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Day 3: Sun Moon Lake and Chingging Vetrans Farm
Monday, May 23, 2005
Day 3: Sun Moon Lake and Chingging Vetrans Farm
Cooling fresh air greeted us, while we packed our stuff and ready for the tour round the lake. The greens around us was very pleasant to the eye. I never felt so relax and stress-free b4. we dumped our luggage in to the boot and hopped onto the cabbie.
The Sun Moon Lake- taken at the roadside
We reached a temple shortly. It has walls engraved with the map of the journey to the west by this monk- Tang2 sheng1 zhan4.
A view from the temple
Pai2 Fong1 in front of the temple
The second sightseeing destination is the ci2 en1 pagoda.
The spiral stairs leading us up to the pagoda
It is a 9 storey pagoda situated up on a hill top.
We scaled 570metres of stairs before reaching the foot of the pagoda.
At the summit of the pagoda, there’s a huge bell. We hit the bell 3 times, 1st from your heart, 2nd for the earth and 3rd for the sky- heaven.
The bird-eye view of the Sun Moon Lake from the pagoda was very beautiful.
Does it look like its snowing? Haha
After that, we proceeded to the Wen2 Wu3 temple, which holds the scruptures of Confucious and his decsendents. It was believed that, scholars set their feet into the temple to pray for their examination. Rather to believe and than to be sorry, all 3 of us did pray for our results which will be released in a few days time.
We then visited a shop that sells Oolong tea and Royal honey. I bought ½ jin of oolong tea leaves for NT$900, almost bought the honey which is kinda expensive. Lucky I have a not so ‘soft-ear’. All of us got into some native costumes. Its from the ‘shao4’ native.
Jess wore a native gal costume, and the colour bright red indicates that she is single yet unavailable, while CP wore a hunting costume. Mine is similar to Jess’s, the difference is the head band. I’m supposed to be the princess..hehee.
Next, we went to the ‘de2 hua4’ harbour of Sun Moon Lake.
The harbour
We got to the ‘Guan1 yin1’ waterfall. Not a very whimsical one, but at least the water has not run dry
The cabbie drove us to many other sightseeing spots but we dun really find any caprice in them. Not really worth to mention here.
One of those sightseeing places
One of the peacocks at the Peacock farm
After a whole morning of travelling and walking and climbing of stairs, the cabbie brought us to a ‘coffee shop’ for lunch.
We all ordered the same shrimp dumpling mee for NT$100 each.
At that point of time I realised that I had overspent… I may not have enough to do shopping in Taipei. I must control… cannot spur on unnecessary stuffs.
Anyway, after lunch, we proceed to the next destination on our list- Chingging Vetrans Farm. Its was situated on some other hills in the Northeast direction of Sun Moon Lake. Thus the cab went up and down the winding narrow road while our ears get blocked from time to time. The surrounding air gets cooler, there wasn’t a need to keep the aircon on the cab on. The breeze definitely smells better than the aircon. Our lodging for the nite is on a hill at a higher altitude.
This time round, its really a house and we got ourselves a bedroom with washroom on the 2nd storey. Did I mentioned that we need to take off shoes before going up the stairs to our room? Yesh, we have to leave our shoes in a cupboard next to the stairs. There are about 8 rooms on the 2nd floor while the reception is on the 1st floor.
The house
An insight of our room
After resting for 15mins or so, we were on our feets again, marching down slope in a single file to the farm. So far it’s the only tourist attraction that need to pay entry fees. There were lots and lots of sheeps and lambs, not to mention lots of ‘gold bars’ along the pathway.
The lambs are sooo cute.
will it bite my fingers?
They were busy feeding on the grassland and can’t be bothered by our presence. We even tried to feed them by plucking grass of the ground, yet dun really attract them. Only a few gullible ones came forward and munched those plucked-grass. But after a while, they lose interest in ur grass. Thus we drew a conclusion: Sheeps prefer to eat grass from grassland and not grass from our hands.
There were some cows which were quite stinky..haha, perhaps I should say cow dungs are more stinky than sheep shit.
At one point of time, we suddenly noticed that all these sheeps suddenly make their way over the slope toward a direction, when I turned and face the road I saw more sheeps heading this way towards the farm. Far behind the herds, was a black dog, just like those childhood story, the shepherd and his dog herding the sheeps back to the farm.
the farm is not those flat plateau. There are lots of slopes and stairs.
I simply love the surrounding, all u can see are mountains in the midst of white misty clouds, mountains over mountains, green grassland with cool breeze blowing onto my face… the view was breathtaking. All the houses there are very nicely built, like those you can find along the river of Venice, very victorian style. I knew from that moment, it was going to be my favourite destination. When Jess asked me, y am i takin so many photos here, we still got many other places to go on our trip, I said, bcoz I like this place. Never have I indulged in such nice weather with surrounding so pleasant to the eye before.
Upon returning to the house, CP ordered some rose tea. We had a nice hot tea session in the garden. In front of the house is a garden lined with carpet grass. Many flowers could be found in the garden, ranging from roses to lilies to lavenders.
A perfect place to lay back and retire.
That nite it rained heavily. The weather was cold… it is also tt nite, I had a very bad stomach. Din really fall into deep sleep.
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