an hour trip away from Taipei
Today, we set out to a new place that not many people know about in Taiwan. It is a famous place for natives to go to and it was a rare treat for us to go with someone who knew a lot about it. I think that we were fortunate to have this opportunity to come here at this time when everything is just working out right for us.
So the trip that we took today was about an hour away from downtown Taipei. We went with a few more people than we did in the days before. At first as we left Lee’s apartment, we met up with Vivian again and her friend named Sally. We took a little trip to Taoyuan to pick up Vivian’s sister, Gladys and we had a little breakfast there. Gladys made us a sandwich for breakfast and bought milk tea for us. Both were excellent. We found out that Vivian's house is a six story building and its all their family. That's very nice and we took their nice Volvo SUV to the onsen place that we were planning to go to.
About an hour into the trip, we stopped at a place for lunch. It was a very traditional taste than before and it was really good. We both enjoyed the food very much. We had a lot to eat at this little small place. We were the only customers in the store, which made us feel very special. We had a chance to make some traditional tea of the Hakka tribe of Taiwan. It was pretty interesting since we needed to smash the sesame seeds with some peanuts and a host of other ingredients to make the tea. We added oolong tea to make the flavor and it was very good. It was tasty, but the problem that I had with it was that my plum stick melted away faster than everyone else. Soon after that we left on another 40 minute adventure on the winding mountain side to a little onsen place that was called the East River something something resort.
It was a nice little place and there weren’t that many people there either. That was the really good part about it. It’s not like Japan where you have to go around naked, so we were wearing swim suits. I was happy that I got a chance to wear my swim suit that I bought in Okinawa again. Since I paid a large amount for them, I’m glad to be making use of them. It was great to be relaxing and talking with them. Gladys, Lee, EK and I were in the outside onsen area, while Vivian and Sally were in the inside one. EK and I kept on switching from hot to cold baths. It was great and really relaxing. I’ve got a lot of pictures of the place and of us there. I'll post them up as soon as I get back to Japan and to my computer. It was fun, relaxing and enjoyable so that was a great day to have during our vacation. It was a very good cultural experience and the scenery was just absolutely breath-taking. I'm glad that I got to see the countryside of Taiwan. That was something that I planned for this trip. I mean when EK and I were thinking about where we could go or what we could do, the main three things that we wanted to see, were all outside of Taipei and all dealt with nature. So getting out there and seeing it was very nice and good for us.
On the way home, things were a bit different. EK kept on going on and off of his sleeping patterns. Sally sat in the back seat and slept most of the way. I was sitting next to Gladys who was talking for most of the trip back home. It was a bit tiring because of the mountain driving and the heat in the car. I needed to get some fresh air from time to time, but the twisting and turning was a bit much for me. I was beginning to have a headache during the car ride. We took a local road to get back to Vivian’s house, so it took a lot longer than anyone or everyone expected. At the end, we were talking more with each other and they were asking me things about what I thought about the culture and things of that nature. We had to head back because Gladys had to go to class since she had two classes tonight. She was late for class though since we took the local route there.
From there, Gladys went to school and Vivian stayed at home. Lee took EK, Sally, and I back to Taipei. Sally had an appointment with one of her friends that she was setting up on a date. They were just going to go see the new Harry Potter movie that just came out here. The ride back to Taipei was pretty interesting. EK and Sally were both in the back seat and talking to each other a lot. I’ve never seen him this way macking on girls in front of everyone. I think that it was pretty obvious. They were speaking all in Japanese too. She used to live in Japan to study Japanese and she’s really really good at it. I was very impressed with it and how fluent she became with only living and studying for a year. They were talking a lot, while I was just talking to Lee to keep him away while he was driving. I was talking to him about the time one of my friends met up with him at the airport. It’s such a small world. He told me about the places that we went to and which place that he enjoyed the most while he was traveling. He enjoyed traveling around Europe and I thought that was very interesting. I really want to go there too, and I'm just trying to figure all that out now too.
After that we went to get some dinner at a Taiwanese style Shabu Shabu. I thought that it was fairly inexpensive to have each person to able to make their own meat and vegetables. It was a lot to eat and afterwards I was stuffed. I ordered the Lamb meat, and it seems that since I’ve been in Taiwan, I’ve been eating a lot of that. I think that it’s only because it’s incredibly under priced, but the quality is still high. I ate a lot and became full quite quickly. We left to go home soon after that. Then EK and I were working on our plan for the rest of our stay in Taiwan. Lee looked stressed about something. I’m not sure if it’s us that’s making him stressed out, but I thought that it was about time that we took over with the vacation planning and set out some of the important things that we wanted to get checked off and made a pretty good plan for it to be accomplished. I put together a plan of all the things that we haven’t seen, but want to see, plus meeting up with all the new friends that we’ve made and the old friend that I have.
