Taiwan Adventures

When we moved to India, Katy made Bobby promise that we would make it a priority to still get to the temple at least twice a year. The closest LDS temples to us are the Hong Kong, China temple and the Manilla, Philippines temple. A little research showed us that it would take only a little more time to reach the temple in Taipei, Taiwan, so we decided to make it a week-long trip and add touring around Bobby’s old mission to the trip. 

 

We went to the temple in Taipei first. Bobby and Katy took turns attending the temple while the other stayed with the boys. The temple was within walking distance from the hotel. After normal Indian traffic, Taiwanese traffic was a piece of cake to navigate.

We got a great lunch at a Korean restaurant. All of us remembered how to use chopsticks (mostly). Luckily, nobody minded if we just jabbed the food.

After lunch, we caught up with one of Dad’s friends from his mission, Wang Rui Si (“Willy”).. He took us to Jiu Fen – a place with incredible coastal views of Taiwan, an “Old Street” full of shops, and a very cool temple. Following are some pictures that Katy took with her birthday present- a new camera.

 

For Dinner, we had everyone’s favorite – Dumplings! We have a great video of Max shoving a whole dumpling in his little mouth, but we can not post it here. Let’s just say, no dumpling will ever be safe from Max again. They all live in fear of his name.

Bobby went to the temple first on Thursday. While he was there, the rest of us went to the park and Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. They had super fat squirrels! Gabe was not impressed.

After Katy went through the temple, we met back up with Willy and went to a famous temple in Taipei. They had an awesome dragon fountain.

For dinner, Willy took us to a Hot Pot restaurant. You get to make your own barbecue sauces and cook your own foods in a boiling pot. We all gained about 14 pounds. It was great! Now it is one of the boys’ favorite dinners.

After dinner, we went through Taipei’s largest night market. There was so much stuff to see! We had to keep a tight eye on each other not make sure not lose anyone. A few Christmas presents may have been purchased in the night market while the kids were being distracted.
Night markets have all kinds of crazy food. Including blow-torch barbecue.

After walking through the night market for hours, we all decided we needed foot massages.

We spent Friday morning packing up the stuff from our hotel and driving around Taipei. We found a famous dumpling restaurant for lunch. The boys were amazed by the sheer volume of steamers they had there.

On the way to Alishan Mountain, we found the coolest rest-stop in the world. They even had an indoor aquarium there. Taiwan Rest stops are now the world standard as far as this family is concerned.

The views on the way up to mount Ali were gorgeous. It was a long 4 hour drive, though.
When we finally made it to the hotel on the top of the mountain, the boys were most excited by the bathtubs. The apartment in India only has showers, so they haven’t had a chance for a good soak in a while.

Mount Ali is famous for it’s sunrises. Unfortunately, you have to get up at 5:00 AM to see said sunrise. We managed to get everyone up and out in time for the bus and the huge line at the old-timey train station that takes everyone up to the viewing platform.

They had a viewing platform on one of the peaks. The boys argued that it was meant to be a place to meditate and practice Kung Fu. Obviously.

When it was all said and done we had walked over 15 km around the top of the mountain. We had to pass back through the cloud layer to get down off of the mountain.
That evening, we were able to catch up with one of Bobby’s work friends from his days back at AEGIS, Mike Lin, and his family. They hadn’t seen each other for almost 10 years. The boys all got on really well.

On Sunday, we visited the ward in Taiwan where Bobby spent 8 months of his mission. A lot of the members actually remembered him, to everyone’s surprise. We did sacrament meeting in Mandarin, but decided to skip classes, as only Bobby would have understood what was going on.
After church, Bobby took everyone to a restaurant from his mission days that serves “Bing” – basically a bunch of shaved ice with syrup and 8 different kinds of fresh fruit on it. The boys were impressed.

After the park, we all decided that we had way too much walking for a few days, and needed to rest. We did go out later and got an entire dinner out of street food – cancer chicken, fresh-baked breads, and fresh juices. The boys loved it. Katy was just glad that they brought it back to her in the hotel room where she was resting up.
After lunch at the Bing shop, we wandered the streets of Tainan back to our parking garage and found a park full of exercise equipment for older people. The boys had a ton of fun on the exercise equipment.

On Monday morning, we all slept in, and then headed out for classic Taiwanese breakfast – bacon Dan Bing (egg pancakes) and sausage hamburgers. It was a breakfast fit for kings. Afterwards, we decided to head to Dai Tian Fu, a temple that Bobby had found out about on his mission that has animatronic versions of Buddhist heaven and the 18 levels of Buddhist hell.

The dragons had an awesome Koi pond at the bottom with voracious mutant-sized Koi.

Katy wanted to take a QiLin (Chinese unicorn) home with her. We decided that customs may object. Not to mention the cats.

The boys were REALLY NOT into the levels of Hell. It freaked them out a little, so we don’t have many pictures of that. But the workers were fascinated with the boys. All of the workers at the temple kept telling the boys how handsome they were.
The 18 levels of hell were basically like a Halloween haunted house, with animatronic demons torturing evil humans. One of Max’s favorites levels was the one where liars were run over by large crushing devices. Gabe was basically creeped out by the whole thing.

The grounds were beautiful all on their own, full of statues and gardens. And there was another temple on site as well.

The inside of the temple had a massive golden Buddha statue.

After the temple, we met up with some of Bobby’s old mission friends for another hot-pot lunch. Ricky Chen was helping some of the Elder’s from the ward move that day, and brought them along for the fun.

Max insisted on thumb-wrestling with the Elders. They didn’t seem to mind.

Monday night, we found another night market to visit. The boys were super-excited when they found out that the night market had Lego mini-figures for about $1 each.
The boys were even more excited when they found out that the night market had cotton candy. We’ve only seen it once in our year in India. You can see how deprived they are :p

Bobby was super-excited when they found a food cart in the night market that made cheese and bacon sandwiches. Seriously, a huge block of cheese, wrapped in bacon and fried. These people deserve the Nobel prize.

On Tuesday, we spent the majority of the day driving back up to Taipei. We managed not to strangle anyone in the 4 hour ride back up from Tainan. Both Bobby and Katy thought this was a major achievement. We booked a spa hotel back on the north side of the island that specialized in hot springs and spent the afternoon and evening playing in the hot pools at the hotel.
Again, an awesome hotel room, and their favorite part? The bathtub. Both of the boys had a long soak in the huge tub that night. But it was an AWESOME tub!

Gabe thought the wooden bucket should come standard with every bathtub.

Our flight back to India was, unfortunately, a red-eye. Our flight took off from the Taipei airport at 11:30 that night, so we still had plenty of time to see things on the northern side of the island. We decided to try to scale one of the now (hopefully) extinct volcanoes that are on the northern part of Taiwan, but the weather turned against us. After hiking about a 1/2 km straight up the volcano trail, we were all so cold and tired, that we abandoned the idea.

Walking up the path to the volcano’s crown.
The further up we went, the wetter and colder it got.

The boys were not impressed by the sulfur smell coming out of the volcanic vents.
The point at which we decided we couldn’t see the beautiful view through the rain clouds, and were tired of being cold and wet.

Everyone was ecstatic to see the parking lot.
We decided to eat a late lunch at TGI Friday’s, so we could have real American style hamburgers before returning to India. There was much rejoicing.

After lunch, we had some time for shopping before heading back to the airport.