Our hotel was a lodge of sorts with a packrat decorating theme. It was cool-ish. The owner of the lodge is an artist--or so he thinks--and he had paintings all over the house of naked women in rather seductive poses or with seductive facial expressions. However, the women were just plain UGLY--one looked like a beaver with buck teeth. It was frightening that these paintings were in EVERY single room and wall. The one above Oakley and Diamond's bed was a nice picture of an ugly woman with bare lopsided boobs. I'm surprised they didn't wake up with nightmares. On the bright side, the hotel served lovely meals and the servers kept their clothes on.
First thing in the morning, we went on a boat tour around Sun Moon Lake. It was pretty boring. The water was an interesting blue-green color, but unfortunately, the air was full of smog--just like it always looks in Korea.
As a funny side note, as we waited for our boat ride, we looked in the little gift shops around the harbor. Every single one had carvings (some up to three feet long) of penises. Yes, that's right, male genitalia--some with women sitting on top. Seriously disturbing. We tried to get the kids to hurry out of the shops without noticing--and five of the seven didn't really pick up on it too much. Oakley and Gwynyth figured it out, but Chloe said, "Why are there so many statues of thumbs?" Brian and I laughed and were especially pleased that at age 13, she was still that innocent. We responded, "For some, a thumb would be an accurate comparison." Then it became the family joke. At one point Oakley was being demanding and I called out, "Dude, people with three thumbs don't get a say!"
After the boat tour, we got on a HUGE cable car that went over two mountains and took us to an Aboriginal themed amusement park.
I was really surprised that Taiwan was not as much like China like I thought it would be. In fact, it had a much more Polynesian flavor--just with Mandarin as the predominant language. At the park they had several replicas of villages of 13 different indigenous tribes. They had tribal art demonstrations and performances. The clothing and dancing reminded me so much of Mayans and Native Americans, as well as Polynesian cultures.
The park also had rides that were like a knock-off of Disneyland and Sea World. Some of the rides were almost identical. Because it was a school day for Taiwanese kids, we had very little wait for the rides and the kids spent hours running back and forth on all the rides.
We had another fantastic day, but at the end we were ready for vacation to end. We were all exhausted and ready to sleep in our own beds.
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