Mandarin Mix-up

Lesson #1: When you want to go somewhere, and point out the name of the city (in English) to the bus ticket lady, make sure you also show her the Chinese characters. Instead of a nice bus ride down the east coast to Taroko gorge, we found ourselves on the west coast around an hour into our trip (Dave, why are the mountains on the wrong side of the bus? I don't know, the water's on the wrong side too). However everything worked out beautiful as we made our way to Sun Moon Lake, a pretty lake amongst large rolling hills.

After a day of hiking and rowing, we made our way towards Kenting, the beach town in the south peninsula of Taiwan. We recommend that anyone coming to Taiwan must make a trip to the south and rent a scooter. It's the only mode of transportation and it took us to Kenting Forest Recreational Area, where we found ourselves in the midst of botanical gardens, interesting insects, lizards, Taiwanese monkeys, and bats deep down in the caves (who didn't sound too friendly as we were trying to take pictures).

This morning we woke up bright and early so that we could have all of Baisha beach to ourselves. We went swimming, soaked up the sun, and explored the corally rocks in the water with our snorkling gear. The little fishes were a beautiful yellow stripped and bright blue colour.

Fun sight #1: The garbage truck comes around like the ice cream truck, with music blaring. As it comes around, you see all the little Taiwanese RUN RUN RUN with their garbage out to meet the truck.

And we cannot forget to mention the great food in all of Taiwan...squid on the stick. YUM!

We're off to Taroko gorge (hopefully we'll make it this time) tomorrow, then head out to the Philippines on Monday for some more great adventures. That's it for now...

Dave and Sara