Temple Trip (August)

I went to the temple up in Taipei yesterday! Once a month our ward takes a bus up to the temple and this week was the monthly temple trip. This was my first time going since the last time there was a temple trip it was also during the typhoon that swept in late July, so it was nice to be able to actually go and feel safe about it.

The bus leaves at 6:00 a.m. and you have to walk there, which means an early wake up time. I'm not a fan of mornings in general so having a wake up time a little after 5 o'clock was rough, but I figure that all just makes the blessings worth more, right?

The bus ride up to Taipei was roughly 2 and a half hours and the temple itself was gorgeous (of course).

It was a hot and beautiful day.

The Taipei Temple looks so different from other temples.

I love me my Kim.

After our session with the temple was finished we still had some time before the bus was departing so we went with a few of the others from the ward and got lunch. They led us to a Chinese restaurant and the food was all really good! I can't remember the name of the province they said it was from, but they said that it was the one neighboring Tibet.

I finally got to try century eggs, which are a specialty in Taiwan.

Spicy meat and vegetables with thick rice noodles.

Naan bread with fried veggies and meat in the center.

Fried bananas dusted with sugar. Mmm

With our bellies stuffed from lunch we still had some excess time so Wawa, our awesome friend, took it upon herself to be our tour guide. She guided us to this famous street that is frequented especially by Japanese and Korean tourists.

I only got a picture of the beginning of the street.

I spotted Doraemon graffiti and had to snap a pic. He's all over.

Hey Bro! Can you hear me yell from here?

Zak is in Korea right now so I had to get a picture under this sign. 1,450 Km doesn't seem that far. Japan, my dream destination, and home (of course) are up there as well.

The sun was blaring and even though we were still full from lunch we were thirsty by this point, so "Mama Wawa" (as we lovingly nicknamed her) showed us where the best drinks were. I've heard about Taiwan's famous bubble milk tea but I haven't had any yet. Wawa knew of a stand that had bubble milk tea but without the tea so Josh, Wawa, and myself all got some.

The bubble milk tea stand.

Preparing the goods.

The vat of teriyaki looking dark goo is actually the sweet sauce. That contains all of the mapley saucy goodness as well as the "bubbles".

The goods!

My first sip

I wasn't sure what to expect from bubble milk tea, but i'll tell you that what I got was not what I thought it was going to be. It was sweet. Like, dessert kind of sweet. When I hear "tea" I think herbaly planty tastes, but this was a sweet, maple sugar, milk shake thing with chewy bubbles at the bottom. It was delicious! Big fan. Would buy again.

With our drinks to quench our thirst the bus took us to our next destination. If we had taken the home ward bus we would've gone straight home at that point, but because we took the YSA bus there were 2 more excursions planned before going home.

We were originally going to go to a place called Hsinchu, but because of the traffic they diverted the bus to a different location. I don't recall what the new place was called, but we weren't there for long. Wawa said that it was an "old street" that had been around for a very long time and because of that many shops had opened up on it and sold specialty items and foods that can't be found pretty much anywhere else.

Most of the buildings were made of red brick and the road was paved with stones. I haven't seen anything like it anywhere else in Asia.

Potty time

A large portion of the short time we had there was spent looking for a restroom. When we found it, this is what it looked like. This type of sight was more common in China. It was just an outhouse style "bathroom" with a squatter. Hey, when you've got to go--you've got to go.

"Mama Wawa" with one of  her ducklings. We called us her ducklings because she would just lead us places and we would blindly follow her, often times in a single file line due to the congested traffic.

We were only at the old street for maybe 40 minutes before it was time for the bus to take us to our next place. While in transit everyone on the bus kept trying to explain the next destination to us but they were finding it difficult. They kept using the words "factory" and "rose". We weren't really sure what a rose factory would be so we figured we would just find out when we got there.

Sure enough when we pulled up:

Roses

We still weren't sure what it was at this point, but we did see that there were a lot of roses everywhere. So they got that part right for sure. Turns out that the factory they took us to is a manufacturing plant for a company called "Arwin Bio-Tech". Arwin makes all kinds of beauty products: hair products, makeup, nail polish, perfumes, all of it. 

The building itself.

We get to the building and this tour guide guy takes us inside and leaves us in this small room with a projector where we watch a short (Mandarin only) video which introduces the company and explains what they're all about. After that we are taken to this massive room with all of their products where...we are supposed to buy them if we want? We weren't really sure why we were there but it was really neat. Also the entire building had pleasant fragrances wafting throughout it, so that was a plus. 

We saw this tv taking random pictures of those passing by so Wawa and I hopped in the photo.

Their super secret lab mixing equipment they use for concocting their perfumes.....or something. No one really knows....

At this point we were left to just wander the facility. They had a massive garden out behind the main building with cute little paths throughout it.

Oh look Taipei 101 on the left

Lots of pretty flowers

I love Megan

We would've been lost on this trip without Wawa

Hearts upon hearts upon hearts

The rose factory was our final stop so we rode the bus back home to Changhua after this. The YSA group is fun because they even played some short lived games on the bus ride back. It was a long day (we were gone for twelve and a half hours by the time we made it home) and I got super dehydrated, but it was worth it. As always I am grateful to not only be here, but to be surrounded by such wonderful and kind people that are willing to do fun things and help the dumb foreigners when they clearly don't have any idea what they are doing.