Day 10, 11, & 12- The beach and Taoyuan

Saturday we went to Yilan (this is pronounced ee-lawn) to go to the beach with Lloyd and his girlfriend. It was super fun. We left his house around 9:30 then picked up his girlfriend and drove to the coast. We got to drive through the longest tunnel in Taiwan. It was really long I doubt anyone could hold their breath while going through it because it took us like 20 minutes to drive through. When we got to the beach it was cloudy but really hot and kind of stuffy feeling because of the humidity. We walked over to a surf shop place and Lloyd rented surfboards and told us that we were going to have a surfing lesson. I was pretty excited because I had never been surfing and I thought it would be fun to try it out. We put on the yellow shirt things they gave us and walked back out to the beach where we picked up our surfboards and got the first part of our lesson while still on the sand. This guy showed us how we were supposed to get on the surfboards and how to get up on them. Jon translated the lesson for me because of course it was in Chinese. Luckily he was showing us while he was talking so I was able to catch most of it without needing it translated. The surfboards they had us use were huge because i guess that makes it easier for beginners.

After our dry lesson on the sand we went out to meet our instructor in the water. He showed us a few things and then just had us go at it. I was surprised because it wasn't really that hard for me to stand up on the surf board. True we weren't tackling any monster waves or doing anything crazy like that, but i was able to get it pretty quick. The beach was actually pretty crowded so we tried to go where there weren't really any people. I found out that there weren't really any people over where we were because the water got pretty choppy because waves came in from two different angles. This probably made it harder on us as we were trying to learn, but I only ran in to one person with my surfboard and it would have been more had we tried somewhere else. Sadly my ability and desire to surf came at a price. As you can see from the picture my board was really big and so getting it out into the water and hefting that thing around was pretty difficult. I have a pretty good bruise on my hip from trying to hold it. One time after riding a wave in I jumped off the surfboard and landed kind of weird on the sand and sprained my ankle. It didn't hurt too bad at the time so i just kept on surfing. Among my other wounds from surfing was a pretty bad rashy thing on my legs. I think it was from the sand and laying on the board and the water some how. Now it looks a bit better- it is more like a bunch of red dots scattered across my thighs and it only hurts if I touch it.

I think the worst battle wound, besides my ankle, was my knee. I can't remember exactly how it happened but somehow a wave caught my surfboard and the fin on the bottom of the board whacked me super hard in the knee. I have a pretty good bruise from that too. After surfing until we were really hungry we went in and had some lunch. Jon and I shared a box lunch thing with rice, meats, veggies, an egg, and some tofu. I didn't really eat any of the meats because I didn't want to, but I ate enough rice and stuff to be satisfied. After eating lunch we went back out to the water again to surf some more. This time I had Jon bring the camera so we could try to get some pictures. We switched off who was surfing and who was taking pictures so we wouldn't get the camera wet. Jon, Lloyd, and his girlfriend all had a pretty hard time getting up on their surfboards, but I did manage to get this awesome picture of Jon where it looks like he was an awesome surfer.

Sadly, when we went back out to the water after eating lunch I was pretty tired so I had a harder time getting on my feet and getting the board out where i wanted it. Jon did get a few good pictures.

Even though I was tired we did manage to get one video of me riding on a baby wave. Surfing was way fun and I think I would like to try it again sometime.

After we were done at the beach we dropped off our surfboards and got back in the car. We headed into town and got some ice cream. Jon and I both got pineapple because the other flavors were weird things like purple rice, taro, and red bean (taro and red bean can be good, but I just wan't in the mood). After ice cream we got some scone-type things. I really liked these. I can't remember what they were called but it was a fried round flatish scone like thing with an egg and green onion omelet thing on it. I don't know if it was because I was really hungry from the beach or what but it was FANTASTIC!

After eating Lloyd took us to a spa where you put your legs in a pool and fish come and nibble at you. The camera died at the beach and we didn't have any spare batteries so we didn't get any pictures of this. At first when I put my feet in and the fish came it tickled like crazy. I got more used to it after a while. The fish in the pool just looked like goldfish, so i don't know if only special fish will nibble your dead skin off or if any goldfish would. The fish liked nibbling at my ankles because there was some nice dead skin there for them to feast on. Once the fish were done nibbling we left the spa and drove back to the Taipei area.

We dropped off Lloyd's girlfriend and then met his mom and aunt for dinner. We went to a steak place and it was pretty good. The steak wasn't anything amazing, but there were a few appetizer type things that they gave us before the steak which were very tasty. One was a soup thing where on the bowl there is a bread/pastry dome covering the soup and you smash that down into the soup and eat it in the soup. This was delicious. The soup reminded me of a thin corn chowder. Another one of the appetizer things that was really good was this little bowl of casserole stuff. On the bottom there were some penne-type noodles and it was cheesy and had little shrimp in it. Yum. Honestly this was probably the best meal I have had in Taiwan. I was glad that I ordered a sirloin steak because on the menu it didn't say how many ounces the steaks were or anything and I figured sirloins are usually smaller and have less fat than other steaks. My steak still seemed pretty big, but with my appetite from a day at the beach I was able to conquer my steak and all the previous courses. Jon and everyone else got these massive steaks that I would not have been able to finish half of. The way they cook their steaks must be different than we cook them because they have less flavor and a different texture. Even though the steaks weren't the best I've ever had I really enjoyed that meal.

After dinner we stopped at the house for Lloyd's mom and aunt to grab their swimming stuff because we were going to go to some hot pools and they wanted to come with us (we were still in our swimming stuff from going to the beach earlier). We drove up into the mountains and stopped at a few places but their hot pools were under construction luckily we found a place that had some open that we could go to. We told Lloyd that we wanted to go to the ones where you wear swim suits, so he made sure we didn't end up at the naked ones. At first when he was talking about them I thought that these were natural hot springs but after going to them I don't really think they were. There were a bunch of pools of various temperatures with bubbly seats and high pressure shower things. It was pretty fun and relaxing, but I realized that the hot water was not doing good things for my sprained ankle so I put my leg in the really cold pool at the end to try to get the swelling to go down. One of the cool parts of these pools was that we got to wear swim caps. The picture is kind of dark but it is us wearing our swim caps by one of the pools.

After the hot pools we drove back home. When we got here we took showers and I packed while Jon and Lloyd figured out the details of our trip to Taoyuan for the next day.

Sunday morning we got up and headed to the train station with our backpacks. We got on the MRT (this is what they call the Taipei subway trains MRT=monorail train) and went to Taipei main station and got on regular train to Taoyuan. When we got to Taoyuan we worried and waited for one of Jon's friends to pick us up. She had said the previous sunday she would be at the train station at 8:30 because our train would get in about then and church starts at 9:00. We got off our train around 8:20ish and waited and wandered around the front of the train station. At 8:50 when we still hadn't seen her or been able to get a hold of her on her cell phone we thought that we might have to take a taxi. We decided to give her until 9 when church was supposed to start and if she wasn't there then we would take a taxi. She called us at 8:59 to tell us she was coming. We made it to church in time for the sacrament hymn. A lot of people in this ward knew Jon and were so happy to see him. We had tons of people coming and talking to us after sacrament meeting and after church. It was kind of cool that a lot of people remembered him and really liked him. During relief society I was able to sit by a sister missionary from Washington and she was able to translate the lesson for me. I have been really fortunate that both sundays here there have been people that were able to translate for me. After church we went to our hotel which conveniently allowed you to check in as early as noon, so that worked out perfect. We were both tired from being up late and getting up early so after eating the bagels we brought for lunch I propped my foot up on some pillows and we took a 6 hour nap. We woke up at about 6:30 and made the bowls of noodles we had brought for dinner. The noodles were good but they were a little spicy for my liking. We watched Ice Age showered and went back to bed. Sunday was very much a day of rest. We woke up this morning and got ready for the day. This was our hotel room.
It had two little beds in it that I kept forgetting weren't soft until I went to sit on them. I am getting used to sleeping on not so comfortable surfaces, but I'm excited to sleep in my own bed again.
The no shower curtain thing is still kind of weird to me. I guess they don't really care if the whole bathroom is wet all the time. The hotel wasn't bad for only being about $40 and there were some pretty great complimentary items. In the bathroom there were razors, shower caps, and toothbrushes with little tubes of "whiteman" toothpaste. On the table between the beds there was a little cup with q-tips, teeth flossing things, and condoms (very classy- I guess that is what you would expect from a hotel that not only rents rooms for the night but rents them in three hour increments). After packing up our stuff, and some free goodies, we went down to see what the "breakfast" included. After looking over the strange meats and veggies we decided to go for the toast option. We toasted bread in a little toaster oven and then I put some peanut butter and strawberry jam on mine. It was tasty. We walked around Taoyuan and Jon pointed out some places where different things happened or where he used to eat this or that etc. We did a little shopping and some of the stores that were open and because it was swelteringly hot Jon got a bingsha and I got a lemonade thing with chunks of aloe in it. All the walking around wasn't doing good things for my wounded ankle (I had hoped that it would be completely healed after staying off of it all sunday afternoon), so we decided we would head back to Lloyd's so we could just relax. Had we not come back so early we could have had dinner with a member in Taoyuan that offered to feed us, but I don't know what we would have done all day waiting around in the heat. We took the trains back to Lloyd's and now it is Monday afternoon and I'm laying on the floor with the fans on. Tonight Lloyd is going to have someone come and thread the hair off our faces. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. Tomorrow is our last day in Taiwan and then we fly home. Jon just told me he wants to eat Cafe Rio when he gets home. We have had fun, but I think we are both about ready to come home.

Day 9- Failures and Successes

When I wrote this morning I mentioned that we slept in for a long time and the fact that it was pouring rain didn't help get us out the door any quicker. We took the train to an electronics store and walked around but Jon was disappointed because he didn't find what he was looking for. We ended up just walking back to the train and going to another stop and wandering around this mall place for a bit, but it was a mall full of expensive stores like Chanel and Armani so we decided to take a bus. Taking the bus was kind of an adventure because we had never been on this bus before and it was kind of a spur of the moment decision to take the bus and we pretty much just got on the first bus we saw. I was getting a little worried because the bus map said that this bus went to Taipei main station, but we had been on the bus a long time and we still weren't at the station. On the way we did pass a Nu Skin building so we took a picture out the bus window.
We did eventually make it to the Taipei main station on that bus. When we got to the station we looked at train times for the train that goes to Taoyuan (this is not in Taipei county so the subway type trains don't go there). The next train wasn't until about 5:30 and after some deliberation we decided that we would want more time than just a few hours tonight to spend in Taoyuan. Since we were already at Taipei main station we decided to walk around the Taipei underground mall. This is a mall that is literally underground so they were pretty creative in the naming of it :) This mall was a lot better than the expensive mall because most of the stores weren't expensive. We walked around and bought some stuff. We found some pretty cool stuff at the underground mall, so in the end it was a successful day but we did a lot of wandering around the city. We did also decide that we are going to probably stay the night in Taoyuan from Sunday to Monday because Jonathan wants to go to church in Taoyuan and if we stay there Sunday night we can do the stuff there on Monday that we wouldn't want to do on Sunday. Because tomorrow is Saturday Lloyd ( I don't know why I just thought of this but his nickname in Chinese means little dragon) has the day off and is going to go with us to the beach so that should be fun. It probably won't be sunny, but I have learned that just because it is raining or is cloudy doesn't mean it won't be really hot. It is weird that it is already Friday and we are leaving on Tuesday. It doesn't seem like we have been gone that long. This morning when Jon told me it was Friday I didn't believe him and I had to think of what we did each day/ate since Monday (I remembered Monday was when I threw up). It has been nice to be on vacation but it will be nice to get back to my own bed. Oh that reminds me I took a few pictures of where he have been staying.
This is where we have been sleeping half the time we have been here. This room is a bit bigger and the floor has these mats on it that makes it a little more comfortable to sleep on than the wood floors- I know because the other room didn't have them. I'll maybe try to get a picture of the other room, but I don't know if I'll be able to because the one Aunt that lives here is sleeping in that room. To give an idea of the size the width of the room was about the width of the blanket things that are our bed. This room is quite a bit wider because we can fit all of our crap on the one side and still have some space on the other.
This is the bathroom. It is the kind where the entire bathroom is pretty much a shower so the floor is constantly wet. They have a pair of slip on sandals that you can use if you don't want to get your socks/feet wet when you go in the bathroom; they stay on the mat outside the bathroom door so they are always there if you need them. That reminds me- you don't wear shoes in the house. Everyone takes off their shoes before they come in. On the back of the door there are some more sandal slippers that you can wear if you do want to wear shoes in the house, but outside shoes stay outside and the sandal slippers stay inside. Kind of a interesting cultural thing, but it probably helps so you don't have to sweep and mop the floor as much. I'll try to get a picture of the living room later- when I was taking the pictures of the bathroom and our room Jomama and the Aunt that lives here were in the living room area and I thought it might be slightly awkward if I just randomly took a picture of them sitting there and couldn't explain why. Well I think that might be all I can think to write about tonight. Because today wasn't very eventful we didn't take many pictures but the other picture we took while we were out was this one.
This was in Taipei Main Station and it was pretty busy so Jon took a picture. You can't really get the whole scope of it from this picture- just know that Taipei main station is the busiest station and it is busier at night.

Day 8- The Zoo

Yesterday I slept in pretty late and while I was sleeping Jon played a computer game that he found. When we finally got up and left we decided to skip breakfast and go straight for lunch. We got some potstickers and this was probably the first time that Jon said he was kind of ready to be back in America because he didn't know if he was supposed to give the waitress the paper with our order on it or wait for her to come get it. He ended up giving it to her but he thinks that might have been wrong. After lunch we got on the train and went to the Taipei zoo. I absolutely loved it! We had fun taking pictures with some of the crazy statues that were in the zoo.

The first animals we saw in the zoo were the ones that were indigenous to Taiwan. We saw some wild boars, deer-like things, little jungle cats, and rodents, but the coolest things in this section were the monkeys. Some of them were playing king of the branch- one monkey would climb up on these branches and then one of two other monkeys would climb up and try to wrestle all the other monkeys off the branch. Some monkeys were picking at the other monkeys and eating the bugs they found. One of the most interesting things was a kid had some bubbles and had been blowing them and the wind blew one all the way to where the monkeys were and one monkey stuck out his hand to catch the bubble and it popped and the monkey seemed so confused about where it had gone. It was interesting to see how the monkey interacted with the bubble. After the Taiwanese animals we went to the insect house. One of the coolest parts of this building were the rooms with butterflies flying around. When we got into the first of these rooms there was this Taiwanese lady jabbering away and pointing to these two butterflies that were obviously mating while hanging on to a branch. The lady then started shaking the branch and was confused as to why they were flying away. Jon told me she was saying things like "what are they doing?" and "are they sleeping?" Really? They were obviously connected at the butt with some white goop... anyway moving on. The butterflies were really cool and were flying around and eating fruit and stuff. After we left the room there was a group of girls pointing at a butterfly that had escaped from the room. Jon was able to catch it and take it back into the butterfly room. This is him letting it free (it kind of flew at his face after he opened his hands so he is making a pretty good face).
Most of the other stuff in the insect place was kind of icky and insect like, but this is Jon with his head in a bubble that made it so you could get a closer look at some crickets. He tried to get me to go in there before he went in because he didn't see the crickets, but I saw them and didn't want my face that close to them even if it was behind plastic.
After the bug place we went into the panda house and saw some cute pandas. The first one was sleeping and this one was rolling around on its back and scratching its tummy with its back legs.
After this I can't remember exactly what we saw next but I will just mention all the different things we saw. We went to a really cool nocturnal animal house where they had trained the animals to think that the day was night and the night was day so that we could see the animals when they were awake. There were some adorable little owls (half of the owls I saw I would think of what Hogwarts student had that type of owl. The little ones were like the owl Ron gets later in the books pigwidgeon. Wow I'm a nerd.). We saw some bigger owls eating mice and we saw a little cat thing eating a whole rat. We saw some sugar gliders and other little nocturnal squirrel like things. I kind of think the little owls were one of my favorite things we saw at this zoo. After the nocturnal place we saw the Australian animals (kangaroos and other marsupials along with some big horned ibex thing), Asian animals (we saw some Asian elephants that looked like they were dancing and I think this is where we saw the tiger. The tiger was right up next to the window so that was really cool), the desert animals (pretty much just some big camels), and then the African animals. The African animals were pretty cool because not only did we get to see giraffes eating and lion cubs playing we got to see elephants from really close up. I think this was Jon's favorite part. He was very excited that we were going to see the elephants and kept asking when we were going to get to them. Also by this time he was getting kind of tired so I think seeing the elephants re-energized him a bit.

After the african animals we went to the amphibian and reptile house. We saw some snakes and lizards and frogs and stuff that were pretty cool. As we were in there the lady came around saying that they were closing and to hurry through. I didn't realize that the zoo closed at 5 and it was a little before 5 so we tried to hurry to go up to the penguin house, but we didn't make it before 5 so I had to be happy with a statue of a penguin.
We then walked down from the top of the zoo back to the exit. I probably wouldn't have mosied as long at some things if I knew the zoo closed at 5 and it was nearing closing time. I had a lot of fun at the zoo even though we didn't get to see all of it. We had someone take this picture of us in front of the zoo after we got out. I didn't mention this before but it was raining pretty hard off and on at the zoo so that is why we are looking a little soggy in some of the pictures.
After the zoo we had some dinner at McDonalds (I will probably not be losing weight on this trip if I keep eating McDonalds) and then we went on the Maokong Gondola. Jon wanted to go in the gondolas because he never went on them when he was here before so we did.

We had a good view from the gondolas because we were going up a mountain. This picture has Taipei 101 in the background (almost every time we see Taipei 101 now we say "another great place to view Taipei 101" because the audio guide we took there kept pointing out great locations to view Taipei 101 from).
It was kind of scary riding the gondola because it would have been a long way down if something broke and we fell. It didn't help to abate these fears that Lloyd had told us that a year or so ago some people died because there was a typhoon and some of the gondola cars broke off. Luckily I didn't feel too unsafe, but I did pick out the place that I did not want to fall the most. The trip up to the top of the gondola took about 45 minutes and when we got there we got off and had no idea what to do in Maokong. There were some hiking trails and there was a tea place, but it was a little late for hiking and the tea place didn't sound too great either so we wandered around for a few minutes and then got back on the gondola. When we rode down it was getting dark so we were able to see the view at night and that was pretty cool.

When we got to the bottom of the gondola we got off and saw signs pointing to the dancing waters, so we decided to check it out. It was 7 when we got off the gondola (I knew this because there was a clock thing that was playing some crazy music and had some dancing animals on it) and we sat by the fountains for about 15 minutes when we found out that the fountains do their little shows every hour on the half hour. We decide that we would wait and it was pretty cool. There was music and lights and dancing water- What more could you want? There were, I think, three songs that the waters danced to. I can't remember what the first one was but I think it was a classical piece and then the second one was The Swan and the last one was some asian one with singing. I took a video during the last song. This is my first video that i've posted to the blog so I hope it works.

I had a pretty smart moment while watching the fountains- Jon said that his favorite parts of the fountain were the ones that spun and I said that those reminded me of sprinklers and then I looked at the other parts of the fountain and said "actually a lot of them remind me of sprinklers." After the dancing waters we went back to Lloyd's and he took us to go get foot massages from blind/mostly blind people. This massage hurt like crazy. The part of the massage that felt the best was when it stopped. I was trying to relax because they told me it wouldn't hurt so bad if I relaxed, but it wasn't true it hurt just as bad. I guess there were a few parts that didn't hurt and felt pretty good but overall it was a pretty painful experience. We then came home and I watched Jon try to beat the game he had started playing that morning. I showered and got ready for bed and Jon still hadn't beaten it so I went to bed. This morning I had some crazy dreams that I was in the hunger games and all the other tributes were from my elementary school and the arena was at a playground/park. It was a very bizarre dream. I think that today we are going to some place that is supposed to be very beautiful and has a lake with paddle boats should be exciting.