My last weekend in Taiwan: Saturday

Being our spontaneous selves, Tammy and I took a day trip to Sun Moon Lake on Saturday, and Phil and Sean joined in.  There was some movie-style drama when we ran to make the train and the door whizzed shut (almost cutting me in half) while Sean was inside, slowly being taken away, hands pressed against the window.  That left Phil, Tammy, and me waiting for the next train— but it wasn’t long before we were all reunited in Taichung, where I had gone on vacation with my host family.

From there, we took a bus to Sun Moon Lake.  Most bus seats are boring.  But these weren’t.  Why don’t American buses have fun seats like these?  (Also, fun fact: “buses” and “busses” are both correct spellings of the word, though the second is less popular.)

Finally we arrived at the famed Sun Moon Lake.

Unfortunately we were too late to buy tickets for the cable car ride, but we were able to get boat tickets.  The boat took us to various locations around the lake, and a guide gave us some information on the rides in between stops.

There’s a little island in the center of the lake shaped like a sun and a moon.  I believe the guide said that’s what the lake is named after, though I could have misunderstood and it was really created after the fact.  Regardless, it was cool to see.  When you passed by it, you couldn’t really interpret its shape.  But later, when we climbed a steep hill, you could clearly make out that it was a sun and a moon.

We all were exhausted after climbing a long set of stairs at the first stop, anticipating something very grand at the top.  It turned out to be a bathroom (ha!).  I guess that’s how they keep the lines short.  To be fair, once you reached that level, there was another set of stairs that had a temple at the top and a very good view of the smoggy mountains surrounding the lake.  It was a sight to see.

The next stop  was lunch.  I had a delicious guava, mango, and ji pai (or fried chicken) sitting on some wooden steps overlooking the lake.  We all ate our food as a toddler ran around in squeaky tennis shoes that honked with every step.  It was pretty adorable.  Soon we were back on our red boat, the last one of the day.

But wow, when we left from there…

…the sunset was beautiful.

The boat took us back to the dock we left from, and we all shopped for a bit.  I got my family some gifts here, including some little figurines of aboriginal Taiwanese that my mom had requested back at Dewey’s Pizza in Ohio.  We were lucky to make an already packed bus back to the train station.  We had to split up, but it was worth it to get back a little sooner.  Sean bought sun cakes for us to try, a traditional dessert from the area, and passed them out before getting on the train.  They were dry and flakey, but delicious.  There must have been hundreds of layers in that one little pastry.  It was also around dinner time, so I bought myself two blocks of garlic bread and a box of animal cookies.

Except these weren’t any animal cookies.  They were made in Japan.  So the variety of animals was incredibly different than the American kind.  They were also less sweet and less like a cookie.  They were more like a cracker, actually.  But the suspense of what I was going to pull out of the box next was totally worth the buy and kept me entertained most of the train ride.  And each animal was labeled in English.  Thank god, because I would have no idea otherwise.

And soon we were home, getting under our covers, already preparing for the next day’s adventure.