TOURING YUNLIN

This past weekend we had the opportunity to tour our county. We haven’t done much of this in the past because it’s hard to do without a car, but we were lucky enough to have some people willing to show us around. On Saturday night, one of my (Annalicia’s) co-teachers, Nancy, took us to the outskirts of Douliu with her family. They showed us some fruit, vegetable and rice fields.

We also went out to dinner with Nancy and her family. They brought us to a restaurant located on the campus of a university in Douliu. The pond at this restaurant was completely filled with huge water lilies. It was gorgeous! We had never seen so many water lilies and we had definitely never seen water lilies that big!

On Sunday, Adelaide (our local friend who owns the English cram school) took us on a 13 hour tour of Yunlin! We started with breakfast at a café on the nearby, “Coffee Mountain”. From there we headed to Gukeng Township where we were able to take in some spectacular views of the area we’ve called home for the past 10 months.

After that, we went to the “Green Tunnel”. This is a road covered by trees (hence the name). On the weekends, vendors set-up on the road and it becomes a nice destination for families to get away from the crowded cities. Check out the bugs in the cage. Apparently kids like to buy these at pets!

A bee museum was located right by the Green Tunnel, so we checked that out as well.

From there we headed to Huwei Township (where Phil’s school is located), and went to “a famous” towel museum. (A lot of things are “famous” in Taiwan. :) Apparently this towel museum has been a family business for many years, but about 10 years ago it had to make some changes. I guess, their competitors started cutting their prices around that time because they started outsourcing their labor to the Philippines and China. Instead of doing that, this place decided to use creativity to stay in business. So, now they make their towels into different shapes, such as cakes and lollipops, and sell them as gifts.

From Huwei, we went to Beigang Township in southern Yunlin. We found out this township has one of the “most famous” Mazu temples on the island. (Mazu is their god of the water.) We spent some time touring the temple and shopping around the area. Check out the huge pig someone donated as a sacrifice! We had never seen that before!

We ended our day eating a very nice Hong Kong style dinner.