Taiwan Day 3

Today is my last full day here in Taiwan. I've been staying at a hotel in Zhongli, which is 40 minutes outside Taipei.

I went to Lee Foo Village today, which is a theme park sort of near Hsinchu. On the Internet it says you can "take the Hsinchu bus in front of Zhongli station for Lee Foo Village". Helpful, eh? I was able to find the Hsinchu bus website and figure out (completely in Chinese) what the route number was. I'm not making the same mistake twice!

When I finally arrived at the theme park, it was, well, deserted. Granted, it's a school day and it's raining. Nevertheless, I went inside. You can tell they expect a lot of people during the year, because the park is absolutely massive. There were several theme lands, such as Arabia, the Wild West, South Pacific, and African Safari. My favourite ride was the Screaming Condor in Wild West: it's a feet-dangling high-speed half-coaster. Basically you get harnessed in and the thing shoots you up a tower, twists, and brings you back with enough force to shoot you up the other tower. It was awesome, especially because it was only me and 2 other people on the ride.

I also went on a free-fall ride called "Pagoda's Revenge" which was actually too intense. I couldn't even scream or yell while I was falling, the only thing I could manage was a hilariously weak primal struggle-grunt. How embarrassing to hear that.

I went on a water rapids ride too which was also excellent. You need at least 2 people to be admitted on, and I was single, so I had to wait for some more people to show up. When some young people came, we rode together. It's a circular inner tube with benches on it, and the current makes it spin all the way down the course. Thankfully, they let me sit by myself at one end. I remembered reading once that weight increases the amount of water likely to enter the ride vehicle. In other words, sit separately from others to get the least wet.

And we did get wet (well, they got wet, really). Language barriers disappear when sharing such an experience. It was awesome.

I also went on the Safari Train, and Indiana Jones style car-type ride, and a roller coaster.

They were playing Dolly Parton music in the Wild West area. They even played "Make Me a Vessel".

When I was finished with the park, I went to catch a bus to Taipei because I had some last minute sightseeing to do. I waited 40 (!) minutes for the blasted thing...and then there were some complications that would have left a non-Chinese speaker/reader high-and-dry. I had asked a question to some young ladies, but they didn't know how to answer in English, so they pointed to me when I needed to get off the bus.

When I got to Taipei I went to check out a subway station that was used as a reference for one of my favourite computer games, Alpha Protocol. Then, I went to check out Longshan Temple. It's one of the most famous temples in Taipei, and it was humming with devotion and prayers tonight.

You're supposed to purchase 7 sticks of incense, light them all, and then drop them off in pots as you go around the temple bowing and praying to the each member of the dream team. If you want to have a question divinely answered, you can do a ritual with two small blocks of wood. You ask your question and describe your issue and then toss them to the ground. Your answer is determined by the way the wood lands.

Taiwan has many distinct smells: often it smells like fennel and another sweet spice (cardamom? I can't put my finger on it), and whenever you walk by a temple or roadside god, it smells of earthy, heavy incense. Sometimes it's the salty seawater that flows in some of the rivers, and sometimes it's the putrid smell of aptly-named stinky tofu.

After I returned to Zhongli, I had a bit of time left, so I went to see the Zhongli Night Market. Disappointingly, it was also deserted and mostly closed. Oh well. I stopped by a bubble tea shop on the way back (bubble tea was invented in Taiwan: it's tea + milk + 1/4" spheres of tapioca jelly (the bubbles)), and got some really delicious milk tea. By the way, they sell milk tea in the stores here. Heaven!! I love the stuff, but strangely they do not sell it in Korea.

Final cultural note: Taiwan is pretty awesome (clean and cheap!!! Shocker!). I think it's worth visiting. They don't have many world-class things to see, but they have their own distinctive island culture which is a mix of Chinese, indigineous Taiwanese, Japanese, and European. Actually, I'm a little surprised about the Japan-love thing here. I mean, Taiwan was occupied (and all the mess that comes with it) by Japan just like Korea was, yet they have 100% different views on Japanese culture and people now. Still, if you're in the area or want to do a circuit of East Asia and can't get a visa for China, try Taiwan, it'll touch your heart (lol, that's their national tourism slogan).