Thursday, April 28, 2011

Sun Moon Lake

On Tuesday, I took a tour to Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan. The lake is found between a few mountains which gave it a really hazy backdrop. The whole area is relatively undeveloped and felt extremely calm and tranquil having just come from the madness of Taipei.


Nearby the lake is the Wen Wu Temple, which has a tower dedicated to Confucius and scholarly worship. After having visited approximately 3271 Buddhist temples in the last 6 months, it's nice to see Confucius getting some love, too.


Further along the lake's edge is the Cih-en Pagoda. After hiking for about 30 minutes, you can walk up 9 flights of stairs to the top of the pagoda. Once you are up there, you can bang a gong into an enormous bell. I think my ears are still ringing.


Last night, back in Taipei, I went to Snake Alley, where I'd heard you can see a show in which the snake feeds on live animals and people drink snake blood alcohol and all of this crazy stuff. All I saw was a guy swinging a snake around by the tail and flipping a poor turtle on its back and making it roll over about 65 times. Gotta say I was disappointed. I wanted to be shocked and appalled.


This morning, I went to the Beitou hot springs. If you've never been in a hot spring, just know they can be uncomfortably, painfully hot. Like human Hot Pot temperatures.


After I was fully cooked and got out of the springs, I went to the Shilin Residences, the former home of Chiang Kai-Shek. I guess the guy had a thing for gardens.



Location:MíngShèng St,Yuchih Township,Taiwan

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