Day 57 & 58 -- July 20 & 21

So even though I went out with Jillian on Saturday we really didn’t do anything super exciting (more specifically nothing new happened) and then I went home and did homework. I watched a few TV shows and went to bed. I really didn’t feel like you guys wanted to know to much about it so I left that day blank. My Sunday however, was one of the best days I’ve had in Taiwan!

    My day began with meeting Sean and heading out from the GongGuan MRT station, we headed off to Main station. From there we met up with Mikki, we bought our train tickets for Ruifang. We swung into the mall and got lunch in extremely silly sized bowls. Then we were off. to where you may ask, we were going to Jiufen. This place is famous for inspiring the scenery in the Miyazaki film ‘Spirited Away’. It is a small little mountain town, very close to the ocean. It took us about an hour on the train followed by a 30 minute bus ride. The area around was stunning as well. We hopped off the bus and immediately went to find a place to take pictures of the bay. We had decided that we were going to let our inner artists out and get odd and fun pictures. I have some strange pictures that might need a little context.

    The famous red lantern area was packed with tourist, this is the second most famous tourist attraction in Taiwan. People moving, yelling, trying to get us to come buy things. So we hopped off the well worn track and went for a wander in the lower town. We had a lot of fun finding strange nooks and crannies to get fun pictures in. I also personally made a point of trying to help people take pictures. Anytime I saw someone trying to take a self-portrait I would offer to do it. It was actually quite nice to see people’s faces light up at the offer. We found a little cafe and looked out at the temples and just enjoyed the calmness of everything. Something about this place was beautiful, I am thinking that maybe before I leave I will spend a weekend of a night up there and just enjoy my stay. I don’t know yet there are still so many places to go visit.

So this is a wall...

So this is another wall

Miyazaki's Bath house inspiration

    We went back into the tourist area to find a place to sit down and watch the sunset. We found a little quite cafe where I got some ice cream and tea. We drank our tea and just talked for a couple of hours. There is something to be said in just enjoying the sun move across the sky. As the sun started to go down the clouds rolled in so our sunset was a little bit earlier than we thought. I still got some awesome pictures of the sky and the bay. Then we made an effort to find dinner which was a good old standard of beef noodles. By this point the lanterns had started to come on. We swung back by the famous street and got a bunch of pictures there. We decided to head home after that.

    The trip home was much longer for some reason on the train we kept stopping for about 5 to 10 minutes at each stop the the hour long ride became about an hour and half. We made it home all right. This day is best described by the pictures so I’m just going to let them do the talking. Back to the grind tomorrow! Good night everyone.