Alishan part 2

The big trees i saw at this part of the mountain were awesome. I have never seen such old and big trees in my whole life. Even though by this time I was soaking wet seeing all this nature was worth it.

A random rest stop with all this Chinese on it. I have no idea what it says though.

Hiking was rough on my legs. We climbed all the way up then down then up again.

Some more bad English in Taiwan.

This is a shrine to all the trees that were cut down in the past.

This is so funny! The red sign says "please don't park here" two cars are parked in front of the sign and one car is double parked behind both of them. this is the best you can expect in Taiwan when it comes to driving. Taiwanese don't care about driving law.

We rode down on a small van. The driver was crazy! He passed 3 buses going down hill on a blind turn. He did get us there very fast though.

We made a stop here to eat some lunch.

This trip to Alishan was a lot of fun! I had a great time.

Hot Springs!

Today we went to the hot springs and the library. We drove for 20 minutes to get to it. It is a mess to get out of the city. The traffic jams are the worst I have ever seen. But once you get on to the highway it is pretty easy to drive anywhere. When we got to the city we parked and started to walk to the library. I noticed that on the drive the weather was sunny, but when we got there it was cloudy and very windy. The weather in Taiwan changes very fast! My host mother said that there was alot of Mainland Chinese people around. She says she can tell because of the way they speak Chinese. To me it sounds the same unless they put (r)s at the end of words like. Dianr,shuir, or wanr. I find that I put those (r)s at the end of words because that is how my Chinese teacher taught us these words.
The library was very beautiful it was made out of wood. We are not allowed to take pictures of the library. It was like 3 or 4 stories tall and had a lot of books. But sadly only three shelf of English books. I had a lot of fun looking around. We were then off to the hot springs. Since Japan use to own Taiwan a lot of the buildings where made in the Japanese style. It was really pretty to look around. I guess it is like me going to old Winston Salem and seeing the old colony style buildings.

 This is a picture of me next to the old administration building when Japan was in control of Taiwan.

 A picture of me outside of the library.

 We walked up the roads to the hot springs. There is the center where the hot springs start off. Where the water is 90C which is sooooo hot. You can't swim in it! Put the hot water goes down in a small river and cools down so you can swim in it. We didn't bring bathing suits so we could not swim. But we did put our feet inside of the water for a big.

 This is the center where the water is the hottest. The steam that comes up from the water is very impressive! The smell was also very bad. My host parents told me that before there use to not be a fence but a little kid fell into the water and died so they decided to make a fence there.

 Here is where the water cools down and everyone goes to soak there feet in the hot water.

 Here is pictures of us soaking our feet in the hot spring. The water was very warm almost like being in a hot tub. It felt so nice! I liked it a lot. We had a lot of fun.















We also went out to eat here. I ate beef noodles for the first time. It tasted so good!! I also tired an special egg that is cooked inside the hot spring water. But I did not like how the egg tasted. I ate all the noodles and fell in love with the taste. It is now my new favorite food to eat!
After finishing our meal we went off to go home again.














At home we wrote things for New Years. We wrote our new years wishes on the papers
































Today was a very fun day!! I had so much fun. And today I will be going to the South of Taiwan which I can't wait to do. Here was my late dinner. Dumplings and a soup. All tasty like most of the food I have eaten in Taiwan : D.

 

Taipei Mountains and Roehe Night Market Part 2

So I though the other post was getting too long so I made two parts! After looking at all the temples we walked to the car and drove around windy and twisty mountain roads to find somewhere to eat. We found this restaurant and ordered some food there. Every time my host family orders food it sounds like an argument between them and the waiter. They start off talking slow and soft then get loud and talk very fast then relax again lol.  Here is what we ate.

 They had a little oven thing in the center of the table so you can keep your soup warm. The soup is chicken soup with many vegetables that I have never head of and my host family don't know there English name. Also there was Pineapples in the soup. Still very tasty though!

 This is eggs. Like an omlet. But it taste so much better!!!

Here is a piece of chicken! It was so tender and soft. I don't normally like chicken soup but this tasted so good. You can see in the right side of the picture my host family gave me a spoon just in case I wanted it ; ). I didn't use it lol









After eating we drove all the way down the mountain back into Taipei. The traffic was very heavy. I am glad I don't have to drive here. I think I would have ran over and hit many scooter by now. Our next stop is the Roehe Night Market.

 This is the entrance to the Nigh Market. It looks like the entrance to Chinatown in Washington D.C

 There was so many people here!! It was crowded and you bump into everyone. I guess you sorta get use to it.

 There were so many snacks to eat. And all the stalls have fans blowing the smoke in your face so everything smells so good!

 Some t-shirts that cost about $2 dollars each.

 This is a game at the Night Market. If you can catch 3 fish with a small paper net you get a free fish!! It looked very hard I saw many people lose the game.

 A cute Betta fish. They have so many!! It cost 25NTD so it is like 90 cents. It is very cheap.

This is Taiwan's version of Victoria's Secret.











More snacks!! Very small chickens

 

 This guys is making glass figurines with a blow torch. I was so amazed that you could do that. He was making a dragon. I never see this in America. Most things are made by machines in factories but this was hand made stuff.

More of the glass figurines this guy has made. 

 

Face threading

This is blood sausage. It tasted really really bad I could not eat it. BLAH!!










This was a great and fun day today!! I was so tired when I got home I could not finish the blog. I can't wait to go downstairs and eat something. I am very hungry!!