Taiwan - Day Two

 Just as I’m ready to go all bah, humbug on the Holland America excursions, one pops up that is delightful.  The sites are excellent, and fairly close to the ship.  The tour guide doesn’t talk continually, and is able to not have a hissy fit if someone (like us) does’t adhere to the ‘plan’.

Here I am in the Hot Springs Resort in Taiwan, close to Taipei.  Wow!  Seven or eight pools, milky white with sulfur, the ingredient for ‘health’.  The hottest was up to 110 - way, way too hot.  Drake and I skipped the buffet lunch and headed directly to the hot springs - not the plan, but we got a head start on the pools.  Mainly, we hung out at the 104 degree pool.

Boy, talk about an unflattering photograph.  Anyway, you can see how red my cheeks are.  I’ve just left the hot pool and plunged into the 65 degree pool.  The flattering head piece was a requirement of the hot springs spa, so everyone wore one of these.  

I did not take my camera to the pools since I didn’t have a waterproof cover for it.  These pictures are courtesy of another person on the trip who did take her camera to the pools.

Taiwan is really a beautiful island.  Taking a bus gives me an opportunity to take pix out the window.  Here are a few:

It’s surprising how very green Taiwan is

Don’t know what it says, but it makes a nice pic

Red roofs are good luck all over Asia

Rice growing 

Taiwan is actually mountainous - and today (spa day) it was overcast and cool all day long - perfect weather

This is some crop - not rice - no fences

No clue what it says - just liked the look of it

These pictures were from the bus on the way to the ‘next’ attraction.  It’s called a ‘Geo Park’.  It’s an area of Taiwan which has unusual rock formations (on a small nameable scale) close to the ocean

The Queen’s Head

This is the top attraction in the park.  People sat down and created this park.  I can just imagine them coming up with ‘names’ for everything.  The name for the entire park is “YehLiu Park”.  This place also has tidal pools.

You can see some of the tidal pools in this pic

Looking out to see - some HaLong type boulders here

Seashore line covered in mossy rocks

Different types of formations

Pictures of formations

The numbers in the above picture link up with the typed list of formations above it.  The numbers are in the lower right hand corner.

There is a lovely walkway about two-thirds of the way to the rock formations.  

Walkway to the rock formations

Jungle to the side of the walkway

This picture shows the erosion of the Queen’s Head from 1980 to 2025

I made it from the ticketed entry booth to the bleachers overlooking the ocean.  It was a very pleasant place to wait for Drake who braved the crowds to take these pictures.  The path through the rocks was steep with steps, and unfortunately, that is now not for me.

The Queen’s Head

I was really happy hanging with the feral dogs and enjoying the view.

We headed back to the ship.  It was a long day - didn’t return until 7:00pm.  We did make dinner at 7:30!  

I will load photos into the blog when I get back to. Virginia, and I’ll notify everyone.

Taiwan - Day One

 

Meet Koxinga, a medieval ruler of Taiwan Island who is revered by the Taiwanese.  This is the third shrine built to worship his heroism and contribution to Taiwanese society.  Flanking Koxinga is his right hand man - whose function is given away by the sword in this hand.  No clue why he isn’t holding the hilt.  Anyway, he’s called the “Sword General”, and he’s credited with uniting various factions.  I have a sneaky suspicion it was either “join us” or “die”.  

There are massive decorations in this temple, and people kept arriving to pay their respects to Koxinga.  Here is a longer view of what surrounds Koxinga.

I have no clue who the two dudes are in front of Koxinga, but one looks suspiciously like the Sword General.  All the flowers and incense were people arriving to leave them.  

The grounds of this temple were particularly beautiful.  Here are some pix of the outside including a beautiful cherry tree in bloom as well as lotus blossoms.  And, yes, it’s raining for the first time during an excursion.

As we moved from attraction to attraction, I took pictures of places on the street that interested me.

These are street scenes from Kaohsiung, Taiwan which is on the southern end of the island.  Unfortunately, we had another tour operator who insisted on talking to us continually.  My impression was the Taiwanese are fooling themselves about the possibly of the Chinese coming to reclaim their island.  We saw numerous Taiwanese war ships and more military presence than I’ve seen elsewhere.  The prevailing Taiwanese idea is because they make computer chips, the United States, ie “Trump” will not allow China to reclaim the island.  Boy, are they deluded.  I’m afraid the current unilateral war the US is engaged in is going to embolden other countries to also unilaterally take whatever they want.  We’ll see, but I think Taiwan is ripe to finally be plucked back into the Chinese fold.  It was apparent in Hong Kong that China was exerting major controls over information and what is ‘allowed’.  

Our next Kaohsiung attraction was another temple named the Chihkan Tower.  I suppose because it was two stories it could be construed as a tower.  As in the previous temple to venerate Koxinga, the Chihkan Tower was highly decorated in the Chinese style.

The grounds also had a koi pond with koi large enough to feed a family of four.  Koi are a type of carp, so they probably aren’t good eating for several reasons:  a pierced gallbladder can poison the meat; they are bottom feeders and taste ‘muddy’ unless specially washed, and they have tons of tiny bones.  Typically, these orange/patterned fish are considered ‘ornamental pets’ and are very expensive to buy - too expensive to eat.  

(Personally, I find these fish creepy.)

This tower was beautifully decorated and included the equivalent of gargoyles which tend to be stylized dogs or lions on top of the roofs.  The red tile on temple roofs are a way of keeping good luck inside a house and repelling evil spirits.  It also helps there’s a lot of red clay in this region to use for handy building material.  

Originally, the Chihkan Tower was used as a fort.  It’s pretty easy to see that function from the way the interior is designed.  Here are a slew of pictures:

The final stop on this excursion day was a temple commemorating Confucius.  It was also red - a lucky color in Taiwan, and all of China.  Right across the street was the ubiquitous 7-11 which is more than just a convenience store in Asia - it’s a drug store, a fast food store, and so much more.  Plus, they are everywhere, and they always have an ATM which ares they ideal for getting the local currency.  So here are  pictures of the Confucian temple as well as some street scenes.

A decoration set into the sidewalk

A rock garden

An old gate into a neighborhood

The red plant is ginger

Gate of Righteousness

A garden inside the temple grounds

Some of us are into rocks

I never learned the purpose of this slab

The Confucius Temple

Didn’t realize I was wearing my earbuds - which I put in to drown out the tour leader

Interior of temple

I

An example of a Presidential plaque

Temple Dragons and other animals 

Is it a dog or is it a lion?

Confucius 

While I enjoyed seeing all the temples, the final attraction was to visit lotus lake.  This was something like an amusement park.  There were temples set all around the lake.  The tour went to one.  You enter through the dragon’s mouth and exit through the tiger’s mouth.  By this time, I was so tired I couldn’t contemplate climbing up and down the five steep stairs to get in/out of the bus, so I sent Drake!

Dragon’s body

Highly decorated

You ca see both the dragon and the tiger

Go in via the dragon; come out of the tiger’s mouth

The dragon

More decorations

These tower temples actually sit in Lotus Lake

Lotus Lake

After the first day in Taiwan, I’d had it with mouthy tour guides.  I was pretty disgruntled thinking about day two in Taiwan on another bus with someone talking at me non-stop.  Just goes to show not to anticipate, the second day in Taiwan turned out to be the best excursion we’ve taken.  

I’ve tried to incorporate more pictures because I can’t seem to get a link to all my pictures.  When I get home, I will update the blogs and include links to my thousands of pictures.