Taipei, Dajia River, Diya, and Sanyi
Sorry it has been awhile since I have posted anything. I have been really busy at work teaching, doing lessons plans, and grading homework. This week especially for some reason felt really busy. Maybe it is because I have done so much this week. Today I finally have time to upload pictures and write a post about all the things I have been doing this week.
Last Saturday we spent the day in Taipei. The branch chartered a bus and we left Fengyuan around 10:30. The drive took a couple of hours, but the scenery along the way was amazing. Mountains on both sides covered in green. I don’t think I have ever seen so much green. Here we are on the bus.
We spent most of the afternoon at Liberty Square. At one end is the National Concert Hall and National Theater and at the other end is the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. The whole park is enormous with massive gardens, ponds, open plazas, etc.
In the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, there are guards that have to stand completely still on a little platform for an hour. At the top of every hour they have a big changing of the guards ceremony.
After spending several hours wandering around the vastness that is Liberty Square, we got back on the bus and went to Taipei 101. It is the 2nd tallest building in the world (It was ranked first until just this year). There is a large shopping mall next to the building that we ate in. I ate subway…. Sorry, I have eaten a lot of the local food here but Subway just looked really good. We were going to buy tickets to go to the top (It costs about $12.50 US, cheaper than the Stratosphere), but the wait was 40 minutes and we had to go. Next time I am in Taipei I will go to the top. So we just spent the rest of the time walking around and taking pictures of the building.
On Sunday I went with my friend Thomas and his family to the Dajia river. I can’t remember if I have mentioned Thomas yet… Every Friday morning I do a cultural exchange with a man named Thomas. I teach him English (He already speaks very well) and he helps me learn Chinese. His wife also always makes us lunch. Fridays are our official day when we sit at his house and study, but he likes to take me around and show me other places during the week or on the weekend. So, he invited me to join his family for a trip to the Dajia river, the 2nd largest river in Taiwan. We found a little spot on the river and swam around for a couple of hours.
After we had our fill of sun and water, we went to a Taoist temple nearby in the mountains and ate lunch. Most (if not all) the temples here serve free meals from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm for anyone who wants to come. It was really good food served buffet style. After we ate, we walked around the temple. Not only is the temple itself amazing, but it is tucked away up in the mountains so the surrounding area is also gorgeous.
Thursday night I met up again with Thomas to go swimming at the local pool here named Diya. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures because this is not your ordinary pool. It is all indoor. It has 2 50 meter swimming pools (one with warm water and one with cold water), an area with a good size water slide, several steam rooms and saunas, a few hot tubs, a few ice water tubs, and then a giant spa area that has about 20 different kinds of water jets. Some shoot down from above onto your neck and back. Others have a place where you can lay down and they spray the back of your legs and back. Others are for your feet. Others just for your legs. The area is decorated with cool looking stones, plants, and palm trees. It was very relaxing. Thomas goes there almost every night and introduced me to the owners, the swim coach, the lifeguards, and a bunch of the regulars. I swam laps for awhile (I am really out of shape) and then Thomas and I tried all the different areas of the spa. This is a place I will for sure be going back to. It is only about a 15 minute bike ride from where I live.
To round out the week of adventures, today I went with Thomas, his daughter Lily, and Lien (another teacher here) to Sanyi. It is a city famous for wood carvings. We first went to a Buddhist temple and ate lunch (again, the lunch is free), but I made a donation to the temple because I think it is great what they do. They also have hundreds of volunteers who cook the food, serve the food, direct traffic, tend to the gardens, and everything else. The meal was a little different at this temple. It wasn’t buffet style, you just went up to the counter and they served the food into your bowl. It was a noodle soup and you didn’t really get to pick what you wanted in it. It was good though. They serve thousands of people each day. As we drove up, they had hundreds of giant bowls and buckets in the parking lot drying and 40 people or so washing dishes, pots, buckets, etc. I don’t have any photos from inside the temple because they prohibit photography inside. Here is a picture of some little statues and the temple in the background.
After we ate lunch, we walked around Sanyi. We went to a place with funny statues and then walked down the main street. There are many different shops with intricate wood carvings, solid wood tables, and everything else wood. All the wood smelled really good.
This weeks adventures are in three different photo albums Taipei, the Dajia River, and Sanyi. You can get to the albums by clicking on the previous links, clicking on the pictures in this post, going to the Taiwan parent album, or clicking on any of them from the dropdown menu on the top navigation bar.