week 4 - sun moon lake, part 1

when my mom went to taiwan just before we did, she met up with my third aunt and her daughter, who is a travel agent.  they had the great idea to set up a short excursion when ben came in town, and the original plan was to visit 日 月 谭 (sun moon lake) and 啊里 山 (mt. ah li).  both are in central/southern taiwan, whereas we'd stayed exclusively in the north around taipei up till then.

i didn't remember meeting my cousin as a child, but i did remember her brother, who's closer to our age.  i called her a few times to set up the trip, realizing more each time how limited my chinese is outside of casual conversation =p  fairly amazingly, when we got off the high-speed rail in taichung and called her, up she pulled in her car and her friend's, whom she had recruited to help ferry us around.  the train itself was pretty neat, reducing a 2 1/2 hour trip to 45 minutes, if you don't count the half hour it takes to navigate to it in taipei main station =p

we had planned to go to 啊里 山 (mt. ah li) first, but it didn't seem like such a great idea in the pouring rain.  so we turned back, and after stopping at a roadside specialty snack shop with everything from bamboo crackers to packaged sweet potato morsels to supersize bags of fresh taro chips, we sampled a regional specialty (so i was told) for lunch:  chicken roasted over a wood fire in giant drums.  i'm sure there's a more elegant name for it in chinese ;-)

the chicken was quite good, especially next to some of the more adventurous dishes like intestines and whole fried river shrimp ;-)

less than an hour later, we pulled up to sun moon lake, and were stunned to find that our cousin had put us up in rooms that might have been the nicest around.  the balconies, the lobby and the dining room directly faced the water:

the girls also found a few fun things inside the room ;-)

k found it pretty comfy too ;-)

after a short rest, we headed out for - what else?  a boat ride on the lake =)