Taiwan - Day 4

A brand new morning in Taichung. Started my day with great breakfast. 

Bacon, potato salad, spicy fried pork , steamed fish and fried potatoes all in one platter. 

Passion fruit and some pineapples

Rainbow Village (彩虹着村)

A colourful village painted by the Rainbow Uncle who have lived there for a long time. 

 

Uncle Rainbow

He could speak Cantonese and he told me he was in Malaysia for a decade or so before. He even knows Hakka. 

I bought a coaster and got Mr. Huang's autograph on the packaging. 

The man himself

He's also a very good poser. 

Some of his artwork 

The rocks are not spared from his creativity 

The front wall of the village 

 

My OOTD matched the Rainbow Village

 

Directly facing the sun

With a 2D Uncle Rainbow

Group photo - Ipoh group with 小陳 on my left

Another shot with Richelle

Leaving the village with more colours in my life 

Wen Wu Temple (文武廟

A temple by the Sun Moon Lake. Beautiful photos to share. Forgive me for the lack of captions. Just enjoy the pics!

Xiao Chen explaining the history of the temple 

The temple overlooking the Sun Moon Lake

The main entrance of Wen Wu Temple

There was a Year of Steps where you can walk down and search your birthdate. The top of the steps marked 31 December. 

I had to walk down 330 steps or so to reach my birthday. This is like the Taiwan version of Great Wall although I have never been there. I guess the experience should be about the same. 

 

Finally reached my birthdate. 

Famous people in Taiwan who were born on 1 February. 

Too excited for my own good, I went down another 31 steps to 1 January. 

An easy task to reach down another 31 steps. 

The view of Sun Moon Lake from the bottom of the Year of Steps was beautiful. The hot day makes the lake looked so sparkly. 

The challenge was to get back up 366 steps to 31 December. It was a terribly arduous journey back up. I took my first break in April steps and subsequently a break after each month. 

My knees were shivering when we reached the top. 

Sun Moon Lake (日月潭)

After the tour at Wen Wu Temple, we went for a boat ride on the largest lake in Taiwan. 

Our personal boat

The white deer on the island. 

Wen Wu Temple from a distance 

The interior of the boat before getting off

Just some walking distance away, we had our lunch. 

 

Lingzhi soup with some other dishes

三杯雞 (Three cup chicken)

Wild lingzhi on display in the restaurant

Still in Nantou County, we went to a lingzhi shop managed by the Thao tribe - we greeted them by saying "Naruwan" (那五萬) which means hello in the language of Thao tribe and gained some knowledge about the wild lingzhi. 

We got to try on Thao tribe's traditional clothes after that. 

When we left, the Thao people waved goodbye to us till we were out of sight. They were very welcoming indeed. 

The tribe's population has only about 300 over people now. They are more previous than pandas according to one of the Thao woman who have us an introduction of the various tribes in Taiwan. 

Feng Jia Night Market (逢甲夜市)

The most anticipated evening was finally here! 3 hours of shopping at this well known night market in Xitun District, Taichung. 

The famous big sausage wrap small sausage

These are the small sausages on top of the larger sausages (white in colour)

My opinion? I prefer the smaller sausage. The bigger sausage is further wrapped with some rice and preserved vegetables which is too filling. 

My favourite 雞蛋仔. I picked the black sesame flavour. Cost at NTD50. 

I finally had the opportunity to try the albino bittergourd juice!

Bittergourd + pineapple + honey

Worth trying again. The bitterness was very slight. Thanks to the honey and pineapple which helped in enhancing the flavour of the drink. 

There were quite a lot to see but I only managed to buy a small bag at NTD150. 

It began to drizzle by the time we almost leave. 

Final night in this excellent hotel before we leave for Tainan tomorrow.