Taiwan

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Travis got his way this morning and we visited a street vendor for breakfast.  Wade would have much rather had the hotel breakfast again.  I believe what we had was called Danbing.  It was like an omelet wrapped in some kind of batter with lots of spices.  It was good but a little spicy.  We then checked out of our first hotel and headed to Yuanlin.  It took us approximately 2 hours to get there by train.  We did not take the high speed rail we took the medium rail.  There are three types of trains you can take, high speed, medium speed and slow train. 

Scenery on train ride to Yuanlin

Wade and Paul on train to Yuanlin

We had tried to choose a hotel that was close to the station and succeeded.  It was about a 10 minute walk but the streets were even more crowded than our last city with no sidewalk to really walk on.  It felt like there were even more scooters on the streets.  As we were walking to our hotel we passed Lion Travel, which is where Casper works.  Our trip was planned around his wedding.  He was Travis first convert to the church while serving on his mission.  We stopped and met Casper and visited for just a few minutes because he was at work.

We then finished our trek to our hotel, Kindness Hotel.  Even though again we were earlier than check in time, they allowed us to check in.  This hotel only allowed up to 2 guests in each room, unless it was a child under 12, so Travis had his own room.  This hotel was very clean and spacious with free ice cream, and every time you would walk in the person at the front desk would stand and welcome you back.  This was my favorite hotel for the trip. 

After checking in and getting settled we headed back to the train station to meet up with Ya Ting.  We then took the train and then a bus to Lugang. It is called old China in modern Taiwan.  We shopped the old Lugang streets and found some treasures to purchase.  This was really our only shopping excursion we had on the trip.  There was an old Ric-Shaw that the gentleman running it kept trying to get us to ride in.  We bought some Cow tongue cookies and Paul purchased a Carmel Apple ice treat.  It was really sweet, but very tasty.  After spending several hours shopping and wondering the old streets we headed back to Yuanlin.

Dinner was at the Hot Pot.  It is similar to the Melting Pot restaurant.  They bring you a bowl of broth and put it on a hot plate.  Then they bring a bowl full of stuff to cook, like cabbage, tofu, other vegetables and sea foods.  They then brought a plate of your choice of meat, lamb, pork or beef.  You put it in the hot broth cooked it and ate it. Of course there was rice also.  Much of what was in the bowl went to Travis or Ya Ting to eat.