Weekend Excursion to the South!

This weekend, we took an excursion to the south! We started by going to an ecological town, where everything grown is grown organic, and people from the city can even do rent lodging for several nights as a vacation. Following that, we went to Sun Moon Lake (日月潭) where they have one of the top twelve biking trails in the world! We got on our bikes and started riding, and it was one of the most scenic trails I've ever been on. The lake was made by the Japanese to increase the freshwater resources on the island, and is stunningly beautiful in the late afternoon with mist rising all around it. On our way back to the bus, we haggled for some high-quality A Li Shan (阿里山) tea, and got quite a decent price for it. We finally headed to Taichung (臺中) where we stayed for the night.

The next morning, we went to see many of the Dutch forts that were built in southern Taiwan, in Tainan (臺南), during their period of occupation. We visited Fort Provintia, one of the two major Dutch outposts. It was a very traditional European style fort, which was redone by the Qing dynasty to be more Chinese in style. The second fort we visited was Fort Zeelandia, the most prominent Dutch fort at the time. It surrendered to the forces of Koxinga (國姓爺), and it also was redone in a Chinese-style. We finally visited a Qing dynasty fort and training ground, which was beautifully done and was full of different fruit-bearing trees. There were giant plaques in both Chinese and Manchu around the base of the fort, and the calligraphy was lovely to look at.

After that we visited the oldest street in Tainan, which happened to also be the oldest street in Taiwan! It was full of food (mostly stinky tofu) and little gift shops with Chinese medicine, dried fruits, and souvenirs. After that, we went to Kaohsiung. There, we went to their night market, which was so small, to eat dinner.

The next day, we went to the biggest Buddhist temple in Taiwan, the Fo Guang Shan (佛光山). It was a stunning Buddhist museum/temple with towering pagodas and and massive Buddha statue done entirely in bronze. We learned much about the philosophy of the museum and temple while there, and were surprised to find many shops inside, especially a Starbucks! After that, we came back to Taipei for the start of our next week.