The Tour Islanded On: Day 1

All last week I went on an island tour of Taiwan and it was so much fun and the sights were incredible.  I got to see so much cool stuff, by way of bus, and meet lots of awesome people from around the world.  On the tour alone we had people from Australia, Poland, The Netherlands, Indonesia, China, Germany, San Diego and Wisconsin.

The bus picked us up at 7:30 in Taipei and we were on our way to the first stop:

Sun Moon Lake.

First we had lunch on the patio with the view of the above two photos.  The lake is amazing.  The water is greenish teal and looks like kool-aid.  Unfortunately, this is not a lake you swim in.

After lunch we got on our own tour boat and took a half hour trip on the boat.

On the left is our tour guide.  His name was Samson.  He was a lot of fun.

There was a pagoda sitting on top of the hills which I thought was awesome.  Little did I know that later on in the day we would be climbing that very pagoda seen above.

We made a stop on one side of the lake to go up and see the Holy Monk Shrine at the top of a hill.  Along the path there were people meditating on the side, completely motionless.

Outside the shrine.

View from the top of the hill.

Not my boat above but a cool looking one.

By the time we got back to our boat on the dock the clouds were taking over and it began to rain all over across the lake.

When we reached the dock on the far side of the lake there was no hope of staying dry.  We stopped at Dehua Village, which is an Aborigine village.  Unfortunately, because of the rain everyone was in a hurry to just make it to the bus so we didn't get to see too much of it.  It was tiny anyway.

But we did get ponchos which were pointless as we were already wet.

And, naturally, the rain stopped and the sun came back out immediately upon purchasing them.

Next we were dropped off at the bottom of a hill where we were to climb over 200 stairs to reach the Tse-en Pagoda at the top of the hill that I mentioned earlier above.

At the bottom before the ascent.

View of the lake from the trail.

Made it!

I thought it was so cool looking.  

Our tour guide told us we could climb the extra 100+ stairs to go to the top and ring the gong.

Didn't hesitate.

View from the top of the inside.

View from the top of the outside.

Views of the lake and mountains surrounding the pagoda.

I rang the gong and it was super loud.

After we climbed back down we got back on the bus and on our way to see the Wenwu Temple, which was beautiful and gigantic.

After the temple it was time to go check-in at the hotel!  I thought we would be staying at a Marriot-type place at best, but noooo!  It was a legit 5-star hotel, called Fluer De Chine Hotel, directly on the edge of the lake.  It was super luxurious and ritzy, especially after figuring this out:

One normal night in this hotel: $483

Price of the entire tour: $500

Reaction to this discovery: Priceless

(2 pictures above taken from google)

Each level had its own lobby with a gigantic window overlooking the entire lake, so we thought it would be fun to take Asian inspired shadowed photos with the backdrop to end the day off (in the kimono pajamas provided by the hotel, of course.)

And that was only Monday.