住你新年快乐！牛年对你好了！Happy Chinese New Years!!! May the Ox treat you well!
I’m going to compile a few days into this entry as I can hardly remember what happened on which day. That’s the downside of cramming so much activity into a short time span. You don’t even remember what you did after breakfast.
The last two days were spent in a city called Kending. On the first day we started with taking a group photo under Big Pointy Mountain. Isn’t it a lovely name? Apparently, from some angles you see it as a sharp pointed mountain and from other’s its nice and rounded. We’ve been working on coming up with a translation that sounds a little more regal…
There was lots of scenery but the highlight for me personally was when we ran into another tour group following our path. They were students of some sort and were chatting (loudly) among themselves. We knew that they were talking about us because A) we can speak Chinese too and B) even if we didn’t, the word for foreigner is a word everyone who enters the country learns first. I don’t mind people talking about us, but it wouldn’t serve them well if they thought that they could do that to every foreigner they ran into now would it? I accidently got caught up in their group at some point and asked in Chinese (hopefully eloquently) what grade level they were. The boy responded in English, looked confused, and then dismayed while the rest of the group laughed quite a bit. Moral of the story- you never know who can understand you. If you wouldn’t speak about them when they can understand you, don’t do it if they can’t.
Later that day we went to a village with replicas of the original style of homes that the aboriginals lived in. They looked very similar to the Chinese style homes I was already familiar with. There was also a bridal sedan chair in one of the court yards, so we put Ellie in it and made the boys carry her around. It was funny. She looked terrified (that they’d drop her), which was appropriate- brides were supposed to weep the entire way from their parents home to the grooms for some cultural reason .
The next day was full of stuff seeing. We went to maotoubi. Literally cat head nose. It’s the southern most point of Taiwan and is called that because of a rock in the ocean that apparently looks a bit like a cat. There’s some debate about that though. Personally, I think it looks like a fish.
We went and rode around on a Go Cart track for a little bit. That was fun. Gunning a car as fast as you can go, even if it is a go-cart, and then whipping around a corner is awesome. I will of course not try it in a full size. I’d have to pay for the damages. Maybe if I didn’t have to pay…
We also went to Eluanbi where we saw the lighthouse fortress. Previous attempts to light fire stacks to warn ships of the shallow coast had been put out by natives because they were afraid of them. The British decided that a proper lighthouse needed to be build and fortified against attempts to put it out. You can count on the British to put fortification into everything…even a lighthouse. There were even holes in the wall to place guns and cannons, although there was never any firing done.
We left there and went to Taitung to stay at a hot springs hotel for the evening. It was nice enough, but I personally liked Kaohsung’s hotel better. They had better soap.
Girl bonding is pretty amusing, though I’m not allowed to tell what it was. It’s a secret J
There was the sporadic sound of firecrackers in the evening but I slept like a dog (I accidently wrote “god” the first time I typed this entry, haha.). Today is New Year’s but we don’t see a lot of evidence of it. If I think about it, there’s not much life in America on New Year’s Day either, aside from TVs showing the Macy’s parade…talk about a shopping culture :P
Today we went to the Siaoyeliou and Sansiantia Nature Reserves, as well as a place where there was a bunch of Caves and Buddhas/various Gods. At Sansiantia we watched a fisherman reel in a fish up the bridge we were standing. The fish looked like a barracuda and had a long jaw full of teeth. He takes out a pair of things that could be pliers or those scissor wrenches and the naïve girl in me thought he might be pulling out the hook. Nope, he snapped off the upper than lower jaws with it. I wish he hadn’t thrown them over the bridge though. It would’ve been cool to have some of those teeth.
At the Buddha caves we saw more scenery and walked around. We’re all going to have a million pictures of the coast that all look exactly the same. We also saw a monkey and tried Betel nuts. Do not ever eat them. EVER. It was a less than pleasant experience. They taste nasty and make you feel like there’s cotton shoved down your throat. Old people love chewing them. I think its cause when you’re old you lose more of your sensitivity to things and this is strong enough for them to enjoy. That or they’ve gone senile.
We also went to an Ami cultural village and saw some traditional dancing. Very much like what you might be able to do in the States with our Native Americans. It feels a little like they’re whoring out their traditions so people can gawk at it and buy silly trinkets. I think that’s just me though. Geoff was included in a mock marriage ceremony and carried the girl around on his back with the help of a little tiny chair (real Ami guys were supposed to make a chair on their back using their arms and hands). Poor boy didn’t know what he was getting into when he was invited upstage. I suspect this might be true for guys in every culture.
At least our boys didn’t have to hike up a vertical mountain with a girl on their back.
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