For today's blog, you will want to have the following image up for your reference:
My coworker Joys (yes, it's a guy's name) invited me to the middle of Taiwan to meet his family and see both the ocean and mountains that the area is known for. I left Saturday morning on a high speed train (top speed on this trip was 300 kph.... 186mph for those who were wondering) to get to Taichung. If you really want to learn something today - "Pei" means North (as in "Taipei") and "Chung" means Middle (as in "Taichung")... yes, there is a "Tainan" ("Nan" means south)... and yes, "Wang Chung" could be translated as "Everybody Middle Wang Tonight".
It really is the beginning of Summer! It was 31-33 all weekend (88-92 Fahrenheit) and I got some nice sun going. They made fun of my tan line from my hat though - they don't get tan lines like I do! After picking me up from the train station, Joys took me to his hometown of Yuanlin (built next to the mountainside... not the "yunlin" on the map above). I met his kids (you'll see Eva (age 11) and Leo (age 9) in the pictures.... they can spell words in English faster than I can... like "sausages") and wife - then we headed on to Changhua City (also on the map) where we saw the largest Buddha I've ever seen. This thing was 5-6 stories tall and we actually got to climb the stairs inside of Buddha and see scenes depicting the life stories of the Buddha. There of course was a shrine in the back and some statues on the grounds of the different faces of the Buddha. Was a pretty view of Changhua City though from up there. You can see the pictures - plus some of the dancing fountains that I always enjoy.
Time was a factor to get everything in... so we hurried to Lugang (to the west... close to the Taiwan Strait/China Sea) which is one of the 3 main places that the original descendants from China inhabited. Went through a temple as a start to our "town tour" that also had a visitor's center (with English map/guide book!). Then onto a street market for some unusual food. The Strawberry and Tomato skewer (you can see in the pictures) was dipped in some hard candy type thing. It was actually really good, but a big ol' drop fell on my white shirt (plus was soft candy due to the extreme heat there). Good thing i was going to throw that shirt out anyways due to it having a hole. Ran through another outdoor temple.... then we continued on!
Stopped by the History house that looked WAY more like a Haunted House from the movies. Inside was a lot of historical items and recreation of the original house that was used by the first governor of that province. It was interesting, but not air conditioned and by then it was over 92 degrees.... so you can imagine what my attention span was for history.
Another well known spot in town was a street called "Touch Breast Lane".... seriously! The designer of the walkway made it very narrow so the breeze off of the Taiwan Straight comes through and by building narrow doors into the buildings, it acts like an airconditioning in the hot summer heat. While the wind was minimal when we walked through it, the walls were scary in spots after years of leaning and looking like they could fall at any moment. The reason for the name is due to if one person is walking the 2 or so blocks and someone comes from the other end, you have to turn sideways and slither along... and a woman's breasts would most likely rub against you. Thus the name. Unfortunately it was only Joys and I walking down this path. We even came back to the car on the same path but we were still the only ones that day.
We stopped for lunch and being so close to the sea, it was safe to assume 100% of the menu was going to be seafood. It is a fishing village after all! So my distaste of seafood was taken to the limit with some fried oyster omelet, oyster and fish soup, and fried noodles with oysters. Luckily I had eaten some at the market earlier!!! I took some pictures to prove to Sarah that I ate some oysters. I did not touch the fish - I still stand by the rule of not eating anything that is served with eyeballs.
After lunch was when the excitement started. We joined a group that takes tours out to the sea. Remember, I had no idea what we were doing, only that we would "see the water in a bit".... per the words of my host. We loaded up in these strange motorcycle/truck combination type thing (that had a motor you can hear about 2 miles away), that maxed out at around 5mph. We went out onto the sand barge into the sea. The tide comes up high enough every night to bring along some food, then recedes enough to allow tours like ours to go out and actually dig for our own oysters. I really sucked at this in case you were wondering. You can't spear them, or catch them on a hook. You actually take a rake through the sand, if you feel some thing like a rock, it's a shell. I spent about 45 minutes walking around looking for easy finds, but in the last 15 minutes, I found probably 85% of my catch. The little kid who was our group leader for our car was a little help. He didn't realize that I didn't grow up in a fishing village where people know what they're doing. I consider myself more of a city boy when it comes to stuff like this. I did find a little crab though. He was too small to take home, but the girls in our truck enjoyed watching him move sideways as he walked off the back of our truck. We went to see an oyster farm where the pros do their catching. They setup lines that the oysters and other shells attach themselves to, but when the tide goes back out, they stay attached and the guys can go out daily and pull in tons and tons as they wish. You can see pictures of them cracking a few "fresh" ones open for people to try. Yeah, I figured "why not" and tried one... it was very VERY salty from being in the salt water. I'm not going to ever try that again. We did see a ray of some sorts, and a jelly fish.... the interesting wildlife that I haven't ever seen in the US.
At this point, the sun had gotten to us. We went back and had a few beers, then called it a day. Joys dropped me off at a hotel and told me to get some sleep since I would need my energy the following day in the Mountains. Again, this is all the information I was given. So you too will have to wait till tomorrow to get more information.....
Typhoon headed this way. Although it's looking to go west of Taiwan now, we still might get some heavy winds and rain the next few days. As long as I still can get home Thursday night;) I may not have to go to work on Wednesday depending on the path it takes....
So I've wasted enough of your Monday morning. For the record - Wimbledon is on live here!!! I just got done watching Federer win in about 75 minutes in Round 1.
Again, make sure you follow along with the pictures on the right!
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