New Year 100

On New Years Eve, I was encouraged to finish class on time for a change to give the TAs chance to get to Taipei before midnight. As we didn't finish work til after 9, I planned a lot more relaxing evening. I cooked up a moussaka for Tin Tin and me and we watched a concert on TV that was counting down to 2o11. It was also counting down to the year 100 for Taiwan, the Republic of China. There was an amazing firework display in Taipei, it was light watching a dance only with lights not people.
On Saturday we woke up fairly early and scootered down on Tin Tin's scooter to the train station to catch a train to Taichung. There we changed onto a shuttle bus to Sun Moon Lake, where we had booked a hotel for the weekend. The drive was smooth and before we knew it, we were on the edge of the lake in Shuishe.
It was just before 2 when we arrived and the sun was shining brightly. The hotel room was small but comfy, with a TV and a great view of the mountains behind. We dumped our stuff and prepared ourselves for a bike ride. Tin Tin was keen to cycle round the mountain and had heard of hire shops around the lake. We walked down to the first shop and I was gobsmacked. It was a giant bike shop! only these new bikes weren't for sale they were for hiring for an hour or 3 or 8.
It was 4 pounds an hour... which is pretty expensive for Taiwan... so we walked through the village until we found another, 5 pounds for 4 hours! This was more my kind of shop. Cheap bikes: cheap price. We took a couple that had good brakes and tyres. I couldn't work the kick stand. The lady said you need to hold the spring when you move it. We started our journey round the lake. The lady said it would take 3 hours... I took 90 minutes when I did it last time with Pascal 4 years ago... and Tin Tin hadn't ridden a bike in 10 years.... still on we went. Unfortunately the first chunk of the cycle was uphill to Wenhu Temple.
I thought if I'm tired Tin Tin's going to be exhausted. I walked back down the hill to where she had stopped. She was feeling really ill. I was hoping it would pass but deep down, i knew we would have to turn round and hand back the bikes. As I was waiting with her, another lady passed us and told me her gears were stiff, could I fixed them. I clicked through the right hand one. Fine! Then I clicked through with my left thumb and OUCH! my thumb just popped out and throbbed as if I'd just fallen on it again. Idiot Duncan! Don't use your thumb. Today a huge black bruise had formed across my hand and thumb as a reminder. Tin Tin was feeling a bit better so I suggested walking up to the Temple for some food and a rest.
I went to pull up the kickstand, and the spring snapped shut on my good fingers. *^#+ !! I growled.
We took some photos of Wenhu Temple ate a sausage on a stick and carried on our way.
We vowed that every time we came to a steep hill, we'd get off and walk.
We past a pagoda, the theme park cable car that is so high in the high above the lake it's surreal, the village of Tha something, and another temple; difficult to see from the road. I was very aware of the vanishing sun and the idea of cycling round a lake in the dark did not appeal.
At last we found the short cut cycle path. The sun was on the horizon. This path is madness! It is too steep and narrow to ride up or down safely so we ran most of it. After many ups and downs, we could see the campsite. I knew where we were again! We plodded on back up up up to the road through a tunnel. It was then a scary finish zooming down a dark busy duel carriageway back to Shiushe. It was gone 6 when we got back. And very dark. We dropped off the bikes and then crashed for an hour at the hotel, before hunger struck. It was very cold so we went in search of hot-pot and only one restaurant did it, the same as last time. I chose the wild boar and tofu hotpot. It was lovely. It was really quiet in the restaurant.
There were thousands of people here the night before watching the New Year's fireworks. Where had they gone?
On the way back to the hotel we had a quick look in the gift shops for something for Tin Tin's family. When we got back the "heater" had turned itself off again, so we had to resort to warming the room with a hairdryer.
The hotel price for this weekend had included a boat trip across the lake. So after some danbin at a breakfast place we bought some water and walked down to the harbour. There was a beautiful view of the mountains on the far side. And a church up some steps. We went up to see if we could get in... but the one lady who was inside said we couldn't come in, because it was prayer time.
I found this very amusing. I don't think I'd ever been told not to go into a temple because people are praying. Anyway, we went back down to the boats, got a red stamp on our hands and made out to the opposite side of the lake.
I underestimated how close the other side was or how fast the boats were. Less than 10 minutes later we had pulled up on what looked like a little island, but was actually a peninsula. There were people singing traditional songs at the harbour and on the steps up to the small temple there were people praying and listening to meditation music.

The temple wasn't that impressive, so we followed a sign 'Scenic Route' to a bigger temple... the path was very hilly but it was indeed scenic.
When we got to the temple it was across the road we had cycled on the day before. It looked Buddhist by the 4 tusked elephants outside and the lack of colours in the main building. It was very quiet and peaceful inside until some workers started banging a new path into place.
We bought an egg on the way back to the path from a pan full of cracked eggs and mushrooms. They had never really appealed to me, but I was amazed how good they tasted. This was to be a day of nice eats.
The boats next call was the small town of Yuchin. We got off the boat and found it difficult to walk as the whole harbour was floating on barrels. There were a group of people singing and smiling, standing on the wall at the exit. They waved at us as we walked past. That's what Hull needs at the docks: happy people singing and greeting people as they enter the city.
Yuchin was filled with stalls selling food and shops selling gifts. It was almost lunchtime, so Tin Tin bought a huge vegetable dumpling from a guy with photos of him serving celebrities giant dumplings all over his stall. I would have got one, but I could just see it going everywhere. So I bought a chicken and salad wrap with thousand island sauce (which has the same in Chinese well 10,000 island).
We then bought a double sausage, one rice one meat. We had to pass on the world famous meatballs. After that we went back to the harbour to relax and enjoy the view of the mountains and dogs wearing coats.
Time was pressing on so we went back past the happy singers to the boat bound for Shuishe.
On each boat ride we were given a bit of info about the area by the driver... Like the fact that the last president of Taiwan, had a house on the lake, and that the man selling cracked eggs makes 3 million dollars in a year.
In Shuishe we decided to grab an "Italian" icecream and listen to a man wailing some vaguely familiar tune, only in Chinese whilst playing the keyboard. He was quite talented player, and his voice surprisingly didn't scare people off.
We then went to buy some food and drink for Tin Tin's family. On the way back to the hotel, we saw a huge queue outside a handmade egg roll place. Tin Tin wanted to buy some so we waited in the queue for 10 minutes and only 2 people had been served we decided to come back after a drink. The queue had gone down, so we only had to wait 30 minutes before getting our two boxes of egg rolls. There were 5 people working there. one rolls the egg, one steams the egg roll, one takes the roll of the roller, one put the egg rolls into trays and another put the trays into a box for the customer. It was like watching Bertha!

Soon after it was time to get the coach back to the train station for our ride home.