Trip to Taiwan - Part 8 (Special Theme Park!)

Taking off from Taichung again, and now we were heading towards Sun Moon Lake. The journey took less than 3 hours, unexpectedly. Guess the place wasn't that far, eh?

Our first destination of the day would be...*drumroll* wait for it *drumroll*... SUN MOON LAKE ROPEWAY! In case you don't know what kind of place it is, it's an aboriginal village and the best part is, it has a theme park! Yay! We finally got to visit a theme park in Taiwan!

It was still a long way though, and some of us decided to sleep (including me), as the fu dao yuans played a movie, IP Man 2 on the TV bus. The beginning of the climax was a bit too noisy that I was instantly woken up during the fight scene. Therefore I couldn't sleep anymore and decided to catch up on the movie.
Just as the climax ended, everyone seemed to be woken up and paid attention a lot to the movie. Yeah, the climax of the movie - no matter you caught on the story from the beginning or not - was a bit thrilling. But at the same time, we'd reached the destination without even finishing the movie.

The place was freaking hot and crowded. I wonder why because it was Monday and I thought the place would be a little quieter than it should be. But then reality hit me: it was holiday season! Duh.
To get to the aboriginal village and theme park, we must ride on cable car that would take us to sort of the top of the hill. Kinda reminds me of Genting though

Scenic panorama taken from the cable car


Rows of colorful cable car.


From left to right: Monika, Sonya, Didi, Janet

Once we got there, we took like an open vehicle ride passing the aboriginal village straight to the theme park. We'd visit the aboriginal village later, because now, all we wanted to do was to HAVE FUN!

From left to right: Katrin, Sunita, Karin

Before we started the day with thrill rides and stuff, we settled down for a moment to have lunch. Here's our lunch:

Done eating! Now my friends and I - all stick in one group - took off together to seek for rides. Since we just finished eating, possibly we wouldn't do any rides that included extreme spin, twirl, or anything that could mess up our intenstines. =___= Our first ride would be...Space Mountain! If you know what it is, yes, it's an indoor roller coaster, with - thankfully - no upside down spin that I hate. Not bad for "warming up"

After Space Mountain, some of my friends decided to go for a ride which resembled Dufan's Tornado. Me and some of my other friends who had this fear on twisting and twirling just waited while watching our friends screaming as the compartment lifted and twisted them in the air.

The non-thrill-riders

Next rides included splash rides. So, again, we would be all wet today. There were two splash rides at the theme park. One had two small drops and another one had one, short yet backwards drop and lastly, a giant drop. The one with two small drops was called Gold Mine Adventure. To anticipate for being splashed and wet, we sported our yellow raincoats given to us earlier. The water that splashed soon after we were dropped in Gold Mine Adventure didn't give too much wet effect. My hair was just partially wet.

The next splash ride was even more thrilling with 30 meters drop >_<, called Caribbean Splash. I gotta brace on this. After the giant drop and splash, turned out that we got even more wet than before!! Later on, we split into two groups. One group decided to go on for more thrill rides. The other group (me included) decided to go for more chill rides, because practically we had no guts getting on for more thrill rides. Let's just call my group as "The Non-Thrill-Riders" :)

My group stumbled upon a simulator ride and we even found it really exciting, except for the part that too many extreme shakes can hurt your butts. Yeah right.
My group then rode on the cable car to go to Aboriginal Village we passed earlier, to watch a traditional Aboriginal show in Naruwan Theatre. We happened to meet with three fu dao yuans, one of which was our fu dao yuan - Mia - who also wanted to watch the same show.

The show went on and it was really just fascinating! (Well for me it was) No special effects involved, just some Aboriginal people dancing, whose dance eventually symbolized something. Man, I felt like studying Anthropology at that moment. Some after-show event included fortune telling, where this fortune teller would give you a small fruit. You clasped them in your grasp and you sort of made a wish.

We also spotted a traditional game and even took pictures in Aboriginal Traditional houses.

From left to right: Felicia, Sonya, Didi, Karin

From left to right: Karin, Audrey, Sonya, me, Felicia, Tasya, and Jane


Witnessing the traditional game takes place

Now, we took off from Aboriginal Village back to the theme park by the open vehicle (it was 4 pm and the cable car had stopped operating). Once we got there, three of my friends from my non-thrill-riders group decided to ride on a giant drop ride called UFO.
One of my three friends, Felicia, got very scared but succeeded to overcome her fear. Look at her expression while getting off the ride :)

Tense much?


From left to right: Jane, Didi, Felicia

We gathered back in the hall where we had lunch earlier. A group of Aboriginal people we spotted dancing earlier was also there, but now they formed a choir and sang a traditional song, possibly to welcome us all there.

Time to leave Sun Moon Lake Aboriginal Village and theme park, as now we were heading towards the hotel and spent the rest of the night there. The hotel was located on the top of a hill overlooking the lake. After dropping our bags to our rooms, my friends and I gathered in the hotel's balcony to play some games and watched the sun setting in the lake. What a breathtaking panorama.

From left to right: Celine, Didi, Jeje, Audrey, Jesse, Felicia, me


From left to right: Jeje, Audrey, Tasya, Celine, me, Felicia

At 7, my group joined the karaoke session along with the fu dao yuans where they sang some old songs in both Chinese and English. This picture below is low quality since it was taken by my Blackberry. But I feel like posting it. Take a look.

Before going to bed, all of my group gathered in Janet's room (since she was the leader of our group) to plan for the fu dao yuan's surprise approaching the farewell.

So that concludes our night :)

<< Part 7 • • Part 9 >>

Spotted on Facebook!

Nothing much to tell.
You can skip this post if you think this is too unnecessary for you to read XD

I've been really into nice numbers these days. (Yeah, another quirky fact you find out about me these days >_<)
Even I find it interesting when I look up to my phone and the clock shows like: 12.12, 12.34, 20.12...stuff like that. The picture above is quite self explanatory.

Save your energy :)

Phiew, I'm currently taking a break from writing about my trip to Taiwan as you can see.
It's been a quite busy week for me, since now I'm taking two weeks of part time job at EF shortly after finishing all levels. Working was quite a normal experience to me especially in the very first days, but then I changed my mind as soon as I made friends at workplace :)
I find that working is a fun, extraordinary new thing for me!!

I got to learn lots of stuff I haven't done before. Thanks to EF staff, especially from Cinere for the guidance. I'm a rookie, haven't experienced much on this stuff. :)

s

This week, the promotion at the previous EF branch I worked in was over, and now it's time for another EF branch to begin their promotion week. This EF is much closer to my house and I've started working there since Monday.

Um, oh in case you're wondering, yes, I'm leaving for the US next week. Apparently my mom didn't approve my choosing to be enrolled at Binus International majoring in Art and Design. Apparently she has planned all the way to send me to US even before my acceptance in Binus. So, yeah, bye Binus.

Sad?
Well, in one side yes, sure. Will you feel sad to leave your hometown for months or maybe a year? Frankly I don't want to feel that way, even though maybe I'll experience that phase, but hopefully not that severe until I have to cry rolling on the floor *soap opera much?* -___-. I'll try to be excited as I can as my friend told me in Facebook. "Are you excited?"
I'm about to reply to her that "Yes, I have to be excited somehow!"

Everyone who have to leave their hometown to pursue a career somewhere else must at least experience this phase.

Plus,
SMTown artists will be coming to LA on September 4!
There will be SNSD, Kangta, BOA, SHINee, f(x), and even... *clears throats*

SUPER JUNIOR.

I've reserved a ticket but looking forward to paying it as soon as I arrived in the USA. Even though LA is considered near to my college town, Cupertino (near San Francisco), but the transportation is still highly needed. I'm still looking for the flight schedule, the hotel, and more important...a friend to accompany me all the way from Cupertino to Staples Center, the concert venue.

I don't want to put my hopes too high though. I'm thankful already that someone has offered me tickets and I've reserved one. But for now, I just want to think about college and settling down. I need time to adapt and get used to American culture, people, and surroundings. :)

There's something else that bothers my mind right now.
No, not about the college, not even about the SMTown Concert. Well, it's another concert. My concert, and it's coming ahead in like...A WEEK!!

Anyway, it's funny somehow when I speak about two different concerts at the same time to my dad (SMTown and my violin concert), these topics get a bit mixed up.

Rhondo Alla Turca has been a hella song for me. Nice song. I can play it a bit on the piano, but violin? Well...it's as difficult as the piano version. Hard to tell.

Another trouble that bothers me and maybe this isn't that necessary:
All musicians participating in the concert WON'T BE PAID.
Otherwise, us - musicians - have to pay a certain amount of money (considerably pricey for me) to pay for the production items, stuff like electricity, stage, consumption, etc.

I'm not being money oriented or anything.
I'm talking about the talent the institute uses. We're not doing any charities, in fact us - musicians - are offered to promote the music school. We help the music school to gain success and attract more people to sign up, at least we need something in return. It's like, you see that branded products hire musicians, actresses, or singers to help them promote their stuff, and in return, those artists do get something or paid, in this situation.

So please, music school, if you care about us, you'll give us something to us as a gratitude sign rather than ask us to spend more and more money for you.
It doesn't have to be money. But at least, don't ask us to pay if it's for nothing to be given to us.

Trip to Taiwan - Part 7

Thirteenth day: July 3rd, 2010 (Kaohsiung - Taichung)
Going back to Taichung today! Hope you won't be too bored to hear Taichung-Taipei very often. You'll be hearing it a lot more often.
Mm...destination today would be Fo Guang Shan. Just in case you don't know what it is, it's like a huge Buddhist monastery spread worldwide, home to lots of monk. Again, it was another hot day and once we arrived, we climbed up on these long staircases (many staircases) towards the upper lot, where stood the mother temple.

We were guided by this nice monk who took us on a tour around the area. A very good place indeed, with many refreshing sights especially those sights might not be common to be seen everyday.

First stop, calligraphy workshop, where we had to trace on Chinese writings and had it rolled. It was said that the calligraphy words might have a connection with your personality. Coincidence much? Then we visited many more places, from the mother temple, where took lots of picture, to the dining hall to have lunch.

Picture credit to: Sunita Sumawi

This kind of lunch is very different than other lunch we had before. As told in the briefing earlier, we were going to have a Buddhist kind of lunch. It started off with a chanting, then the dining manner where the rice bowl should be put on the left to the dishes' bowl, and the soup to its right.

The briefing itself was quite long and the lunch already sounded stressful, especially manners really counted on this lunch. The meal and everything was delicious and the lunch itself wasn't all that stressful as expected. In contrast to what explained in the briefing, it was actually very relaxing. It was just the quietest lunch I'd ever joined.

We spent the rest of the day having a tour around Fo Guang Shan, still guided by this nice monk, exploring the art gallery (likely a museum), a large golden Buddha statue, and ended up in a gift shop. I bought nothing but a bottle of pulpy orange. What a hot day and it seemed everyone preferred to buy drinks instead of souvenirs.

In the afternoon, after we finished our stroll, We bid the kind monks goodbye for their guidance throughout the tour. Next up, we'd be heading to Taichung. Since Kaohsiung was located at the southern part of Taiwan, and Taichung was on its other side, this journey would take around 4 hours, before we reached our next destination. During the ride, most of us decided to just take a nap and some would stay awake since the fu dao yuans played two movies: Alvin and the Chipmunks and Up.

At last, after approx. 4 hours of journey, we made our way to Lu Gang Street, yet another night market. But when we hit the place, it wasn't dark yet, and again, the place had more food, traditional stuff, rather than boutiques. I bought myself a satay of wallet's eggs and even stopped by to munch on fried oysters. Looks yummy eh?

There was a kind of small Believe it or Not, which my friends and I were considering to enter, but it was quite pricey. We thought it wouldn't really worth it to spend some NT to see ridiculous sights.

So we decided to stroll some more and bought boxes of mochi for our families. The bus played another movie on the way to Taichung, which was G.I.Joe: Rise of the Cobra, which sadly I never understood.
We got into our hotel shortly, attended a short briefing at the corridor on level 6, where we should fill out a form (IN CHINESE!!) about our plans for tomorrow and where we were going. As for me, I spent the rest of the night browsing at the lobby and watching "Inkheart" in my room while two of my roommates, Sonya and Jane, had their laundry done.

Fourteenth day: July 4, 2010 (Taichung)
Since today was Sunday, so today was FREE DAY! Today was like the first official free day in Taichung, since we hardly ever got out of the hotel during our stay in Taichung. We woke up pretty late, at 8 am to be exact and took a shower at 10 pm before departing to a nearby mall by taxi. As we got there, (since we had no breakfast) we rushed to the foodhall to have our brunch. The mall was effin huge and was divided into different section, so it took us a moment until we found the foodhall. Monika and I decided to share a large plate of beef curry rice.

Later, we sort of separated and I ended up strolling with Jeje, Didi, Monika, and Audrey. Somehow, while windowshopping, we happened to stumble upon a department store with a small shoe store inside it, which obviously displayed quite attractive shoes. I planned to purchase another pair of sneakers, but again, due to the price's matter, I had to stop that urge to buy'em.

Instead, Didi and Jeje decided to two pairs of sneaker, only with different colors. During the payment, we had a little interaction with the young salesgirl, and later, Jeje and Didi (whose Chinese was very fluent) exchanged emails with her. After figuring out that we were from Indonesia, the salesgirl mentioned that she was newlywed (congratulations!!!) and planned on going to Bali for honeymoon. Aww...

We reconciled with others after a short shopping session and later, someone mentioned that this mall had very uniquely designed restrooms!
My friends sort of received that info from other groups or Lao Shi who'd been to this mall. So we strolled around the mall, starting from the ground level, only to take a look at each floor's restrooms.

Ground floor: no result, since it was a normal, damp restroom. Second floor and so on, until on another floor, when we entered the restroom, suddenly Didi (who was walking ahead of us) yelled. "This one got a Victorian style!!!". And yup, it was a Victorian style restroom.

See?? No one would have known that it was a restroom, since it didn't look like one!

We climbed up to the next floor and found no interesting restrooms until on two floors above the floor where we found the Victorian style restroom, that we found more unique restrooms. We found a restroom designed like an aquarium, all blue, which would remind you of Seaworld for sure. If I hadn't told you where we took this picture in, you wouldn't have figured that it was in a restroom.

These pictures were taken in more unique. We found a restroom with colorful square patterned walls and a restroom with bamboo displayed on its wall.

Before we left the mall to go to the market, we dropped by at Eslite bookstore. It was like Kinokuniya, only the bookstore consisted of two floors. So you can't imagine how big is it. Must have been a paradise for those who love to read, like me. Too bad we didn't spent much time there.

Shortly after that, we took off to a nearby shopping district. It was like a market, but more like rows of shop along the street. We headed to a stationery store where everything was completely cheap!! Not kidding.
Even better, the shop was having a discount, so you can't imagine that cheap things could be even cheaper! I bought quite loads of thing, from journals to Super Junior cards for my friends and for myself. We also bought some colorful cardboards to design booklets for our fu dao yuans to be given on the last day. Teehee.

We happened to stumble upon small clothing store and vendors that sold clothes at the side of the street, where I bought a pretty white shirt with only NT 150. That's like 45.000 IDR or US$4.50.
I'm loving Taiwan even more :)

At 6 pm, we got back to the hotel and stopped by at 7 Eleven to buy curry rice (haha yes, fact is, I ate curry rice twice a day. Only for today though). As for my other friends, they had bought bento rice for themselves. Since I wasn't in mood to eat stuff like bento (some of my other friends too), we decided to just eat curry rice. The good fact about this small convenience store is, it was only a few blocks away from the hotel! Quite near, wasn't it?

A VISIT TO THEME PARK TOMORROW.

<< Part 6 • • Part 8 >>

Trip to Taiwan - Part 6

Eleventh day: July 1st, 2010 (Taichung - Tainan)
Despite sleeping late at night due to celebrate Celine's birthday, we woke up quite early as usual in the morning.
Today started with quite an exhausting activity. Shortly after the breakfast, we walked down a small path to observe some plants along with their uses, especially for herbals. The sun was right above us, so you can imagine us being bathed in sweat in the morning. Anyway, we even got to taste a small fruit, not sure what it was called, but it was delicious! It looked like a cherry.

Then we walked down another path that turned out to be the path we walked on just last night! During the walk, we even got to spot two eagles perching on a branch in a tree far far faaaar away from where we were. Thankfully, George snapped them in his camera. So it was clearer to see the birds on the camera rather than looking directly when you could see nothing but trees along the way.

Once we arrived to the courtyard, where we started our walk, another activity had awaited. We saw kinds of coffee beans, and next, we planted a small tree in a group (Group 4 was divided into two groups). Turned out it didn't take long to do that. Basically we just dug the soil and shoved the small plant into it. Nothing much. Then we had lunch for a while and then took a break for like an hour.

After a while of taking nap in our room (yeah we used the time for good. We were dead tired at that moment after the whole walking thing), we woke up and stuffed some clothes and a towel into an extra bag and also wore a pair of sandals just like what we were told before the break time. Guess we were going to have some fun in the water that day.

The splashing time begun! And it started off many phases:
1. Still dry
2. Someone splashed the water from the pool towards us. Wet already? Yes,a bit.Wait till you see more.
3. Group competition! Each of the group representatives should compete in a rock paper scissor. The winners should scoop the pool's water and splashed it on the lost ones.
4. New rule was established! The lost ones should be thrown right away into the pool
5. Some random people brought a bucket of water balloons and threw them to each other
6. Random people started throwing other each other into the pool
7. Thrown into the pool, got off the pool, thrown back into the pool, repeated many times
8. Splashing time in the pool
9. Staying in the water, still with our clothes and glasses on.

Since today was Celine's birthday, she got splashed and thrown very often into the pool.
The pool party soon ended and we were to get back to our cottages. Imagine us, wet from head to toe while our clothes still stuck to our bodies, walked down to the cottages while the afternoon breeze was blowing. Coooold...~~~~~

Barbeque party is next. It was actually a normal dinner with fellow dining chair mates, with us sitting around a table provided at the courtyard, along with grills and beefs to be roasted.

The night itself ended with a short karaoke session before we went back to our cottages, and went straight to our beds at 10. This was probably the earliest time we'd ever hit the bed, because usually while in Taiwan, we'd go to bed past midnight. Always past midnight. And have I mentioned that it wasn't that seldom for us to sleep up to three am?

Twelfth day: July, 2010 (Tainan - Kaohsiung)
Early in the morning, we took off to Kaohsiung, and the first destination was the Olympic stadium. It might not be as famous as the Bird nest, but I'm telling you, the stadium and its interior looked incredibly gorgeous. With the white beautifully shaped clouds hanging in the clear blue sky, I didn't bother to take some pictures. The results weren't so bad.
And of course, we did take pictures of ourselves too. We even got a chance to step on the blue running track.

Then we were heading towards the downtown of Kaohsiung, where we had a quick lunch (we ate fried squid, meatballs, and fish dumplings) before going to the harbour to board on the ferry to the other side of Kaohsiung.

Well, I had this fear on riding boats, since I had quite a trauma after going to Krakatau (the waves were effin scary). But then it didn't take a while for the ferry, for the other side of Kaohsiung wasn't even a mile away from where we took off and no waves at all.

The bus had waited for us there at the harbour, and we were quickly taken to a place, which was very quiet, with only train's railway and a row of artistic-ly made statues. Turned out it was the art district of Kaohsiung, and was quite famous despite how quiet the vibe was.

We ended up entering a small building (like a warehouse) where there was an art exhibition display one large 3D painting by Kurt W. The painting itself depicted a bathing dragon, which, if seen from the top, it looked as if the whole elements inside the painting was real. (it was called 3D for a reason)

After that, we took some pictures along the sidewalk with artistic statues I mentioned.

Before heading to the hotel, we stopped by SYS market, where I purchased a pair of purple sneakers on a Levis store with reasonable price. Thanks to the 50% off discount!! Another uncommon sighting spotted in this market is, you could see bunch of schoolgirls and boys hanging around. Their uniforms were uniquely cute! With blazers, vests, and even the girls sported pantovels.
Ah, they reminded me of my dear school.

Anyway, we headed straight to the hotel afterwards, dropped our things and took off to Liu He nightmarket. This nightmarket was possibly a bit different from any other nightmarkets I'd ever visited in Taiwan, since this nightmarket - Liu He Nightmarket - was smaller, but despite its size, it was crowded and full of food stalls on its sides! We bought snacks and as for me, I decided to buy myself a traditional egg kebab for dinner.

Oh, and my friend happened to stumble upon a game vendor. She won the game (it wasn't that hard though) and got a Plankton doll (that Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants) in exchange to the amount of money paid for the game. The Plankton doll instantly gained fame in my group and he even got a special nickname...Plankiss. LOL
We spotted a very unusual sight: a foreigner selling food!

That's about it for today. We went back to the hotel, and before that, we dropped by at 7 Eleven. Going to 7 Eleven before heading back to the hotel had become quite a ritual for us in Taiwan.

<< Part 5 • • Part 7 >>