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Day 2

Taichung -> Sun Moon Lake -> Aboriginal Village -> 明月湖住宿

We woke up at 5.30am and were shocked to see that Taiwan's 5.30 is like Singapore's 7am. People can be seen having breakfast at the shops below and the sky seems brightly lit! Tomato Room provides Laya Burger breakfast coupon. With this discount voucher, one is entitled to their strawberry/chocolate sandwich + red tea/soya milk or its equivalent to NT25 for purchase at the shop. We had our breakfast at 6.30/7am. It is just a left turn about our residing area. 

逢甲文化道商场
Laya burger main entrance (Free newspaper stand at the right side)
Laya Burger Menu
surroundings of Laya burger
Our breakfast using the breakfast voucher provided by Tomato Rooms!
We walked through the streets before returning back to the service apartment. Saw quite a few students wearing their school jacket despite the weather being fair. Guess its their culture there. Nutritious sandwiches are mainly sold on the streets and at a reasonable price of NT30.

Check-out was hassle-free as we only need to place the room key at the letter box outside their adminstration office. Our pre-arranged taxi service with 张先生from 全运交通公司came 5 minutes before appointed time of 8am. Just right in front of 顺天blog. Generally, pre-arranged taxi service within Taiwan is quite common with free&easy Tourists and the drivers tend to always be punctual or even arrive earlier than arranged time. However as  张先生 wasnt free that day, he arranged 陈小姐 to be our driver for our trip from Tomato Rooms to our hotel at Sun moon Lake. She told us that she has 2sons, 1 daughter and grandchildren!

陈小姐namecard
On the way, she stop and let us purchase 太阳饼@一福堂. Its quite a famous standalone shop. As we saw quite a few tourist buses stopping by after our departure. My family bought 太阳饼at an offer of 350NT(U.P 400NT) for one box of 20. 

台中名产-太阳饼!

We reached our hotel (明月湖@日月潭) after 1 hr 30 mins. Room was not ready when we arrived, but they provided us with tickets first so that we can either take the boat ride/cable car ride to Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village.

http://moon.myweb.hinet.net

明月湖@日月潭
After we came back from Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village (九族文化村), we realised the hotel people has helped us carry our luggage, up the steep stairs to our room on the third floor. 
*there is no lift at the hotel, but there's only four floors, with the first two as dining area (restaurant). Upon request, the receptionist lend us adaptor and data cable at no cost! However do note that only the first and second floor  has wifi-access.

As we were early and the cable car service only starts at 10.30am. We decided to walk around the shops in the near vicinity. We bought 4 bananas and most fruit shops at the alley that we bought close at 6pm. Then we headed towards the cable car ropeway station to Formosa Aboriginal culture Village. It was a rather straight and cooling walk there.  


The view while walking to the cable car station

Cable car + Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village admission tickets
We were given this ticket to enter the 'village' + 2 way cable car rides provided on behalf of our hotel as our hotel package consist of:
  • 4pax room with full lake view
  • Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village tickets + 2 way cable car ride X4
  • Breakfast + dinner
  • boat ride( stop only @ 玄光寺)


Cable Car ticket board
We used the ticket to exchange for queue number, despite being there at 10.30pm, we were number 235-238. Mostly before us are school students. Luckily, the waiting time was short, around 15 mins before we can get up the cable car.

view from cable car

string of cable cars ~
 The cable car ride lasted 15 minutes.



Upon reaching we went to take the internal Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village Cable car to travel to another end. 

view from the internal Cable car

九族文化村纪念石


As its lunch time, we decided to head to the nearest eatery - Li Jing Restaurant whereby it offers Chinese cuisine. Its located at 水沙莲花园(European Palace Garden) which is very grand and nice. I have the feeling that it was used as a 偶像剧拍摄地点,but couldn't think of the name.


European Palace Garden !


pretty flowers along the two sides of the long walkway leading to 麗宮
麗宮
As theres a minimum requirement of 8 people to enter, my family was sort of denied entry and we ate at their 'canteen' instead. They serve Vegetarian set meal/ beef set meal/stewed pork meal/卤(lu)肉饭。There's 4 vege in each set meal, quite a relatively big portion +soup. But it cost NT150/meal. And, it wasnt tasty and all. We agreed that it is considered as one of the lousiest meal we had in Taiwan. Its near flower plantation, and the stench of fertilizer is very evident. 

open restauarant within 麗宫

According to our experience, its better to lunch at the individual tribe villages' restaurants. The food there is much nicer and slightly less expensive. Bamboo rice is very common.



Bamboo Rice (traditional way of using charcoal)
Shop within the tribe villages selling BBQ meat
We then march on to the 'theme park' the Aboriginal village - Aladdin Plaza. Not really a very big theme park but enough of roller coasters and merry-go-around to satisfy the craving for all ages. We didnt stay for long, and eventually went on to visit the individual 9 different tribe villages. Comparing the popularity of the two different genre of place, the theme park seems to garner more visitors. Some of the villages that showcase the different cultures of the tribes seem abandoned/deserted. Looks like they are becoming more commercial now.




We went to the various villages of the 9 tribes that showcase their cultures. Then we went to view two cultural performances at the Naruwan Theater and  Sacrificial Rites. We viewed the 1.25pm show at Naruwan theater and it ended at around 2pm, and we strolled to the place(short distance) for Sacrificial Rites for the 2.30pm show. They even allow people to try the traditional clothes for photo taking with just a payment of NT100!


Saizya archery area
performer selling 'Naruwan' songs CD
Traditional Dance performance
 All performances are of free entry, but do note the performance timings. They can be found on Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village Web: http://www.themeparks.net.tw/eng/park/park19/index.asp But its still best to check on the day itself with the information counter in case of last minute changes in the timing.

wax figures of olden days

Shop for people to try on the different traditional clothing.
Back:A-mei tribe
Front: Saizya tribe

 As we took the route back to the "sun moon lake<->Formosa Aboriginal culture Village" cable car stop,we find ourself reaching the cable car stop soon after touring the various tribe villages. We did not take the internal cable car back anymore as we took the route on foot. We took the cable car back to Sun moon Lake by 4pm.
just before taking the cable car back to Sun Moon Lake

Do ensure sufficient sunblock especially on fair weather days as the sun ray can get very intense!

View back to Sun Moon Lake on Cable Car
Ita Zhao Pier



We are back at Sun Moon Lake, and we checked in at our hotel which we didnt in the morning.As our  package includes dinner at the hotel restaurant, we decided to have an early dinner @ 5pm, with the intention of catching a traditional show performance near our accomodation but realised that the timing has changed from 6.20pm to 5.20pm. Regrettably, we missed it.

As mentioned before, the hotel owner has already sent helpers to carry our baggage up to the third storey. How helpful!

Our room!

sofa + tv area. (yes, we are able to view the pier from our full length glass window) 
The kerb area leading to the door wasnt very user-friendly

2 double beds separated by the mini divider/wall as seen
Toilet. shower area behind sliding door

We went down for dinner at 5pm and they served the dishes piping hot. Waiting time wasnt long.
The dinner include a plate of fried small prawns, vege, bamboo shoot, lamb meat, wild boar meat and soup. Perhaps being in foreign land for just the second day, the food prepared wasn't exactly to our liking. We still preferred normal pork to wild boar meat, and fresh prawns to fried mini prawns that can be eaten wholly together with its shell. We were served yellow watermelon after our dinner, which was sweet and nice!

Dinner at Sun Moon Bay Hotel!
We went for a short walk around our accomodation area but as its getting colder at night and there isnt much night activity at Ita Thao at night, we retreated back to our hotel early.

Side-Note:



We were all quite puzzled to see congratulatory flowers in the shape of wreath.


Taiwan Congratulatory flower

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi may I check how much you paid for the taxi fare from Fengjia to SML?

Unknown said...

Hi! Thank you for visiting our travel blog. We paid a total of NT1500 from Fengjia to SML (4 pax). In addition, you may wish to refer to the post titled 'Taiwan Reflections' on our Taiwan Trip (April 2012) column to find out more about our trip's total cost breakdown :)
- All-4-travel (Anna)

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