Click here to read from the first post of this travel log!😊
Day 2: Unpredictable circumstances
5 October 2023, Thursday
And woohoo, our 1st full day in Sun Moon Lake! I stepped out of the hotel with my reversible parka wrapped around my hips, in long pants (because it was cycling day) into the unexpected heat (no kidding, its almost the feeling of a heatwave, realising later on from the news that it was 37-38 degrees).
Decided to do a quick camera-route to capture the sights before breakfast since there weren't many people around, and super peaceful.
Remember I said there was more things to rave about the hotel?
We were staying at <The Crystal Inn> which has a main hotel named <The Crystal Resort> which overlooks the entire lake and obviously at a higher price point because of the view.
So, what is great about being at the <The Crystal Inn> is, although it is a more budget-friendly option without a view, the main reception desk, the breakfast are all located at the main hotel - which means you get pretty much the same service as folks staying at the main hotel!
And us, who got the quad room, were entitled to 4 portions of breakfast - it did not matter that we were just 2 occupants in a quad room. I believe this is a weekday (prob Sun-Thu) thing where the hotel reception would actually request for you to select your set for the next morning and we were given 3 options to choose from: (1) the western style, (2) the regular style & (3) the vegetarian (which is basically (2) just replacing the meat with more veg).
Since we had the privilege of up to 4 sets of breakfast, we decided to go with 2 western & 1 vegetarian set - and hell yeah, the breakfast was frigging awesome. That egg roll you see wrapped with half green, crabstick and cucumber... super impressed. We learnt much later on that the veg is called 龙须菜 which is native to Taiwan.
After an amazing breakfast to start our day, we decided to check out their rooftop view as well as their gym (which was fully cardio - no weights).
Just check out the howling winds...
We decided to check out the nearest bus-stop to us, just to have a feel and grabbed a Tea Egg from one of the convenience stores, before heading back to our hotel for a quick stop.
Completely empty, no signs of being in operation... no announcements that they were not either.
The winds were so strong, heavy metal barriers cannot stand. Not sure if its visible from the picture, but walkways also had a plastic barrier, but there were still people walking the trails so we did too.
Walked to the end of the trail and was forced to turn back because the metal gate (that actually links to the ropeway) was shut and locked - which also meant, the ropeway was not in operations for the day.
Did many jump shots at this particular spot (below) and really liked one of them - it became one of my profile pictures on socials. 😆
Landed back where we started, we decided to head back to the hotel reception to ask about the current situation - basically, there were no publicly accessible transport (no ferries, no buses, may or may not have taxis) because the nation had declared it a typhoon public holiday for the likely-affected areas, our only viable option was to rent a bike (manual/motorised) .
And so we decided, yes, lets rent a motorised bike so we can get to the other side of Sun Moon Lake and still go on as we had planned (despite my anxiety over the safety because I have zero trust in myself).
So we went to the bike store that the hotel has an alliance to and tried to rent a bike, to which the store owners suggested not to, due to safety concerns (as the uncertainties surrounding the extent of the typhoon were still unknown). To which, we felt so warm in our hearts because how many store owners would reject business because its might not be safe to do so? (of course, there's also the other train of thought that businesses will also suffer if anything negative happen to us while on their bike - but we choose to believe its the former. 😂)
Since now, the only transport we had left was our legs, we decided this was going to be a chill-lax day to unwind from our day-to-day lives back in Singapore.
Found this family-friendly cafe with pretty looking cakes.
(They had a playground for the kids at the 2nd floor, and parents can just watch their kids through the surveillance cameras from the 1st floor.)
Following a long tea break, we decided to embark on our long walk to Ci En Pagoda which was recommended by the hotel reception staff.
Along the way, we found Xuan Zhang Temple which had a Guan Yin Statue right at the top of the temple.
(p.s. the video is really taken to showcase the intermittent strong winds we faced throughout the day.)
A rainbow! 🌈
Not too long after we passed by Xuan Zhang Temple, we found the entrance to Ci En Pagoda! - except that we were greeted by a plastic barrier (the same one they used to block entry to the walking trails) at the base of the stairway to the pagoda.
And so, we decided to simply call it a day and head back before nightfall.
Being back at Ita Thao pier, we grabbed our dinner items from the stalls around.
It was really too early to end the night, so we decided, after all that we ate, lets go out and grab ice-cream and thinking back, I was so glad we did. We hung around the pier with our speedily melting ice-cream and found a guy with his guitar and mic, singing.
Guy was pretty funny, as he asked where his audience were from and the songs we would like to listen to. I suppose he mistook us as Taiwanese, cause he wondered why we would make life so hard for a 自己人 (jokingly) by choosing a hard song by Beyond (Hong Kong) named 海阔天空 - which he still did anyway.
Later on, he asked a couple to pick and song, and the lady chose Weibird 韦礼安's song - to which he said he really couldn't (even though he really tried to listen on the spot and actually sing it, so cute).
While all these were happening, there was a stray dog (or maybe owned since he had a collar I think) just going around for pats - to which I was a little fearful, but Bi is great with them so phew.
After the mini concert vibes, we headed back to rest and I started to piece this Eevee I bought at 7-eleven. I previously bought a Jigglypuff set from Osaka (earlier this year), and thought how rare to see other designs - so I got an Eevee & a Mimikyu (I will later find out back in Singapore that we have these Bandai pop-ups that pretty much sold the entire series, but that story is for another day).
Ended the night feeling pretty thankful because in my memories, typhoon was associated with strong gusts of wind & heavy rain, and though we got the occasional scary gusts of wind, there was no rain, and in fact we still had pretty blue skies and even a rainbow after the weather cleared up. ✌
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