Escapade to Hsinchu (sin-chew)

     Saturday (Jan. 14) was election day in Taiwan! That means for the past few weekends the main road we walk to work has been blocked off with a huge stage and tons of people cheering and speeches and concerts and lots of excitement to promote the candidates.  I haven't much of a clue as to how many or who was really running, I know one was a woman though.  So, no, I don't know who won either, or if the country even knows yet.  Let's just say I know nothing about their voting system.  Election day is considered a national holiday, so that means we got Saturday off from work!! A long weekend, of 2 days!  Originally we were committed to a group lunch with most of the staff we work with, but many have fallen ill over the past week, fevering and coughing, so it was decided to postpone the luncheon and let those rest, and keep us healthy ones away from the ill stricken.
        What would we do with our extended weekend?  We first thought of going to Kaohsiung, the 2nd largest city in Taiwan located way in the South.  It's about an hour and a half train ride on the High Speed Rail, round trip costing around 100 US dollars, or if we took a cheaper train the ride would be about 4-5 hours. We would have stayed overnight, probably in a hotel, and the thought of such an adventure made me tired.  I feel lame and sad for not wanting to go, but we're leaving for China in a week and I want SOME time to sit around doing nothing.  Instead we went to Hsinchu, the oldest city in northern Taiwan.  About a 30-45 minute train ride.
       Anthony, Greta, Abe, and I went on this trip together.  The basis for our desire to visit this city is from one of our classes, actually.  Our classes are based on levels, the majority of these levels are called Step Ahead, levels 1-16.  Each level has a corresponding book.  In SA11 the book is called "Beautiful Island" about a boy from America who visits his friend in Taiwan.  One of the places they go is Hsinchu, to see a huge gold Buddha statue.  We wanted to find the Buddha.
        We left around 1130, got to the train station and with the help of a nice man got our tickets from one of the machines.  Jumped onto the train, and into Hsinchu!  Off the train and into the city. The station itself in Hsinchu was quite beautiful, much more architectural than the station in Jhongli.

(This was taken at the end of the day, almost sunset.)

We set off into the crowds and first came to a roundabout with a little hut thing in the middle.  Traditional Chinese roofing.

        Across the street was a lovely park that captured our amusement for some time.  Hundreds of huge fish floating about, giant rats running about, turtles resting on stones, interesting people to see.  A much better park than ours.  I really wanted to get rice noodles for lunch, a traditional Hsinchu food, but didn't have any luck.  Well, I may have found some, but the lack of English menu's kept me from knowing if they were rice noodles or not.  We got some sandwiches and sat in the park to eat.

 

  There was a photo shoot going on, too.

      Then on to the temples!

No idea what this is.. rice noodles maybe? Probably not.

           The temples here were really large, winding with many hallways, lots of people praying and bowing about.  The first one, no giant Buddha, but still  many large statues and gods.  The 2nd temple had an indoor entrance to like a big food court.  Performances and music going on.  The temple was inside of this, and after wandering through it a bit, we thought it was a no go.  But then, into another room, and BAM! Giant gold Buddha! We took some pictures saying "cheese," just like Jason and Stanley from the book! It was an exciting time.  We tried to capture the look on Buddha's face. 

You can find these in all temples.  People pray and place incense into them.  

          Next we meandered through a market, trying to find our way to the Glass Museum and Flower Market area.  Roads led to more roads, and.. we decided we no longer knew where we were.  Alas, we came across another foreigner!  "Which way to the train station?"  Greta asked.  "Uhhh yea we're pretty far away from there,"  was his response.  Ok, so we were slightly lost. The man offered to help us, but luckily I always carry my little Chinese book with useful phrases, but more importantly it contains the Chinese writing for all of these phrases.  It's much easier to point and show sometimes.  We found a taxi and were back to the train station!  From there we knew how to walk to the Museum, which sadly enough was closed, due to the national holiday (the election, remember?).

 A princess like entrance to a zoo I think?  Near the Glass Museum.  A little kid climbed into the Cinderella carriage with Anthony and I, he was so cute and happy, wearing his yellow scooter helmet.


   

   Around here was a nature-y walk which led us to the Flower Market.  A lot of beautiful plants, I would have enjoyed purchasing multiple.  

 Bonsai Trees, sooo awesome. The biggest one was 8,500 NT, rather pricey.
 
      Once we had our fill of walking through the market, we decided to go head back to Jhongli..  Well this time we purchased our tickets ourselves and asked one of the platform workers which platform to find our train. 2B she said.  Well, lady, 2B was incorrect.  We rode the train from 2B about 3 or 4 stops until someone came walking through to check tickets, and when he asked where we were going, started waving his arms saying "no, no, no" when we told him Jhongli.  He instructed us to depart at the next town and take the next train going in the opposite direction.  Ohhh how silly we were.  Of course everyone was staring at us in our idiocy, one man started speaking to us in English, asking us if were on vacation.  Noo, we told him, we live here.

                            Lost and waiting for the train. 

Eventually, though, we made it back to Jhongli.  We ended the evening with some ShabooShaboo! Hot pot, Japanese style, very delicious!

 Our hot pot and dessert.  They always insist on making you choose a "free" dessert, we don't order this stuff. I picked purple rice porridge with bean sauce... why? Anthony got mango ice with jelly. Always jelly.