My Taiwan Adventure

Ci En Pagoda was a monument Chiang Kai Shek erected to commemorate his mother. (Chiang Kai Shek was the first leader of Taiwan. He and his troops fled Chairman Mao's communist movement to Taiwan. Although he planned to stay only temporarily and win back mainland China, he spent the rest of his life living here in Taiwan.) There was a fairly easy and beautiful short hike to the pagoda. Ta Da! Here it is!!! There's a huge bell at the top that you can ring, and the 360 degree view of the lake is beyond compare. (Just wish there was an elevator. JK!) Yup, we climbed those stairs. I rang the bell! It's super loud! What do you think? Is it a nice view or what? Yay! I was here! Opposite the pagoda was this building. It was structurally damaged during an infamous earthquake (on 9/28 I believe) years ago. Last time Albert was here he said he was able to get in and see an even better view than from the pagoda. It's blocked off now and no one seems intereste...

I got a lucky week's vacation in July and decided to revisit Sun Moon Lake and Kenting. I only got to bike around part of the lake last time I visited so this time I took in more of the major sites. There are two important temples here: Wen Wu Temple and Xuan Zang Temple. Wen Wu temple is unusual because most temples in Taiwan are Daoist. This one, however, is dedicated to Confucius! Here are some pictures: This is the name "Sun Moon Lake" in Chinese. It's named after the shape of the lake. When the Japanese occupied Taiwan they dammed up part of the lake in order to generate hydroelectricity, resulting in one half of the lake shaped like a round sun and the other half like a crescent moon. Look at how blue the waters are! I wanted to swim in them! Here is the front of Wen Wu Temple. It's huge! Can you spot Albert? I like these turtle/lion creatures. Wish I knew what they were called! There were three large halls in the temple. This is the entrance...

Tian'an Men Square (天安門廣場) means "The Gate of Heavenly Peace." It's the fourth largest city square in the world at 440,000 m 2 . In it you'll find the Monument to the People's Heroes, the Great Hall of the People (the seat of Chinese legislature), China National Museum, Mao's Mausoleum where you can see his preserved body, and you can enter the Forbidden City. Although often remembered for the Tian-an Men Square massacre, where student protestors were killed, our tour guide mentioned that many people hang out here to keep cool during the summer and save on their AC bills. It was definitely packed with people (tourists and locals).    Here's the Monument to the People's Heroes (1958). It's dedicated to the martyrs of the Chinese revolution. I felt sorry for the guard- it was super hot that day.    (Monument to the People's Heroes again)  This is the China National Museum. Supposedly you can see exhibits of the Re...

  Peking Duck of course!!!!! It's so amazing! I got to have it both times I visited Beijing and I stuffed myself until my stomach hurt. I literally had a belly for the rest of the trip.   Peking Duck (Peking was the old way to say Beijing) has been around since the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and is considered the national dish of China. That is not to say that people haven't been roasting duck in ovens since before then. Special ducks are bred to be cooked this way. What's special about this dish is that the skin is very thin and crispy and it's often eaten in a pancake with scallions and sauce.   In the restaurants the cooks will cut the duck in front of you as part of a show.   Here's the pancake with scallions and sauce. It looks like a crepe, yes...and my focus was way off.   Thankfully there are no pictures taken of me eating this, because I'm really fanatical about my Peking duck. If you ever get a chance to try it (...

So I've been to Beijing two times...and quite a few years apart as you can tell by my hair. What I think of China is always going to be biased by my intrinsic quality of not being Asian- so a lot of the culture I don't understand quite yet. It's also going to be biased by my time in Taiwan where the culture is similar but manners are completely different. My first impression of Beijing is always the buildings- big, short, stark rectangle shapes (Communist style architecture). The city is so spread out that you HAVE to take a taxi or subway everywhere. Hopefully the only places you want to go are near a subway station because taxis are few and hard to come by. Usually someone's already waiting for a taxi before you...or they take the taxi you're hailing. There's not very many patches of green- maybe the pollution destroyed all the vegetation. That's another big thing- pollution. When I went the second time I especially noticed the smog that seemed to ha...

One of my secret dreams is to be a movie star or something along those lines. Working for an English teaching company in Taiwan sort of made that dream come true... or at least gave me a taste of it! I was asked to help shoot a commercial for Hess a couple weeks back. I had no idea what to expect and was half nervous/half excited. I just knew I wanted to do it! The story is that us English teachers and some students helped a disabled, elderly man's dream come true: playing baseball. Miraculously he hit a home run! ;) Like I said, showed up to the shoot and had no idea what I was going to be doing.. nothing. Turns out I got to be the pitcher. I'm so grateful for having played softball growing up! But it was so terrifying- I had to throw the ball with the old guy next to the plate. I was so afraid I was going to hit him! Okay, luckily he was wearing a helmet because I did lob one onto his head. :'( The ball was really soft okay!!! I felt really bad.... He was fine tho...

So our last day in Tokyo... what do you think we did? DISNEY!!! This was my first time visiting a Disney resort. Yes, I know. My childhood was so deprived! (Just kidding!) Needless to say- I was in heaven!   I'm not one for roller coaster type rides so I think the shops were my favorite. We only had half a day there. NOT ENOUGH TIME!     Albert's thinking: Oh no... Why did I have to get stuck with this 5 year old?!           Look! It's Snow White!!       The Goofy headband is so funny! Holy cow! How iconic is this? A mother daughter, (and a young son which you can't see here) were ALL playing on electronic devices while waiting in line!   This is so cool!   Needless to say...we didn't get in line for that! One of the only rides we did was: The Merry Go Round! Heehee! I remember loving it when I was a kid so I was excited! ...