Beautiful Lakes and Bogs: Excursion Weekend!

In good Taiwan news, I’m finally adjusted to everyday life here. Unfortunately, this also means I’m now finding it pretty difficult to pinpoint exactly what I want to write about day to day. So instead of grasping at straws to try and describe my everyday experience (which will be coming soon), I’ll talk about a more standout experience: the cohort excursion to Nantou, Sun Moon Lake. 

Sun Moon Lake, in all it's glory

The first day started off very exciting, with me realizing I had forgotten to pack the night before. After scrambling to throw all the needed things for a two day trip in my bag, I rushed out of the dorm and remembered I also had forgotten to buy breakfast the night before. Not to worry, thanks to some Trader Joe's granola bars (thank you San Francisco) I had plenty of food. As the bus ride was going to be a couple hours, I planned to finish my homework early. Naturally, I immediately fell asleep. 

Bus ride on the edge of the lake

Favorite sign at the winery, where their products are obviously the best chooise.

Our first stop on the trip was visiting a winery. I know, it sounds a little strange, bringing people who were least likely to enjoy a tourist spot centered around alcohol… to the alcohol centered tourist spot. Fortunately the place had planned for this, and we all enjoyed traditional Taiwanese wine sausages, obviously alcohol free. I bought some potions (juice in potion shaped bottles) and watched helplessly as my friend got tactically pressured into buying candy by a very insistent salesman who kept offering samples saying “You’re American! Try! You can try!” After the unfortunate incident, we rolled back to the bus and headed for the next stop, traditional tea making. There we rolled, fermented, and dried our own tea leaves, and packaged them with custom stamps. I’ll leave a picture here as I’m honestly not quite sure what they all say. 

Inside, where we rolled tea leaves on flat baskets

Outside rows of squash grow

Outside, just plain beautiful

Our lunch, 火锅, hot pot, where you put meats, vegetables, noodles, and anything else into a boiling pot of water to cook food and make a soup at the same time.

The teabag with mysterious but well spaced stamps

One of the simple highlights of this trip was the driving. Personally, I don’t love being behind the wheel, but riding in a car is one of my favorite daily things. It’s a time where I don’t have to stress, work, or do much of anything (unless I’m on a field hockey trip, Dad), and can just think, relax, and look at the scenery. I loved these drives because the scenery was downright incredible: past small towns, through fields, and finally to the edge of Sun Moon lake. From there, between excursions all the driving was around the lake, and pictures of this place don’t even do it justice. The entire lake is a collage of jewel toned blues and greens, ringed by mountains touching the clouds and a lush jungle. Dotted among the trees are a mix of centuries-old temples and modern tourism cities. One of the most fascinating things about this lake is that everyone is completely prohibited from swimming in the lake year round, except for one day where a 2 mile race is held. I’m not sure if that’s what is keeping the lake so utterly gorgeous, but I’m in favor of maintaining that tradition in case that’s what it is.

We then briefly visited the Sun Moon Lake visitors center, which is exactly what it sounds like, a place for tourists to stop and take gorgeous photos of the lake from an opportune spot. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves even if they can’t quite do it justice. 

On the drive, rain is brewing

At the visitors center

And more

The highest observation deck

En route to the next stop the overcast skies broke and it began to rain. In Baltimore, we have some pretty intense rains but they are always short and sweet. In Taiwan, we get those same intense rains, amped up a notch and for ten times as long, oftentimes occupied by bouts of wind. Needless to say, it was a little precarious arriving at our next stop, a gorgeous four hundred year old temple, and we all gratefully grabbed a NSLI-Y provided poncho along with our umbrellas (thank you Kai and Matt). Even with the rain, the temple was spectacular. Perhaps even more so with the weather, it provided a specific exciting atmosphere that’s hard to emulate. I wandered around some of the larger halls, admiring the presteined (and later I learned newly renovated) intricate murals, colors, and carvings. As the clouds dispersed and the rain subsided to a drizzle, a group of us naturally convened at the top of the temple to admire the view, and feed some surprisingly rabid koi fish. Again, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

After a long day of the sun (and rain) I was very happy to arrive at the hotel. We were staying at a cute and clean hotel in a ‘mini city’ situated directly next to the lake. I say ‘mini city’ because the size of the area was more akin to a town, but because of the strange mix of tall hotel buildings, apartments, and tourist spots it felt like we were staying in an upscale model of a real city. Or like someone had taken a chunk out of a touristy part of a city and placed it directly next to the lake. After a quick recharge a group of us decided to hit the local night market which quickly became another highlight of the day. We spent a few hours eating the best doughnuts, cabbage buns, and ice cream, and blew a little too much NTD on the totally rigged Taiwanese claw machines. To end the night we practically skipped down to the pier and enjoyed the last few rays of sunshine cresting the mountains across the eerie but beautiful lake. Me and my roommate returned happy and full, and ended up watching X-Men Apocalypse (after talking about mutual appreciation for the superhero format), before calling it a night.

Another awesome english translation

The next day dawned and I enjoyed a quiet breakfast at the hotel, chowing down on a mix of fruits, Taiwanese breads, noodles, and dumplings. We started the day off strong (and hot) with a boat cruise on Sun Moon Lake spotted with smaller excursions. Being on the lake was somehow more gorgeous than observing it. It reminded me a lot of Cross (the lake my grandparents used to live on) if Cross had jewel colored water and water surrounded by ethereal mountains. Okay maybe on second thought not super reminiscent of Cross, but flying over the water on a boat sort of was (again if the boat was not a pontoon). Our first stop after a short climb was a small temple where we drank tea (that I later learned had been fermented for about twice my lifespan) with a very friendly monk, who afterwards was so excited about meeting Americans who could speak Mandarin took out his phone for a video of us reciting a good luck chant. Back to the boat, and arriving at the port, we walked through a different ‘mini city’ to our bus. We went to another tea farm, but this time the experience was much more catered around tourism and shopping. I ended up buying an incredible amount of tea for the price I paid, including tea for making bubble tea at home. 

Leaving our mini city in the distance

...and an even farther distance...

My precariously perched tea, freshly purchased!

Next stop was lunch. We drove out of the winding mountain roads into a valley housing farm fields–mostly different types of gourds and cucumbers. Lunch was a fairly standard spread, rice, noodles, boiled vegetables (eggplant, Chinese cabbage, mushrooms), and a few types of meat. The plan was to head to a local wetland, but it initially was unsafely hot to be outside, so we made tea tree soap from the local farm’s supply. This was particularly ironic as after our soap had boiled and set, it started to rain again. Not quite as hard but there were definitely some groans as now we were actually headed to the wetlands. The trip (at least I thought) was super fun. Our first stop in our newly fitted rain gear was a demonstration of how deep some seemingly innocent patches of water were, with our guide managing to shove a fifteen foot pole into a puddle only about as large as a coffee table. The next leg of the trip, which was met with extremely mixed responses afterwards, was an ‘obstacle’ course through the wetlands. The most fun part was the entire cohort realizing halfway through that it was in fact an obstacle course, a path through the bog that wound directly back to where we started, not a hike to a cool spot. The start of the ‘trail’ consisted of patches of semi-solid ground, about half a meter across, surrounded by inconspicuous mud-quicksand and grass. Further along, it got more tricky, as the partially stable mud ground was replaced with soggy wooden boards balanced precariously on a mud and water mix, which would certainly give way to a misplaced step. And many people misplaced their steps, with a total of five NSLI-Y students either breaking the seal on their rain boots or submerging a leg. Fortunately no one was (seriously) injured, and although we were mostly confused as to why we went in a circle around a swamp, it was altogether a fun trip.

A gorgeous photo of the wetlands, captured with my phone (safely locked in a ziplock bag)

Our last trip before heading back to Wenzao was a comparatively tame shopping run. I spent the forty five minutes we had waiting in line to buy gelato, which ended up being not too bad. And just like that, we were back on the bus to Wenzao, prepping for the next day’s classes, chatting, and falling asleep like nothing had happened.

Back on the bus

Sunset departing

To be honest, it’s been getting harder and harder to write this blog. I’d like to see this as a good thing, as I’ve been happily busy with day to day life and my classes, and I think it’s been mostly hard to write because I’m feeling so strangely normal here in Taiwan. I definitely think that’s a good thing. I’ve adjusted my everyday life here and now it’s more difficult to find the momentum to figure out what is different or worthwhile to talk about. And the dorm Wifi isn’t the best so I have the added excuse of the difficulty of uploading photos. Time here has flown by, and while I have some regret about not making more smaller posts, I plan on putting together a few more entries before my time here ends in not a week.

Love you all, and I’ll see you soon back in the states.

-Violet