Trip to Taichung

Hey guys,

unfortunately, I'm far behind with my blog entries. This trip was already three weeks ago, the weekend after I found my new room. I went together with Monica (my buddy), her boyfriend PJ, Nil, Ines and Geoffrey (also exchange students) to Taichung, Taiwan's third biggest city.

 Day 1

We left from Taipei by bus at 11 in the morning, and due to some traffic jams, it took us 5 hours to get to Taichung. After we put our luggage in the hotel, it was already 5, and we were starving. Our original plan was to look at a museum first (it was a very rainy weekend), but since our bus took two hours longer then expected, we decided to go directly to Taichung's most famous attraction: the Feng Chia night market. This night market is said to be the biggest night market in Taiwan.

After we arrived at the night market, we started working our way through the many shops and street vendors:

Left: A typical street vendor; one person prepares the food in the back, another person fries or roasts the food in front of the customer.

Right: The first thing I did at the night market: eat! There were so many different kinds of food, mostly Taiwanese and Japanese snacks, such as rice balls, tempura, squid balls, the usual fried chicken, fried rice and fried noodles, dumplings, glass sweets, cream waffles and of course the ever present stinky tofu.

Here you can see the size of the night market. Because of the tons of people, it was very difficult to move forward.

Next to food you can also find clothes, phone cases, etc. on a night market. Just like the other items, the motor helmets on the pictures are very 'Asian' style.

Taichung has around 1 million inhabitants. In my opinion, the number is higher. All the streets were full of people, and it seemed much more crowded than in Taipei.

After the night market we went back to the hotel. Since we booked only 1 week ahead, it was difficult to find a room. We ended up in a questionable establishment; the room probably hadn't been cleaned in months and cockroaches were crawling out of the shower... It was hands down the worst hotel I ever stayed in!

Day 2

We got up early to take the bus to our next station: the Formosan aboriginal culture village, located in the mountains that surround Taichung. The Aborigines were the first inhabitants of Taiwan and arrived here around 8000 years ago. Later, when the Japanese colonized Taiwan, they were surpressed and hunted. Nowadays, the Aborigines are still living on the border of the society, but they are trying to integrate by showing their culture to tourists.

When we arrived, we were in for a surprise: the so-called 'aboriginal culture village' was not an actual Aborigine village, it was an amusement park. I already noticed on several occasions that 'culture' does not entail the same meaning in Taiwan as it does in Europe. Here, culture is something that you can take a nice picture of and that can entertain you. An amusement park with a kitschy baroque castle next to aboriginal houses, several roller coasters and artificial lakes fits this description of culture perfectly:

As you can see in the picture below, it's cherry blossom time at the moment. 

After spending the day at the amusement park and trying out several roller coaster (despite the constant rain), we took a gondola over the mountains, to our next station: the Sun Moon lake.

This lake is one of Taiwan's most popular tourist spots, and the biggest lake here. On the lake's shores, there used to be several Aboriginal tribes villages, of which some still exist today. Our original plan was to walk along the lake and enjoy the scenery. But since it was raining non-stop, we decided to go to our hotel right away.

Because there was a lot of traffic jams, it took us 2 hours to get to our hotel. This hotel was located in a little village, and it was pitch dark and empty when we arrived. This time we were very happy with the room, which was clean and simple. It was part of a little appartment, so we also had a living room and kitchen to stay in. Other than us, there was a Taiwanese family staying at the appartment. They were very nice, and invited us to our first Taiwanese tea ceremony.

Later that night, Monica taught us how to play Majong, which is a traditional Chinese game. I really enjoyed it and decided to bring a souvenir majong game home.

Day 3

We spent the third day relaxing at the village, which was called Checheng. It was very beautiful there, despite the rain and fog.

The village used to be a big logging producer in Taiwan, but now its main industry is tourism.

There were lots of old, abandoned trains, left behind by the logging companies.

A wood museum presented the history of the village in a very Taiwanese way (the gift shop of the museum was bigger than the actual museum).

Monica and I made our own woodboxes. Feeling like a child again!

In the afternoon, we took a train back to Taichung. From Taichung we took the bus to Taipei. This was our first trip outside of Taipei, and I hope there's still more to come!