My Taiwan Trip

Wow.. It been more than 6 months since I updated my taiwan trip. Decided to complete my travel blog this time round.

After the breakfast, we waited for our driver to pick us up to our first destination. I had booked a cab (小黄) to bring us around today. Our first destination was Sun Moon Lake. Our driver Xiao Jiang （小江）arrived around 8.30am.  Sun Moon Lake is located in Nantou country and the journey from our hotel to there took slightly more than an hour. We reached Sun Moon lake around 10.00am. Athough it was the monsoon season during this period of time, we were lucky the weather was good when we reached there. 

Our first stop was Wen Wu Temple. From there, one can have a great view of the Sun Moon Lake. We were lucky the sun was out when we reached the temple, making the lake water looked sparkling blue. Nice view for taking photos. We went inside the Wen Wu Temple. As its name implied, this temple houses the confucius saint (civil) and guangong deity (military).  One of the interesting artefact was the reclining moon blade on displayed outside the Guan Gong Hall. There were also many interesting and exquisite carvings of chinese folklore on the walls around the temple.

After a tour of the Wen Wu temple, Xiao Jiang drove us to Shuishe jetty to take a boat cruise through SML. The cruise took us through all three jetties in SML, namely Shuishe pier, Ita Thao pier and SyunGuang pier. Each cruise boat will make one round around the SML. One could alight at a pier to explore the areas around the pier before taking the next cruise boat to the following pier. The interval between each boat cruise was about half an hour. Xiao Jiang helped us bought the ferry ticket at a discounted price.  We took a cruise boat which had an upper open deck and an indoor air-conditioned area. We chosed the air-conditioned area as it was less crowded. Once the boat cruise started, a guide began sharing with us information on SML and its history. We passed by the Lalu island, which the guide told us, lies in the middle of SML. This island is the holy ground for the Thao tribe. We also passed by the world "highest" lighthouse as SML is located about 2500ft above sea level.

We arrived at SyunGuang pier. This part of the lake houses two famous temples - Xuanguang and Xuanjiang temples that are dedicated to the famous buddist monk Xuanzang who travelled from China to India to collect the scripture scrolls. As a fair amount of walking was required to reach the temples, I decided to give them a miss. Instead, we hang around the pier to watch an Ita Thao singing performance. The Ita Thao singers were really good. Xiao Jiang bought the famous tea leave eggs to treat us. Many had said that this was a "must" try in SML. Well, indeed the tea leave eggs were quite fragrant and tasty. We watched the performance while eating the eggs. 

We boarded the next cruise boat to Ita Thao pier where the Ita Thao village was. Ita Thao is the smallest aborigines tribe in Taiwan. We arrived at the pier in less than 10 minutes. Over here, there were hotels, restaurants, food stalls and sovenier shops. The smell of the food in the air made all of us hungry again. A few must try food includes chicken wing rice, susages from wild boar, fried beancurd. Along the way, we also bought charcoal peanuts, nougats and muah chee. After filling our hungry stomach with street foods, we walked up to the rice wine musuem. It was pretty empty inside the museum. I guessed the reason was that not many people knew that there was a rice wine musuem. I found it interesting as it showed the steps of making rice wine. It also displayed the tools used in the early days to make rice wine.

It was almost 1pm when we left Ita Thao village. We walked over to the cable car station to take a cable car to Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village (FACV). Thanks to the discount coupon we got from the Taiwan Tourism Board in Singapore, we were able to purchase the FACV and cable car tickets at a discounted price. There were two separate queues to take the cable car. One of the queues was for visitors entering the FACV. The other was for visitors who were not be entering FACV. Luckily for us, our queue was short.

FACV comprises of aboriginal villages, theme park and a european garden.  Overall, my family did not enjoyed FACV. The aboriginal performances were average and the aboriginal villages failed to captivate us. Furthermore, it started raining while we were inside. We spent about 2 hours in the park before calling our driver to pick us up to the next destination. I will likely recommend any one planning to visit FACV to skip this place. It is really not worth the money and time. I should have spent more time in SML, probably visiting Ci En Temple.

Our last destination was a magniifcent buddist temple called Zhong Tai Shan Monastery (中台禪寺) located in Puli, Nantou. I came to know of this temple from other travel blogs. The temple had several halls. However, not all halls are open to public. We visited the Perfect Illumination Hall, Hall of Four Heavenly Kings and the Great Majestic Hall. The place was awesome. Many of the statues were a few meters tall. I was impressed with the architecture of the temple.

We left about 6pm and headed back to our hotel. At night, we went to Fengjia NM again.