Ten Thousand Buddha, "The Beach", and Taiwan

Ten Thousand Buddhas

-Dora-
We visited the Ten Thousand Buddha Monastery on one of our days off. For those of you who don't know we managed to get four day weekends every week. It's pretty nice having a three day school week. Anyway the picture below is the entrance to the monastery the stairs go on for what seemed like forever and these statues are all the way up. Some of them were really strange looking.

These pictures are from the top of the hill/mountain. Some of the Buddha were just plain weird, I wish I knew a little more about it so I could understand the meaning (or if there is meaning) behind some of these statues.

"The Beach"

A friend of ours knows someone who has been in Hong Kong for a while, so she was able to take us hiking to a beach. The beach is open to the public but the only way to get there is by boat or foot. It took us about 1.5 hours to hike there and this was after a 20 minute boat ride and a 30 minute bus ride. So it was quite a trip to say the least, for a beach anyway. The hiking was through the mountains so it was pretty hard. We climbed two mountains before reaching the beach. Then we took another way to get back and there were maybe three more. It was really beautiful hiking, but a lot of work, the beach and scenery made it all worth while. The pictures don't do any of the it justice. The water was completely clear, the sand was white, and mountains surrounded it all. There was only a hand full of people there too. On the way back we took a different a way where there was a water fall, where we swam for a little while. It was a nice break from walking and we were able to wash off all the salt water.

Yes we walked across all of this!

Taiwan

So Monday the 20th was a holiday, which meant we didn't have school. So we spent the time off in Taiwan. Our flight left Thursday morning at 12:15 am and we got back to school at 4:30 on Tuesday. Just in time for our 6:30 class! There were some noticeable differences in Taiwan, first the scooters! I learned to not appreciate them while we were there. They are everywhere, the street and sidewalks. It was really frustrating sometimes because you want to walk on the sidewalk, but they are covered in scooters so you have to walk on the street. The streets are filled with speeding scooters so it’s a lose lose situation. The other major difference were the people, it seemed like everyone wanted to help us, or at least have an excuse to talk to us. Another thing, which made it very hard to get around, was the fact that on all of our maps the street names where spelled different than they were on the actual street sign. So we had to match the sound of the street name, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

We stayed in Taipei for two full days. The first day we spent visiting the Confucius Temple and Danshui (or something like that). The temple was nice, but they are beginning to all look the same. In Danshui, which is on the river in the north, we had dinner by the water and walked along the shore line. It was weird because all along the road they had carnival games. Like the ones where you through a dart at a board filled with balloons or a ring toss. We didn't play any, but it was fun to see.

On Friday we hiked a little through a park (the pictures below) and in the evening we went to a hot spring. It was a public hot spring so we were able to talk to some people there. The place had five difference pools of spring water. Three hot ones divided by burning hot, really hot, and hot. Neither Nathaniel nor I could even put our feet in the burning one; I guess this is the actual temperature directly from the ground. They let the water run from this one to the really hot one and so forth. The other two pools were ones to cool off in. We forgot to take pictures of the place.

On Saturday we took the train from Taipei to Hualien, which was about 3 hours. In Hualien we went to Toroko Gorge National Park. Because our train didn't get in until about 2:30 we didn't make it to the Gorge until 4:00. I don't know why we thought it would still be possible to hike 10 km, but we thought we'd try anyway. So when we got there we figured out that hiking just wasn't going to be possible and there were no taxis or buses. But we got lucky because some people overheard what was going on and actually offered to personally give us a tour. It was two brothers (in their mid 30's) and there dad. They were really nice and asked us where and when we wanted to stop, they told us about the places, and asked if we wanted them to talk pictures of us! It was really strange how nice they were. They didn't have the best English though, so it was kind of hard to talk sometimes. But after we were done there they told us they would take us to dinner, so we had some traditional Taiwan food at the port in Haulien. The dinner was noodles (big suprise) with some stuff on it (don't know what it was and don't really want to know), some sashimi (tuna and some white fish it was really good), and some soup with meatballs (not good) in it. After that they brought us back to our hotel, but not before asking if they could pick us up later in the evening to show us around town. It was a really nice offer, but after spending a few hours with them we were exhausted. So we said goodbye to them, and they were surprisingly disappointed. Below are some pictures of the Gorge, it was mountains of marble with a river running through it. It was very beautiful.

On Sunday we took the train to Kuashiong, the second largest city in Taiwan. Because it was a holiday they had fireworks and some things going on in the evening. So we walked around a little and then saw the fireworks that went off above the Love River. The next day wasn't really too productive since everything was closed. But we walked along a river in the city and waited for our train.