Last update of the batch. Other days will probably be added up when I get the time.
Today, my family and one of my dad's old friends family hired an entire van just to ourselves, and a tour guide to go with it. This guy was pretty hilarious, he knew mandarin, the local dialects, and even some shaky English. The guy's name? Ambrose...even spelled it out for us, in case we didn't know.
With everything set up, we all loaded into the van, and we were off. It was a 3 hour drive to Hualian, which is next to Taidong. Ambrose was definitely very knowledgeable of Taiwan's history, down to every detail about Jiang Jieshi and the KMT, and how it all related to Chairman Mao and the CCP. He seemed to know a good thing about everything; apparently Taiwanese rice was closely related to wartime procedures, and was introduced by the Japanese, which was why the rice was somewhat sticky but nothing too mushy, which was pretty much perfect for sushi. The name Taiwan also originated from the way the aboriginal people pronouced "Big Garden" or "Da Yuan." Slowly over time, as the Han people moved in, and heard the aboriginal name, "Da Yuan" slowly evolved into Taiwan.
When the van arrived in Hualian, and the history lesson over, we got out to see Taroko National Park. This included the sights: Swallow Valley, and the Cave of Nine Turns. There were huge deposits of limestone and marble around the cliffs, and a small stream that still steadily flows from the mountaintop down. Every 3 minutes of walking or riding in the van, we would see more signs that warn us of possible rockslides and such...the fact that there are this many signs warning against it meant that it was pretty common. To lighten the mood up, we saw some genuine Engrish: "the disaster falls the stone." What a great warning indeed. When we got to the top of the mountain, we got to eat at the mountaintop 5 star hotel/spa/restaurant. The food was amazingly fresh and delicious. Man, Taiwan's spot on for food! Coming back down, we passed by a factory that manufactured jade and marble products, my mom ended up getting a cat's eye, whose value is completely determined not by size of the jade that it's found in, but rather, the width of the cat's eye slit. The straighter and thinner the line, the higher quality the cat's eye is. As we continued our way back to Taipei, we saw a huge cemetary, and honest to goodness, the tombstones weren't tombstones. They were huge houses, obelisks, near-monuments for the deceased. The running joke was that the houses for the dead were bigger than for the living. Damn, with a monument like that, who needs to be famous?
Finally, last stop on our way back before we got back to Taipei was a shop that made handmade Taiwan Mochi by the local aboriginal girls. Not only was it delicious, it was cheap, and offered by the aboriginal girls themselves. Cute girls selling you cheap, homestyle mochi? Pretty hard to say no, eh?
As you guys are all accustomed, pictures!
Taroko National Park: http://www.easyasiatravel.com/files/images/Taiwan-Taroko-1.jpg
Cat's Eye: http://www.mineralminers.com/images/jade/jlry/jadj128.jpg
Cemetery/Tomb: http://www.taiwan-guide.org/aa/tomb.jpg
Taiwan Mochi: http://epicurious.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/chiayi3b.jpg
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