Sun Moon Lake
Taiwan Fact: Taiwan's largest natural lake is Sun Moon Lake in the mountains of southern central Taiwan. One of it's outlets was dammed by the Japanese in the 1930s which produced enough electricity to power the whole island at the time.
Thailand tomorrow! We've been getting our stuff together and cleaning in preparation. I think the stress from the change has affected the cat because, despite playing with her for half an hour, the minute no one was paying attention to her, she went into the middle of our bed and, waiting until three people were watching, pissed all over it for the fifth time. Fortunately for her, Jordan caught her first and merely threw her out on the porch and shut her out there, then she threw the comforter out the window. If I had caught her, I would have mopped up the pee with her, wrapped her in the comforter and thrown them both out the window. That cat can just fuck right off. We were starting to bond with all the time I've been spending at home, but I'm absolutely content to never see her again at the moment. OK, EVERYONE READY FOR HAPPY PARTY TIME?
Anyway, last weekend Andy and I took a bus to Taichung (should be Taizhong, but I guess I still say Taipei instead of Taibei, so I can't criticize). We found a real dumpy, dirty hotel and met up with our (Alyson's) friend Joyce who used to live down the street from us. We met her at a bar with another friend who was visiting from Taipei. The bar was made to look like a school and it's name translates to something like Fun Middle School. Then we hung out in a park, admiring the relative quiet and cleanliness of the city.
We were up about four hours later hunting for a place to rent scooters. I'd gotten some information from the information desk at the train station about where to find rental places, but that they probably wouldn't let us have one with the intention of going to Sun Moon Lake. Thanks to the tip, Andy and I knew we had to lie through our teeth. After five shops sending us to the next shop down before we even had a chance to lie, we gave up and started walking to the bus station. Right as we started, we saw another rental shop and decided to try one more time and were finally able to lie ourselves into a couple of scooters. She didn't even really care that Andy didn't have a license. It was later than we wanted to leave, but we were off!
Andy commutes by scooter now, so I made him lead the way out of the city, though I was doing much of the navigation. We took our time finding a route, but we were having a blast zipping through the little towns and into the hills. After three hours, we came around a bend and saw it.
omgomgomgsnow! And the lake! Though, where we were standing we were quite warm in our sweaters.
It was early afternoon, but after grabbing some lunch and finding a place to stay, the "rope way" (ski lift) was closed. Two hours before the sign indicated. Man, I think the Taiwanese have a thing against tourists. No swimming in the lake, by the way. I imagine they're worried about the liability if someone got caught by the ghosts. As Andy observed, they always have some rule that eliminates the possibility of fun. Anyway, we got down to the shore. Andy waded as I collected some rocks.
It had been recommended to me to watch the sunset on the lake, but some dickwad clouds decided I'd better not. As it got dark, we wandered around what had before sundown NOT been a ghost town. It was, in fact, amusingly boring. We were tired from the ride and little sleep we'd had, and everything about the town indicated it must be midnight. Everything in our experience told us that, at that moment, it must be quite late indeed. Only our phones revealed the awful truth: 7:30pm. It wasn't a totally wasted day, but it was certainly over by that point. Our solution: the dawn.
Up at 5am, we drove threw the cold, wet morning towards a pagoda we'd seen on a hill not too much farther around the lake. We watched the sun come over the hills and heard as it woke up the birds.
The sun finally crested the mountains and we watched it crawl down over the hills and pagoda.
We took a more direct, less main road back to Taichung that was much more mountainous and was less developed. Every inch from the lake until we could see the city was spectacular.
On a little turn off with Taichung to my left.
I couldn't take any pictures because we were racing down hairpin turns and whipping by monkey crossing signs, but the sheer cliffs, palm trees and bright green vistas were breathtaking. Those signs said 30kph, but we were zipping by them, blazing away at 55 and 60kph. Even at the time I realized in the back of my head it was like 35mph, but that little bike, on those tight turns and through the mountain villages, felt like a rollercoaster. We'd get passed by cars and motorcycles, recklessly going into the other lane on blind turns (Andy almost got smushed by a tour buss going the other way the day before), but the rising sun and rushing wind was so freeing and invigorating.
The scooter lady was very mad and very excited to be so. She might not have noticed the 200km we clocked except that after we returned from the pagoda that morning, we found Andy's scooter had fallen over, scraping one of the brakes and breaking a button that releases one of the passenger foot pegs. She and Andy exchanged broken Englishes and Chineses and many eye-rolls. We wound up paying her $500 for the broken peg and $500 each for an additional day (though we would have anyway because we had them more than 24 hours and we were allowed 100km per day). We went to the high-speed rail station (which is absurdly huge and made to look just like an airport) and zoomed our way back home.
Thailand tomorrow! We've been getting our stuff together and cleaning in preparation. I think the stress from the change has affected the cat because, despite playing with her for half an hour, the minute no one was paying attention to her, she went into the middle of our bed and, waiting until three people were watching, pissed all over it for the fifth time. Fortunately for her, Jordan caught her first and merely threw her out on the porch and shut her out there, then she threw the comforter out the window. If I had caught her, I would have mopped up the pee with her, wrapped her in the comforter and thrown them both out the window. That cat can just fuck right off. We were starting to bond with all the time I've been spending at home, but I'm absolutely content to never see her again at the moment. OK, EVERYONE READY FOR HAPPY PARTY TIME?
Anyway, last weekend Andy and I took a bus to Taichung (should be Taizhong, but I guess I still say Taipei instead of Taibei, so I can't criticize). We found a real dumpy, dirty hotel and met up with our (Alyson's) friend Joyce who used to live down the street from us. We met her at a bar with another friend who was visiting from Taipei. The bar was made to look like a school and it's name translates to something like Fun Middle School. Then we hung out in a park, admiring the relative quiet and cleanliness of the city.
We were up about four hours later hunting for a place to rent scooters. I'd gotten some information from the information desk at the train station about where to find rental places, but that they probably wouldn't let us have one with the intention of going to Sun Moon Lake. Thanks to the tip, Andy and I knew we had to lie through our teeth. After five shops sending us to the next shop down before we even had a chance to lie, we gave up and started walking to the bus station. Right as we started, we saw another rental shop and decided to try one more time and were finally able to lie ourselves into a couple of scooters. She didn't even really care that Andy didn't have a license. It was later than we wanted to leave, but we were off!
Andy commutes by scooter now, so I made him lead the way out of the city, though I was doing much of the navigation. We took our time finding a route, but we were having a blast zipping through the little towns and into the hills. After three hours, we came around a bend and saw it.
omgomgomgsnow! And the lake! Though, where we were standing we were quite warm in our sweaters.
It was early afternoon, but after grabbing some lunch and finding a place to stay, the "rope way" (ski lift) was closed. Two hours before the sign indicated. Man, I think the Taiwanese have a thing against tourists. No swimming in the lake, by the way. I imagine they're worried about the liability if someone got caught by the ghosts. As Andy observed, they always have some rule that eliminates the possibility of fun. Anyway, we got down to the shore. Andy waded as I collected some rocks.
It had been recommended to me to watch the sunset on the lake, but some dickwad clouds decided I'd better not. As it got dark, we wandered around what had before sundown NOT been a ghost town. It was, in fact, amusingly boring. We were tired from the ride and little sleep we'd had, and everything about the town indicated it must be midnight. Everything in our experience told us that, at that moment, it must be quite late indeed. Only our phones revealed the awful truth: 7:30pm. It wasn't a totally wasted day, but it was certainly over by that point. Our solution: the dawn.
Up at 5am, we drove threw the cold, wet morning towards a pagoda we'd seen on a hill not too much farther around the lake. We watched the sun come over the hills and heard as it woke up the birds.
The sun finally crested the mountains and we watched it crawl down over the hills and pagoda.
We took a more direct, less main road back to Taichung that was much more mountainous and was less developed. Every inch from the lake until we could see the city was spectacular.
On a little turn off with Taichung to my left.
I couldn't take any pictures because we were racing down hairpin turns and whipping by monkey crossing signs, but the sheer cliffs, palm trees and bright green vistas were breathtaking. Those signs said 30kph, but we were zipping by them, blazing away at 55 and 60kph. Even at the time I realized in the back of my head it was like 35mph, but that little bike, on those tight turns and through the mountain villages, felt like a rollercoaster. We'd get passed by cars and motorcycles, recklessly going into the other lane on blind turns (Andy almost got smushed by a tour buss going the other way the day before), but the rising sun and rushing wind was so freeing and invigorating.
The scooter lady was very mad and very excited to be so. She might not have noticed the 200km we clocked except that after we returned from the pagoda that morning, we found Andy's scooter had fallen over, scraping one of the brakes and breaking a button that releases one of the passenger foot pegs. She and Andy exchanged broken Englishes and Chineses and many eye-rolls. We wound up paying her $500 for the broken peg and $500 each for an additional day (though we would have anyway because we had them more than 24 hours and we were allowed 100km per day). We went to the high-speed rail station (which is absurdly huge and made to look just like an airport) and zoomed our way back home.