Taiwan Lantern Festival

LF = Lantern Festival

CNY = Chinese New Year

This weekend I went to the Taiwan LF.  In Taiwan, LF's start off 14 days after the official CNY date and last for two weeks.  This year is Hsinchu's turn to host the giant LF.  Apparently, they have them all over Taiwan, but there's always one city selected to host the big LF each year, and millions of people flock to it.  Luckily, it was easy for me to get to because Hsinchu is only a half hour away.

It was gigantic.  It was probably around 3-4 square miles or something.  It had to be.  I was there for 3 hours and didn't come close to seeing everything.  Lanterns all over the place.  Vendor's everywhere you look.  Families everywhere.  And one big snake lantern (with it being the "year of the snake" and all).  Basically, just one big party.

They. Go. All. Out.

 Above is one of the main entrances.

So cool, right?

 Millions of food vendors.

They had hundreds of character lanterns...

rows and rows full of them.

No way I could have seen them all...

Angry birds!

"Duh-dum-dud-uhh)-The-Main-Street-Electrical-Parade!"...

jk.

All the surrounding buildings had their lights glowing and had "hollywood lights" going off from their ceilings and such.  It was pretty crazy!

Tunnel of light.

There was a huge lantern of a snake that came alive every half hour with lights and music and it rotated and blew steam out of its mouth, and everyone within sight stopped and oooh'ed and awwwe'd.

There was also a giant elephant lantern.

"Quick! Take my picture, there's no one around.  Three seconds later..."

Shoulder-to-shoulder crowded.

A bigger tunnel of light.

Endless streets of lights.

Illuminating tree.

Constant fireworks were going off all over the place all the time.

Everywhere!

I love this picture.

Seriously the entire event was incredible, but far too big to see it all.  You can only look at lanterns so long before...you're done.  Getting home was a complete nightmare though...the shuttle and taxi systems were probably well organized, but there were millions of people and millions of lines; didn't know where to go!  But thank goodness for the kindness of strangers and people who can speak at least 1% of English.

Asia knows how to throw a party.

Lion's Head Mountain

- cont'd from the last post -

After lunch we went another half hour on the bus and ended up at the starting point of Lion's Head Mountain.  Apparently there's a bunch of trails you can go on...and apparently we were going on the crazy one...because that's what it ended up being: crazy.  It was literally uphill for a good hour and a half with hardly any flat spots. I wasn't quite prepared for such an epic journey but went with the flow.  It ended up being beautiful and good exercise.  It was a super foggy day, and the higher and higher we got the more thick the fog got.

Starting point.

At this point I had no clue what I was really getting into. 

No one had climbed it before so they didn't really either. 

Gold Buddha in the forest.

There were lots of little things to see on the ascent.

If you yelled out into the open mountain it would echo back clearly.

Parts of the trail went under the mountain shelves above.

As you can and will see, the fog got crazier and crazier.

I love this picture.

Cool building along the road in the fog.

At this point I had steam-rolled ahead of everybody a good ten/fifteen minutes.

Now, I'm no athlete, but when walking uphill I tend to go faster just to get it over with, with minimum breaks.  I get in the zone and go go go!

I love the layers and depth that fog brings and creates.

At the top of the mountain there was a giant pavilion and area with picnic tables and such.

The view from this height would be phenomenal on a sunny day, but it was still awesome.

At this point we only had one casualty.

One of the girls with us returned back to the starting point.

Beyond that gate in the background was another intense adventure I wasn't prepared for...

STAIRS!

First we went down a THOUSAND+ stairs, with each step adding to the anxiousness that it would have to be climbed up on the way back.  But it was awesome being in the middle of the forest just walking down into the foggy abyss.

I loved this rock wall.

Don't know what this says but it was cool.

Well we fiiiinally reached the bottom of the stairs and it ended up being a gorgeous area with a giant temple on the edge of a cliff.  It really was breathtaking.

Temple artistry.

We had some more casualties on the way down the stairs...

These are the ones who made it the whole way!

They had the coolest waterfall with fake birds all over.

It was amazing.

I wasn't exactly looking forward to climbing the stairs but knew it was inevitable...

But I finally made it to the top!...

After about a half-hour straight of climbing stairs nonstop.

It was intense, but not that bad.

And it was worth it for views like this.

The walk back down was pretty easy.  I steam-rolled ahead of everyone a good 15/20 minutes and kept my momentum just going down hill nonstop...and right back home to sleep a good nights sleep.