day one

The local guide, for my trip 2, A-fu-ge was a middle aged man and looks professional. And he didn't give in for a later departure time though for day one. Surprisingly, the group did get up and finished breakfast much earlier than our leaving time.

To me, what a pity that I didn't have much time to stroll around on the sea beach and relax and recharge myself. It was a great day with bright blue sky. We were given some nap time on the way before the bus drove into a flower farm and also a movie set for a quick rest.

However, the group didn't express any like for the place. 'Boring and bad arrangement of tour !' as in Hangzhou there are many similar parks.

We then stopped for lunch at a new concept restaurant called ' tong hua cun' ( village of mock orange). It was now the blossom season for this white flower, and we eyewitness that many of them in great groves along the drive in this area. And the restaurant also has a tiny store for perfume, soap and etc. ( I like such a neat and clean place, however many of them didn't like the taste very much.)

Then in the afternoon we drove for long hours (2?) before we came to Taichung ( middle of Taiwan). We paid a visit to a very special temple. By special, it's not the same as any Buddhist temple I've ever seen in other places. In concrete such a gray huge complex is more like a museum, combined with different religious architectural elements.



zhong tai chan si




It was another more than one hour's drive before we got to one of so called 'must visit' spots in Taiwan. Sun moon pool,together with Alishan mountain are house hold names of Taiwan scenery to mainland Chinese visitors as their beauty are so highly praised in primary school textbooks and folk songs about our parted treasure island of Taiwan.

It's not easy road to there, since the winding mountain roads turned out to be too exciting and several of our group quickly threw out. And before the boat ride on the lake, we went to see another temple dedicated to Confucius and Guanyu.



And after than was a 40 minutes long boat ride. Luckily this time our boat was allowed to stop by the tiny island. But our group were disappointed to report there was nothing to see on there except a ugly statue of a white deer, which, according to the captain's introduction, was for a mystical deer who attracts the ancestors of Shao minority ethic group to chase after and then discover such a wonderland by the lake. By the way, Shao is the smallest ethic group out of 14 in Taiwan with a total population about 260 people.

The sky became dim after it. It was about 6 pm and we didn't have any time for its cultural performance. We drove up and around the hills for about one and half hours till we finally arrived at our hotel for the dinner and tonight.