By the time we finally got back to the hostel, it was probably 1:30 or 2 am-ish, and we were real ready to pass out. Except for the teensy little inconvenience that, say, the outer door to the building was locked and we didn't have a key for it and there wasn't a bell. We knocked, and pressed a button that didn't look like it did anything, and looked for a back door, but nothing was working. The lady who ran the hostel had told us that she lived across the street, so we went over to try to get her, but she didn't have a doorbell either, and nobody responded to our knocking or hollering. We were feeling pretty lame, and couldn't really think of what else to do, when finally the lady's sweet old husband came to our rescue, shuffling out in his pajamas and slippers to open the door for us. Whew!
The next day, we didn't really have a plan. We woke up late, and although the prospects for ferries to the Matsu Islands aren't that great in the winter, we poked off to Keelung anyway to ask, just in case. Sure enough, when we found the ferry, a nice guard informed us that it wasn't running because there was some weather. Oh well. The next option was to rent a car and drive down through the mountains, past Sun Moon Lake and into Yushan National Park, if time allowed. We took what ended up being a veeery slow train to Taoyuan, hoping to find car rental places by the airport.
My Rough Guide to Taiwan describes Taoyuan as "wholly unattractive," and I have to agree. Taoyuan features a normal train station, a high-speed rail station, and the Taoyuan airport, all of which are located conveniently really far away from each other. We took a bus to the airport, where our main achievement was to get a list of car rental locations from the lady at the car rental place. Then we went back to the train station area and stayed there for the night. The best feature of our hotel was the little toothpaste that they give you:
I guess Black Man Toothpaste was already taken.
On Friday morning, we went to try to rent a car. We thought it would be fine because Gered got an international driver's license before he came to Taiwan, except apparently after a certain period of time you're supposed to change it for a Taiwanese equivalent, so it turned out that we couldn't rent anything. Phooey. (Although the friendly man at the car rental suggested that we get a ride with the other foreigners who were renting a car there, because obviously they were our friends) Feeling discouraged, we poked off to the high speed rail station.
The next option was to go to Tainan and take a bus from there into Yushan National Park. This seemed doable, but when I called the only accessible hostel in Yushan to book a room, they were all full. Lame. Determined to do something with the long weekend, I looked around in my Rough Guide to Taiwan (I LOVE THIS BOOK) to see if we couldn't still go to Sun Moon Lake. Most of the hotels around Sun Moon Lake are pretty expensive, because a lot of tourists visit there, so I called up the one cheap hostel, where I muddled through an interaction with an extra-incoherent and slightly shouty man before he put someone more articulate on the line. Hooray, they had space! Then it was off to Taichung to catch a bus to the lake.
My experience in Taichung reminded me of my layover in Helsinki on my trip back home from India. I have an extremely positive impression of Finland, partially because I was just so relieved to be out of India. In the same way, Taichung seemed like an extra-marvelous place, having just come from frustrating Taoyuan. It was so green and nice and everything was convenient and everybody was extra-nice, actively helping us find the right bus and buy tickets and even recommending a place to get lunch. You go, Taichung! The bus was long and jouncy, but it was worth it, because check it out, Sun Moon Lake is BEAUTIFUL:
(you can click on it to make it big)
Once we arrived, a nice man named Diang from the hostel came to pick us up, bringing his 10-year-old sun. He warned us that there was nothing to eat at the hostel and nothing nearby, so we got some dinner to-go to bring back. To get to the hostel, we had to park on the side of the road and climb down a long and fairly slippery path down the side of a mountain. The hostel itself turned out to be more of a camping-style place (the actual name is Holy Love Camp, it was founded by an American priest), with one large room featuring a raised floor with a thin mattressy thing and a number of sleeping bags. Awesome.
As we were eating our dinner on the patio, Diang poked his head out of the building and called, "Libeika? Can you come speak English to someone on the phone?" The person on the other end turned out to be a Norwegian guy named Lars, looking for a place to stay. Fortunately for Lars there were some English-speaking guests around! Gered and I decided to go with Diang to pick up Lars so we could buy some tea in town. On the way there, we stopped by Diang's house and picked up his other kids. Well, it wasn't really on the way, because his house was on the other side of the mountain. Although Sun Moon Lake is traditionally the home of the Thao tribe of Taiwanese aboriginals, Diang and his family belong to the Bunun tribe, who I guess live on the other side of the mountain. The kids were very surprised to see foreigners, but they were quite friendly. Diang told me that the CD we were listening to in the car was their absolute favorite, and the kids had listened to it so much it was wearing out. The beloved CD? A mix consisting primarily of Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, with a dash of Backstreet Boys and something that might have been Hanson? Anyway, that is how I came to be riding in a car up a mountain with three Bunun children and a Norwegian, having a Celine Dion singalong. (Lars turned out to be quite an amiable fellow and a good sport for that sort of thing)
The oldest brother, Usung, was very shy, but definitely the biggest Celine Dion lover of the bunch. He sang a lot, and also took pictures obsessively.
Usung and Gered looking at pictures.
The middle child was Biling, who was extremely outgoing and seemed to be unable to go more than an hour or two without getting himself extremely dirty or wet or both.
Full of mischief, but how can you be mad at that face?
And the youngest is Lilu:
On Saturday I woke up and came downstairs to find these jokers and their father around the campfire. Biling told me an excited but unintelligible story ending in a "poong!" and Gered told me that they had made some kind of nut explode in the fire. Then a lady brought out some pieces of bamboo that had been filled with sticky rice and bits of meat and beans for breakfast. You roast them over the fire until the outside is dark, and then take the bamboo and whack it against a rock until it splits, at which point you can open and eat it. This was an entertaining food.
Later in the morning we explored the facilities a little more, playing with their bicycle-boats as well as the obligatory karaoke machine (of course there is a karaoke machine!), and playing some random volleyball-ish game with Lars. We were originally planning to go home Saturday afternoon, but we were having so much fun that we decided to stay another night. On Saturday afternoon, the kids had a basketball game to go to, Lars had to leave, and Gered and I wanted to go explore around the lake. They talked us into all going along to the basketball game, which was at their church. It turns out that there are a lot of Catholics in the Bunun community, but maybe not so many people who had seen foreigners before. When we came up the road, every head in the court turned to the three waiguoren. We watched basketball for a bit, then made our way back down into town.
Lars had to leave...goodbye Lars! As the only Norwegian I have ever met, you have done a nice job at giving me a favorable impression of Norwegians.
The next order of business was to explore around the lake. We had spotted what we thought was an electric bike rental place earlier, but upon closer inspection it was a scooter rental, which required an international driver's license. Although we had already determined that Gered's isn't particularly valid, the lady didn't really look at it, she just gave him the papers. When he was all set up, I casually asked if I could get a scooter too, prepared to weasel my way around the fact that I haven't got even an invalid international driver's license. Conveniently, she didn't even ask for so much as my name, just gave me a scooter.
When we started scooting, it was earlyish afternoon, and the weather was quite warm, so we weren't wearing any warm clothing. However, once we got into the shade plus the wind from the scooter, things got very cold. By the time we had circled the whole lake, we were so absolutely freezing that we didn't stop to take pictures anymore, just hightailed it for home as fast as we could go. When we got back into town, we got hot tea and food and tried to figure out how to get back without calling Diang to bother him. We stopped in at the police station and asked if any buses went our way, but they said no, nobody was going there, especially so late in the day, and there are no taxis in this town. Don't worry, the police said, we will help you find a car. What this actually means is that the policeman went out on the street and essentially hitchhiked for us, finding somebody who would give us a ride home for a little money. Thank you, Taiwanese police!
When we got back, there were no kids, but there were random fireworks! Other than that, it was a quiet night until the kids came back, after which we had a little party up in the big old room o'sleeping bags and played Michael Jackson for them on Gered's computer, which they liked a lot. Biling asked us tons of questions about all kinds of things (for example, do American Indians kill people? he was very interested in what aboriginal people were like in America), and the kids clamored to hear about our families and wanted to see pictures. I didn't have a picture of our family on me because I hadn't anticipated making friends, but we did watch the video of me doing YMCA at age 7, which happened to be on my flash drive, and which they ended up downloading onto their own computer, haha. Then we taught them the dance to YMCA, which seems to be a main component of my cultural exchange here in Taiwan.
On Sunday we did some canoeing and raced canoes, which somehow ended up in Usung and Biling drenching each other. Gered and I were going to walk into town to get lunch, but when we mentioned it to the kids they wanted to come too, and then Diang said he could just take us on the boat, so it ended up that everyone went. Diang went to visit his wife at work, and we took the kids to the traditional market and got a bunch of street food for everybody. Back at home, we spent the rest of the time playing random games. The silliest of these was probably the one where the kids would all run at this giant ball that they had and try to kick it from different directions, which almost always ended in everybody colliding and/or falling down, but they did it repeatedly nonetheless. We also played something like water bike polo in the lake with the giant ball and the bicycle boats. Then we played a little Calvinballish something, followed by a fairly organized game of baseball (I now know a number of baseball terms in Chinese). Gered had brought a small ball that said "Life is good" on it, which we used for baseball. Biling had asked me what the words were, and once I told him, he and his brothers started repeating it on their own. However, their favorite random phrase (and one that was repeated many times) was "because of love." Usung in particular kept blurting it out, but all of them said it at random times. I asked Usung if he knew what it meant, but he actually did, so I have no idea what possessed them to say it all the time. Still, they were a good set of catchphrases. "Life is good!" "Because of love!" It was a sad time when we had to get on the boat to leave, but I can't think of a better way I could have spent my weekend.
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