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.
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.
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