |
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| Taiwanese temples feature lavish designs, much in contrast with Japanese ones |
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| Panorama from the Wen Wu temple |
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| We stopped for some live music, and Fifi contributed with her dancing skills! |
With that, we got back on the bus, and back to the train, and headed towards Hsinchu, where other Great Grandma lives!
