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|evelyn|ravenxeve|
16 going on forever || 23/7/91
ravenxeve@gmail.com
~~DLSS~~||~~KSS~~||ajc
this is me forever

Taiwan: Day TWO [ 21:06 ]

taken at Yeh Liu.

This is apparently quite a tourist spot. There were tons of people milling about, and you can hear tour guides explaining about this location.

There was this rock, shaped like a broken heart, in which happens to have a legend behind it. Apparently, the two... immortals from the legend of The Eight Immortals, had fallen in love with each other. But due to some disagreement with each other, He Xian Gu, the female one, took a sword and severed her lover's heart. Or something. It's a little lame, the legend... and not exactly something that I believe in. Because after all, the Eight Immortals are just a myth sort of thing. But you can't deny that the scenery is anything but spectacular.

After that educational trip in which I sort of learned how these... rocks are formed, we moved on. And now, I shall introduced to you the first temple that we visited. Apparently, this is a famous temple, in which there is a... deity that is made entirely in solid gold, sitting at the top level of the temple. There are other statues of him too, on the first level, he is made out of bronze, the second level being jade. The whole cost of creating these statues must be downright expensive. I didn't take any pictures, since it's disrespectful or something. Anyway, the Taiwanese are really religious or something, going to all that cost... the statues are not small, you know. They were at least thrice as wide as me, and four times taller. Granted, I'm short and all that, but it's seriously large. Imagine all the resources needed.

I don't exactly like chinese-styled dragons. they don't breathe fire or hoard treasures.

Sooo, as you know, temple visits aren't really my sort of thing... so yeah...

To reward myself for enduring incense and 'respectfulness', I got myself an unusual ice-cream. No pictures but I'm pretty sure I can describe it.

To make this ice-cream:
STEP 1: Take one 'popiah' skin and lay it flat out. This is the outer layer.
STEP 2: Sprinkle peanut shavings VERY liberally over the surface of the wrapping.
STEP 3: Put desired amount of ice cream onto the wrapping.
STEP 4: Add even more peanuts.
STEP 5: Wrap everything up, in popiah style. And it's done.

See, it's that simple. And very cheap too. Hence, this ice cream was only NT$30.

Then, I also tried their Black Sugar Fa Gao, it's a sort of cake thing, made with black sugar. Fa Gao is really common here anyway, but this is different in a sense. I also had the traditional Bang Bang Tang, it's a sweet malt thing that is coated thickly on a stick, sort of thing. Very sweet though, and quite nice.

After that, we moved onto the next scene. Instead of travelling by bus, our tour guide treated us to a ride on a train to Hua Lien.

the train ticket... and the train station

It was a forty-five minutes trip. In which there wasn't too much scenery, especially when we went through tunnels. The reason why we didn't take the transport bus was because the entire journey would have taken much longer if we went by the winding roads. Instead, if we go by train, we would be travelling directly through the mountains, hence cutting down time wastage.

As you may know, Taiwan has their own natives, sort of like America's American Indians, Taiwan have their own 'tribal' people too. And some of them eke out a living by performing for tourists and being a tourist attraction, in a sense. And because we're tourists, how can we pass up the chance of seeing them?

It says Ah Mei Cultural Tribe. Sort of.

quite a long performance indeed. second and third picture may seem familiar. the bamboo dance from sec 2, remember?

And it was back to the hotel after this. Not the first one with the sugoi bathroom, but another hotel. Which was much plainer. And one of my aunts had a spooky encounter!

It was in the middle of the night, when she suddenly jolted awake from sleep. Chills blossomed down her spine as she distinctly felt the bed shaking with an extra weight. It was almost as if someone else was rocking the bed. Her sister [my other aunt] in the next bed was oblivious, peacefully slumbering. So, this aunt laid as still as possible, trying to ignore the shaking, but obviously she couldn't fall asleep. And I have no clue what happened next... I guess, she did fall asleep at some point... right?

Labels: freetalk