Sun Moon Lake
I'm on holiday with my landlord (who is now a good friend, and called Ava) to Sun Moon lake, Tainan and Gauxiong. Neither of us have jobs at the moment so thought just after chinese new year break would be a great time to go.
Turns out we seem to have been right. We arrived on the bus about 2.00pm, and although I had a terrible headache I was impressed with the hotel facilities and had a good little lay down before heading out for a sun-set walk. There was a nice boardwalk that went down to the lake, and Ava and I sat on a couple of benches and chilled out. I was reading a sign when she pointed behind me. I turned round and to my surprise a dog was standing not far away from me. It looked fairly friendly but it gave me a bit of a shock. He turned out to be very friendly and affectionate (as well as a very handsome clean dog) and followed us all the way home, where it found some more humans to befriend.
Today Ava for some reason decided to get up and put the kettle on at 4.00am! I was a bit annoyed because I still wanted to sleep, but she said she couldn't sleep. I just put my MP3 Player in and tried to get back to sleep. However, we then went to breakfast (not much of which I really fancied for breakfast) and then headed off to try the cable cars. The cable car turned out to be fun, but at the end you couldn't actually get out and do stuff - the only thing you could do was spend even more money to get into a culture park, so we just went back. The cars were red yellow and blue, to represent sun, moon and lake respectively. Then we decided to go to a temple. There was a bus, but we checked and found we had to wait 45 mins for it, so decided to walk. After walking for almost an hour and a half we were a bit tired and wondering where the hell this temple was. So we checked again and found that we had been walking the wrong way. Exactly how you can end up walking the wrong way around a lake when you can clearly see which side the lake is on I'm not sure, but we decided to take the bus back, and then keep going to get to the temple. The temple turned out to be a really lovely buddhist one with lots of nice things for visitors to do. There was a machine not entirely unlike one of those old fortune teller machines at old amusement parks, except a little woman would go into a tiny temple, and come back bearing a tiny straw containing a sheet of paper. This she would tip into a chute, and then you could collect your paper. It had lots of grades on it for various attributes to your life, and mine had 99 (top marks) for everything. We speculated that maybe they were all like this. However, just after me some mainland chinese played and theirs had lots of different numbers, so I guess I was lucky. Next we rang a huge deep bell and then explored the temple (a lady came and gave us free sweets and tea). We took a walk down to a pier and then took a boat back to the hotel. On the way a man with two chidren chatted with us and the kids tried to talk to me in chinese - without drawing attention to me being foreign, which I found very refreshing.
In other news, I went on a different holiday with rocketgirl_85 and her work friends. We went to a kind of amusement park for kids, and although it was a nice relaxing holiday and nice to get to know rocketgirl_85, I thought it was quite expensive for what it was, and I was also rather surprised the manager didn't pay for her employees at some of the expensive things she took them to.
I was thinking of working there too - that's why I was invited, however I eventually decided I don't really need money and the job would be full time with a much lower wage than I was earning before, so I decided not to take it up. I think for now I'll just enjoy having free time and a few savings to explore some of the things to be seen in Taiwan and maybe further afield in Asia, before settling into my next destination, whether that be Taiwan or beyond. I'm looking into working online teaching english too.
Oh yes, I'm still ill from Cambodia all that time ago! I've got some pills to try, and if they don't work I'll have to go to the doctors.
Turns out we seem to have been right. We arrived on the bus about 2.00pm, and although I had a terrible headache I was impressed with the hotel facilities and had a good little lay down before heading out for a sun-set walk. There was a nice boardwalk that went down to the lake, and Ava and I sat on a couple of benches and chilled out. I was reading a sign when she pointed behind me. I turned round and to my surprise a dog was standing not far away from me. It looked fairly friendly but it gave me a bit of a shock. He turned out to be very friendly and affectionate (as well as a very handsome clean dog) and followed us all the way home, where it found some more humans to befriend.
Today Ava for some reason decided to get up and put the kettle on at 4.00am! I was a bit annoyed because I still wanted to sleep, but she said she couldn't sleep. I just put my MP3 Player in and tried to get back to sleep. However, we then went to breakfast (not much of which I really fancied for breakfast) and then headed off to try the cable cars. The cable car turned out to be fun, but at the end you couldn't actually get out and do stuff - the only thing you could do was spend even more money to get into a culture park, so we just went back. The cars were red yellow and blue, to represent sun, moon and lake respectively. Then we decided to go to a temple. There was a bus, but we checked and found we had to wait 45 mins for it, so decided to walk. After walking for almost an hour and a half we were a bit tired and wondering where the hell this temple was. So we checked again and found that we had been walking the wrong way. Exactly how you can end up walking the wrong way around a lake when you can clearly see which side the lake is on I'm not sure, but we decided to take the bus back, and then keep going to get to the temple. The temple turned out to be a really lovely buddhist one with lots of nice things for visitors to do. There was a machine not entirely unlike one of those old fortune teller machines at old amusement parks, except a little woman would go into a tiny temple, and come back bearing a tiny straw containing a sheet of paper. This she would tip into a chute, and then you could collect your paper. It had lots of grades on it for various attributes to your life, and mine had 99 (top marks) for everything. We speculated that maybe they were all like this. However, just after me some mainland chinese played and theirs had lots of different numbers, so I guess I was lucky. Next we rang a huge deep bell and then explored the temple (a lady came and gave us free sweets and tea). We took a walk down to a pier and then took a boat back to the hotel. On the way a man with two chidren chatted with us and the kids tried to talk to me in chinese - without drawing attention to me being foreign, which I found very refreshing.
In other news, I went on a different holiday with rocketgirl_85 and her work friends. We went to a kind of amusement park for kids, and although it was a nice relaxing holiday and nice to get to know rocketgirl_85, I thought it was quite expensive for what it was, and I was also rather surprised the manager didn't pay for her employees at some of the expensive things she took them to.
I was thinking of working there too - that's why I was invited, however I eventually decided I don't really need money and the job would be full time with a much lower wage than I was earning before, so I decided not to take it up. I think for now I'll just enjoy having free time and a few savings to explore some of the things to be seen in Taiwan and maybe further afield in Asia, before settling into my next destination, whether that be Taiwan or beyond. I'm looking into working online teaching english too.
Oh yes, I'm still ill from Cambodia all that time ago! I've got some pills to try, and if they don't work I'll have to go to the doctors.