Ershui

Ershui is a town my roomate discovered you can go and see monkeys at various times of the day. Erin, Brandon, and I decided to head up there one morning, and this is what we found!!
There were monkeys everywhere! We headed up a path, and on every side there were more. The road wound up into another mountain, with stairs of course. We headed up, looking for the temple we heard was at the top.
The path was pretty crowded, which we thought was a little weird considering how few people we had seen before then. At the top we discovered some kind of festival going on. The next thing we knew there was a procession lined up, complete with these super cool costumes of people twice as tall as normal! It was crazy. Only something you would see in Taiwan, that's for sure. The drums and interesting displays made for quite the adventure. We followed for a few minutes to see where they were going, and to our surprise there was a whole city behind the temple! I am constantly amazed at the use of space here.
After hanging out on the streets and grabbing a few snacks from various vendors, we headed back down the path to head to the train station. It was fun to see a few more monkeys:)
Thanks to Erin for showing me such a fun place!

Day 5

Our last day of vacation was bittersweet. I actually missed my new home base, but at the same time loved exploring the island. Before heading out on our 430 train we took one last little trip to Carp Lake.
It was amazing, even in the rain! Thank you to my good friend Fenny for sharing her umbrella with me for our walk around the lake!
I am so glad I was able to hang out with all of these awesome people I am able to teach and live with for six months. Believe me, I got very lucky! We had a blast on our trip, and everyday it gets better and better:)

There was beautiful scenery all the way around the little lake, but of course when we saw the paddle boats we knew we had to try it! It made it even more fun that it was raining!
Me, Susan, and Whitney on our paddle boat- I will be sure to tell you all about them in the near future!

Day 4

Day four started out a little rainy, so we headed out for some famous hot springs- they were actually built for Japanese princes! It was really nice to just relax and read a book.
Later on we headed out for what had quickly become our favorite meal- dumplings and bautza. The second picture is of the line to get our food- it was totally crazy whenever we went there, and believe me it was quite often:)

Our desert was Mochi, a famous gelatin pastry type of food that Haulien is famous for. Good times!!

Day Three

Day three of our vacation started out with us going back to the gorge planning on going on a morning hike and meeting others of us for lunch. We walked up a path next to a gorgeous river, and planned on making a loop back to the visitor center. We had heard good things about the Shakadang trail, and were pretty excited about it.
After climbing up the mountain consistently for awhile and counting down the kilometers we had left, we slowly realized the path hadn't been counting down to the entrance. Instead we were on top of the mountain, still in the clouds. It was beautiful of course, but our planned hour and a half hike ended up turning into a five hour hike. Blame it on not knowing what the locals were saying as they motioned up the mountain!!
The plus side is that we were able to enjoy all of the scenery, including and aboriginal village situated in the mountain top. It was a lot of stairs, as is very common in Taiwan, coming to the end of the trail was a straight shot down the mountain, and that meant hundreds and hundreds of stairs. I was pretty dizzy by the end!!


We weren't too worn out from our hike to stay in from the night life of Haulien. We found a local college with students who put on a traditional dancing show! It was super fun, and we got a picture with them at the end:)