day 25! nantou

So I have to apologize, I've fallen a bit behind on updating this thing. Maybe once I plow through the next few days (and y'all plow through it with me) you will see why...it has been a series of unfortunate events. ;) Not just laziness. Ok partially laziness. FINE! I'M LAZY ARE YOU HAPPY. T_T

I will try to fill in what happened as accurately as I can....

We woke up early to get to the bus station to Nantou. The bus takes about 3.5 hours, and from what I remembered from our last trip there, the station wasn't easy to find. (Remember? tempers flaring? prancing around and about Taipei station searching for the holy grail that is the Nantou bus?)

Thanks to very detailed instructions from my dad, though, as well as hours of diligent map memorization by me, we made it to the Taipei West Bus Station, Tower B (dad's directions said Tower A, but I saw through his little feint. nice try ba.) and through hand waving and acts of god I procured us two round trip tickets from Taipei to Nantou. :D Tempers only slightly flared (due to stress) but magically went away while munching on a green onion bread from 7-11. Funny, the curative powers of green onion bread.

When we arrived, my aunt met us and we walked over to her parents' house (same as last time) and we were immediately deposited at the dinner table and forced to eat all of the delicious food (same as last time). Forced, at chopstick point. D:

The few straggling leftovers get put under this cute food umbrella :D to keep flies away. We need one of these for home. Actually I want one, to sleep in. :( mosquitos........

Then we went for a walk to eat some baobing. This kind is the more, mm, "traditional" kind, I want to say? It's just crushed ice with toppings. We got one that was kind of like "the works"...

Inside, we found....various peanuts, barley, beans, a cherry tomato, a piece of yam, a piece of watermelon, and...oh yah. The whole thing tasted vaguely like bubblegum. Do NOT get the works.

Go for this one instead! It's what my aunt had, red beans + pudding. :)

Then our aunt drove us to this nearby area. I forget what it's called, but it used to be a lot of government buildings/dorms for government officials. It stopped being used though, and has been renovated as more of a touristy/cultural/arts area. Here is one such cultural/arts center that we stopped at. It was a big campus, and there were one or two rows of people selling crafts that are all handmade.

Like these name stamps. :) Pretty!

My aunt and Michael, on some walkway with flowers.

Had some "red tea" at a little pavilion, with live music playing nearby. A breeze finally kicked in  and it became bearable to be outside. Btw red tea tastes just like black coffee.

Cool little art installation near where we were sitting. The whole area was super nice.

Fountain installation.

And then there was a building with lots of little rooms, with each room dedicated to a particular type of "craft". They had products for each craft, and then an area for teaching/learning the craft. This one is "lacquer work".

..and its corresponding learning area, with some students trying their hand at it.

Michael is considering taking classes for "bamboo".

There were a BUNCH more that I didn't take pics of/didn't want to include, like metalwork, ceramics, indigo dye, but by far my favorite was...

glasswork. :D This photo doesn't do the vibrant colors justice at all. If there was a photography room, I should probably sign up for classes there...

Really pretty dragons for my mom/dad (who are both dragons), with equally pretty price tags. :D Again, the colors irl were much much nicer than what it looks like here.

Seriously doesn't that make you want to learn how to do glass blowing?? The price for these is something like $50.

aaaand on the much more affordable end of the spectrum, how cute is this??? It's like $8!! I'm an idiot, I should have bought some. :( (Michael did get that dolphin in the background as a gift for our cousin though).

It started raining so we left, and our aunt drove us to another area that's famous for these flowers/water lily pads. It's a whole street with just paddocks (is that the right unit word? i think that's for sheep) and paddocks of these things. Most flowers weren't open yet but I can imagine how nice it is when they are. There are many cute little coffee shops all around, which probably get packed around the time of year that they're all in bloom. 

For dinner, our aunt brought us to this hot pot place.

The place was huuuuge.

You get your own little personal pot. :D I've never actually had this kind before! You can pick from one of nine soup bases, I went with kimchee.

and then there's an emporium of various things to boil. :D

Obligatory veggie pic.

A garden of yakult drinks. :D

Gah not to be a pansy but I just..I love salad. T_T

And everyone's chance to get artistic, the sauce bar. :D

For dessert, there was a fondue fountain (that I didn't actually eat out of cuz there were bratty snotty kids running around everywhere and, fingers, noses, dipping, ew). The dipping sticks were so cute though, twisted little marshmallows :D

There was even a drinks bar, with fountain soda, milk tea, and that delicious thing to the left was this like, lime slushee. :D So good!

...and much much more that I didn't take pics of. There was dim sum, there were cooked dishes, there was an ice cream cooler....!! >< OMG! THERE WAS SO MUCH!! Damn you, all-you-can-eat! You know what the amazing part is though?? I thought this was gonna cost a fortune, like $30/person. I glanced at the price on the way out and it was 280nt/person. That is...less than $10/person. WTF???? The vegetables were all super fresh too. This clinches it. I'm moving to Taiwan.

Well actually, not so fast.

So we slowly ate whatever our little hearts desired, and then wobbled out to the car, and headed back to where we were staying for the night. Our aunt's brother, Simon, owns a business, and she stays in one of the office buildings (the 2nd floor is living space) when she comes to Taiwan. We stayed in the room next to hers. There was a shower, wireless internet, all in all a really good day! I felt pretty good that we'd made it all the way there (tbh I'd been worrying about it a bit over the last coupla weeks), and we got to see some cool stuff and relax. All was well.

It was the golden day of Nantou.

After that, it all went downhill...........................

(to be continued)