Man Man Zou

Today the weather was so hot and sunny, so we had to make a choice… stay in Yuanlin, where farmers are busy wreaking havoc with the air by burning the rice fields:

Or go somewhere where we could breathe, such as Sun Moon Lake:

We dragged our butts out of bed sometime before 10am and hopped on the scooter for the nice 2-hour ride to Sun Moon Lake. There are so many ways to go to Sun Moon Lake from Yuanlin- through Puli, through Nantou, or down through ErShuei- and I’m sure there are even more ways than that. I like going down through ErShuei because the land changes so much. We went through pineapple fields, betelnut tree ‘forests’, rice fields, HuoLongGuo orchards, and more.

The scenery was such a delight that Mark and I had to be careful that we didn’t slam into eachother on the road when we slowed down to look at something. As you can see, Mark was very patient every time I stopped to take a photo:

Opposite of last time I went to Sun Moon Lake (December 2003, the coldest I ever remember feeling), it was so hot that I felt like I was sitting next to a fire the whole time. Even while driving at 90kph- it just kept getting hotter. After going through this tunnel (that was leaking water inside), we started heading into the mountains a little, and it slowly got a little cooler:

Before Sun Moon Lake, we stopped at the super famous Snake Kiln near ShueiLi. Ever since I came to Taiwan, when talking with people about sightseeing in Taiwan, they always ask me if I’ve been to the ShueiLi Snake Kiln yet. So I figured I should give it a looksee.

I should have known. Almost everything that is a tourbus attraction in Taiwan - the Salt Mountain of Tainan, mini Statue of Liberty of Chiayi, Fire meets Water of KuanTzeLing, etc..- is the kind of place where I stand there, confused about why I am actually there. Same thing with the Snake Kiln of ShueiLi. I paid 120NT to get in, which is kind of a lot for a small place with absolutely nothing going on, just a long 70-year-old kiln that was inside a restaurant, a bunch of smashed up pots, and of course shops where you can buy pottery. I was expecting to see artists in action, some displays, and more info (at least a little in English!) about the old kiln. But there was nothing. It’s even safe to say that there were better things to see just outside the Snake Kiln entrance, where all the typical tourist stalls were set up. Well at least now I can say that I’ve been there! Here’s the Snake Kiln:

After that, we drove for just a little while longer up into the cool mountains and arrived at Sun Moon Lake. There really weren’t hordes of people like I was expecting for a Saturday, perhaps Sunday is a busier day. It was nice.

The lake was beautiful today. The clouds were threatening rain off and on, but it never rained. We went to the same temples as last time: the Dragon and Phoenix temple, WenWu temple, and the Tzuen Pagoda.

At Sun Moon Lake, the cool thing to do is to go on a boat, but that’s no thrill for us since we do that all the time in Canada so we didn’t bother. It was funny seeing all the tourists boats ‘woo-ing’ the people by making slow doughnuts in the water.

I guess for me, a ‘cool’ tourist thing is to walk through a temple, but I understand why that’s not so cool with Taiwanese. It would be like me walking through a church back home- that’s no fun!

By late afternoon, we rode back to Yuanlin. This time we went through Nantou, which was also a nice way. Mark drove half way up a ramp to the raised superhighway for cars only, but finally noticed me honking and laughing down on the county highway and turned around. I thought I’d add that to embarrass him.

I’ll add the Sun Moon Lake gallery this week.