After sleeping in Taichung, we went to see a few local sights. First, Taichung is overrun with scooters, which actually may cause as much smog as cars do due to their inferior anti polution devices or total lack thereof. End result, the city is filled with smog and overrun with scooters driving dangerously in all directions. That didn't really bother me too much when I was driving since I took the attitude that if they were lane weaving into the lane I was going to (while signalling), they'd get more hurt than me, but it was still a bit annoying.

We started with the Paochueh Temple, which is another temple dedicated to the teachings of Confucius. People honor him as if he were a god. To be honest, considering his wisdom and teachings, I see nothing wrong with that:

The marthyr temple next door was closed for business on weedays, so we only got to see the outside:

So we went to our next stop which was a big buddha statue in the middle of town:

Asia seems to like their koi fish :)

After a couple of temples, the pickings were slim, so when I saw a dot on google maps which gave me a personalized highlighted result for a natural science museum with high ratings. I suggested that we spend about 3H of our schedule to go check it out, and it was time well spent. Oh, and the best part was that it cost $4 per person, can't really argue with that :) This is on its own page

After a good time in that museum (time well spent), we went to a nearby town (Lugang) to see some more temples and old streets:

We found this pet pig attached with the dogs next to a school:

Time for a few more temples before heading out:

Service station for water, cute...

We then drove to our next town, Tainan, two hours away, where we went to another night market for Jennifer and spent the night:

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We arrived in Sun Moon Lake after sunset the previous night, but signed up for an early (05:00 getting up, that was a bit tough) sunrise walk with Wayne, the very nice owner of the B&B we were staying at (Laurel Villa). He took us to private land from his family from which you get a good view of the surroundings and the lake. Unfortunately the weather we got that morning wasn't the best, but at least we got to see sunrise across the mountains, so it wasn't all for naught :)

ants actually build their nests up in trees for protection

I have some Panoramas here.

He then recommended that we go ahead, get rental bikes and bike around a portion of the lake before breakfast so that we could miss the crowds that would arrive by busloads soon after. He also told Jennifer which of her places to see where worth doing and in which order, and that was invaluable advise.
As a result, we actually had a great rest of the day in the area, enjoying sights with barely any crowds.

apparently many people biking there suck at biking, the path was littered with signs tell you the curved road ahead of you indeed curves and you should slow down :)

because someone who can't bike managed to fall off this path, we were told to walk it. We kind of ignored that ;)

across the lake was a tall pagoda we went to visit that afternoon

After the bike ride, we went to pick up our car and drove to the beautiful WenWu temple dedicated to confucius, and then climbed up Tsen Pagoda:

the decorations were exquisite

confucius

Next, we grabbed some quick lunch and went to check out the Pagoda:

view from the top wasn't bad

We then headed out to Lugang, nearby town with a few displays for tourists:

Ah yes, then it was still time to get to our next town, Taichung, and check out another night market:

more random animal parts for sale :)

After some food was time for bed and sleep :) .

On our way out, we first stopped by a temple on the way and climbed its pagoda:

lots of scenic roads, although not always very wide

We then arrived to our another hike in Taroko National Park, to a cave with waterfall within. That was unusual and worth the small trek. The hike actually starts in the middle of a tunnel which you enter on foot:

lots of swallows in that tunnel

even found some bats with my flashlight

I got a tiny bit wet in the waterfall cave, but not too much :)

After that, we had a longish drive across the Taiwan Alps (peak is 3200m, not too shabby), on a road that was one lane wide half the time. That made for interesting driving in a crappy underpowered rental car (it sure was struggling that high, had to downgrade to 1st gear several times), but I probably took 1h off the normal drive time, curvy roads are my bread and butter :)

this is a 2 lane road of course

quick stop at the peak (3200m or so)

We didn't have much time to stop for pictures on the road because we had an appointment with a guide for a private tour in English of the Chung Tai Chan Monastery. Despite my best efforts, and lots of passing on a no passing road, we got there 40mn late, but they were still able to accomodate us, and boy was that worth it. It's the biggest buddhist monastery in the world, and we got to see inside rooms on the 16th floor and above that are not open to the public (including a room with 2000 bouda statues):

And after more driving, we finally we arrived at Sun Moon Lake in the evening for some rest:

After a good night in our cabin, we got up early to catch breakfast and be on the first trail before 08:00. For that trail, we needed a permit with a ridiculous process including a local who can vouch for you, is actually called by the NPS to make sure they'll answer the phone and vouch for you, and then you have to give your permit to a guy who will open the physical gate (padlock) to the trail. We arrived early because we wanted to score one of the only 3 legal parking spots by the trailhead.

turns out it's actually ants that build nests in trees

picture of the bridge that started our trail

And that finished our hike (6.4km return, about 3h and change). It was supposed to be a much longer one way hike, but the trail was damaged by a typhoon, and we had to content for that. I found the trail to be not bad, but when you've been to Yosemite and done things like the Glacier Point trail, it's a bit hard to beat that :)

Next, we did the swallow grotto trail, which was mostly walking by the original road that was now one way (a wider bypass replaced it), and while the hike was braindead simple, it was quite scenic and worth walking 1km down the road and then back to our car:

nice swallows, with orange necks

After that hike, we went further on the road to see a few more sights and do a more minor hike (which in hindsight was skipable):

When then headed back to our hotel for a short hike there just before sunset and dinner. By then we were both sick with a cold that Jennifer picked up and nicely shared with me :) so we needed the rest.

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We drove up the coast for views and then back down and drove inside the park by going up the river:

If you've seen the california coast, the views weren't better, but they still were enjoyable:

Jennifer planning our trip with a ranger

we also hiked up there, to the high temple, many steps :)

our goal

our next goal (from the top temple we had reached)

We finished by reaching the Buluowan Visitor Center to plan our longer hike the next day, and check in at our cabin just before sunset (17:00 only because Taiwan isn't really in the right timezone). The included buffet dinner was actually quite good, but the show mostly done by kids afterwards was cute, but way too long.

Jennifer looked up the origin of her name (3 different characters):

After 4H+ in the museum, we went out to see the park next to it, and a museum of Aborigines

very fat koi fish, if they could walk on land to get your food, they sure would :)

happy bird

Our next destination was another night market we caught just before sunset to stock up on food for our upcoming train ride to Hualien for Tarako National Park:

Piggy!

Rainbow bridge

Yummy food for the train

blowtorch piggy

On the way out we stopped by a very very nice temple I don't have a name in English for :)

By then it wasn't late, just 18:30, but we had to get back to our hotel, pick up our luggage and take a fast train to Hualien for Tarako National Park, where we arrived around 22:00 and got some sleep for our drive to the park the next day.

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We started the day by going back to the Sun Tay-Sen monument which was half closed last year, and learned more about him as well as his main executor, Chiang Kai Sheik. We saw the changing of the guards there, which was quite elaborate.

Next, we went to see some old city gates, and the Zhongshan Hall where Taiwan signed getting its country back from Japan after the 2nd world war. As luck would have it, it actually was the 69th anniversary of that day, so the hall was open to the public and they had a long parade otside starting from that point:

north gate

nice parade car

reconstruction of south gate

When then went back to the Chiang Kai Sheik monument to read about him again and compare his history with Sun Tay-Sen's:

From there, we went to Elephant Mountain, and hiked up for a view of Taipei at sunset and beyond:

We then hiked back down and went to a night market and all kinds of foods, many didn't seem safe or even food to me :)

Pachinko for children?

blowtorch chicken, my favourite :)

huge ass prawn

We avoided the baby shrimp fishing pool at the night market, because Jennifer took us to a real shrimp fishing place. It was a new screw around zone, some people came with their own fishing equipment and bait, and totally kicked our non fisherman asses :) In the end, we did so badly with a single shrimp that the owner felt sorry for us, and threw in some freebies when we asked him to cook our one shrimp :)

the only shrimp we ever caught was by hand when it got caught into our net

people other than us then ended up with a plate load of shrimp ;)

And this was the end of day one, after this hard fishing experience, we went to our room for some sleep.

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After breakfast, we went to the beach during low tide, we saw people fishing and we looked at the low tide sea life:

Next, we drove up to a Maria statue with view of the area:

water village we saw next

We then went down to the water village:

low tide

kids wanted us to take their picture :)

Last, was the market:

And then lunch before boarding the Waow for our diving trip.

After the climb up Egon, we got down by 08:00, so we had plenty of time to go back to the museum we had tried twice and was closed twice. They had a fair amount of prehistoric artifacts, and as I write this, archaeologists just found cave paintings in Indonesia that are allegedly 40,000 years old.

Japanese-Dutch money from the Japanese occupation

After all this, we were still back to the hotel by 11:00, way in time for lunch. I let our guide see the photosphere pictures I took with google cardboard for an immersive experience:

I had a hard time picking Indonesian food I was ok with during each meal, so for this one I thought I would live dangerously and got a cheeseburger just to see what it would be like. Arturo and Jennifer spent a good time laughing at me when I got spam and a very thin slide of unmelted cheese :)

We mostly spent the afternoon resting, and looking outside a bit:

After a long drive across the island (and it was the short way across, but driving in Indonesia is so attrociously slow), and sleeping close to our departure point, we got up bright and early (actually it wasn't bright at all yet) at 03:00 and took our tour car towards Kelimutu National Park. We drove almost all the way to the top and only hiked a mere 20mn at most.

Watching sunrise there was not better than Haelakala in Maui, but it was still very very nice. One interesting thing is that the 3 lakes routinely change color depending on the volcanic activity and what ends up in the water.

After this nice excursion, we got back to our lodge for breakfast, packed and went on the road to visit some villages and markets:

One of the villages:

cool tree

traditional houses

We got a visit in one of the traditional houses in exchange for a tip :)

and I found another little chick that needed to be picked up :)

rich people had different houses

And then more driving to back to Maumere...

busses are full

taking the pig to the market

We got to a restaurant by the beach for lunch:

somehow another little chick ran into my hand :)

And we finally arrived to our lodge by the beach to rest and go to bed very early for a 02:00 waking up the next morning:

After a flight from Bali, we arrived in Maumere, where we got picked up by our guide and driver:

After arriving, we had lunch at a local restaurant, before heading out to the other side of the island:

After getting to a lodge close to Mt Ende, and after a quick nap, we went out for dinner where I got to catch this nice moonrise :

This year, our Indonesian destination was Flores Island to catch the Waow boat in Maumere. We were told that Flores was worth visiting before boarding the boat, so we took 4 days to spend there before getting on the boat. However, you fly there through Bali, so we had a few hours in Bali the day we arrived before taking a plane to Maumere the next morning.

Unfortunately this year it took 1.5h to get through the aiport due to a huge imigration line. Eventually we got out at 17;10, which was barely enough time to meet our driver guide we used last year and go to Uluwatu to have a quick tour of the temple, see the monkeys, and then watch a Balinese dance (actually kind of a play, not entirely unlike Japanese kabuki), and then we were supposed to have suckling pig for dinner, but the place closed for some holiday. Instead, we ended up having dinner on a beach with pick your own fish, we'll grill it :)

new toll expressway to the airport

that night also happend to have a full lunar eclipse

We spent a free night at a nice Hyatt thanks to my credit card, and while we were short on time due to our flight, we did a quick tour of the grounds with Arturo .

Like last year, we flew Eva Air business (only 120K miles to go to Bali), and while the food and service were still quite good. Unfortunately the entertainment system was unreliable and crashy. It failed for me in both planes....

seabass was yummy :)

good job entertainment system, still didn't work after 2 reboots

very nice HUD

virtual landing