Largest Typhoon of 2016 hits Taiwan - 颱風莫蘭蒂

Its been a year since we moved to Taiwan. A Typhoon greeted us last year just as we were settling in and this year, another one arrived the first week of school to welcome us back to Kaohsiung. 

Typhoon Meranti was the most powerful storm we've seen since living here.

Because its located on the coast, there was a lot of damage near our school, National Sun Yat-Sen University. This afternoon, one day after Meranti hit, we drove there to take some pictures of the ships that washed up. When we got there, we could smell the fumes coming from the wreckage. The photo above is of a boat trying to manage the oil leaking from the boats.

Below is an aerial shot we found online of the wreckage.

We also found this video of the typhoon destroying  Kaohsiung Harbor's shipping yard.

Skating with Andrew Chang in Taichung

Skating with one of my favorite skaters in Taiwan, Andrew Chang. I use to skate with him almost every week when I lived in Taichung, Taiwan between 2011 and 2012. Since coming back to Taiwan, when we go skate together, we spend half our time skating and the other half just talking to each other about our passions, families, careers, etc.

(below video edited by Andrew)

Maolin, Taiwan - 茂林國家風景區

Maolin Valley (茂林國家風景區) is one of the most beautiful places in Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties. It's about a two hour drive from Kaohsiung City and has many scenic locations on the way as well.

On our trip we decided to drive our scooters. The first hour we pretty much just drove north towards Tainan then started to head east. I read on another blog about mud volcanoes (燕巢烏山頂泥火山) but it wasn't clearly marked. Once you get onto the mountain there are signs marking the way.  

When we arrived the visitors center required our passport numbers, addresses, and names.  As we walked towards the mud volcanoes we could hear the mud bubbles popping extremely loudly. It was sometimes hard to tell where the sound was coming from, as sometimes the sound was coming from under our feet.  

There were some mud volcanoes that you could easily look down into and watch as the mud bubbled up and splashed over the rim. The mud wasn't hot at all; we didn't do this, but apparently you're able to light the mud volcanoes on fire.

After seeing the mud volcanoes, we headed towards Maolin (茂林). After about another hour we finally arrived. The first waterfall I wanted to check out had the road closed off. So we headed towards the next one (大津瀑布).

This is definitely one of the coolest waterfalls I've been to. It was very tall, had a shallow pool and had tons of butterflies and leaves falling down from above. It definitely felt like something out of a movie. I wanted to swim in it but  I didn't want to disrupt the Taiwanese meditating at the waterfall and live the American stereotype. However once we saw a few other Taiwanese take a dip, swimming was free game. (This actually isn't a great swimming spot because of how small and shallow the pool is.)

After our dip, we drove deeper into the mountains of Maolin Valley. Our main stop was a high suspension bridge going between two mountains. The roads wind back and forth as you slowly navigate through the valley, often getting stuck behind slow tour buses that can't turn easily around the many bends in the road. Once we arrived, however, the view was spectacular and well worth the time it took to drive there.

On the way home, because one of our friends hasn't gone yet, we stopped at Fo Guang Buddhist Monastery (Click here for my post on Fo Guang Shan).



Sources:
Mud Volcano Wiki

佛光山 - Buddha's Light Mountain

Fo Guang Shan (佛光山) is the largest Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. The name literally means "Buddha's Light Mountain." The monastery's webpage says that they have 25,000 visitors daily, with people from all over Asia travelling to visit. It's only about a forty five minute scooter drive from Kaohsiung City.

The first building, pictured above, is mostly filled with souvenir shops as well as restaurants. They even have a Starbucks.  

The main building, with the Buddha on top, feels like Disney World but with Buddha. Inside are different corridors to walk down to learn about the religion, Buddhist history, a museum for old artifacts, and many fancy places for worship. Unfortunately those areas were off limits for photography. Everything is decorated with bright lights and beautiful displays. Many people will buy incense sticks or other items to present before the idols in the different rooms used for worship. It may have a theme park feel to it, but this is a real place where people take worship very seriously, so they do ask you to be respectful.  Some places we weren't even able to observe. The caretakers wanted us to enter and be apart of worship or leave that specific area.

On top of the main building are four pagodas. Inside of each one is a golden Buddha. There is a monk inside each pagoda assisting guests with worship or in our case, answering questions. We had one monk offer to help us make a wish (after she asked if Anne Marie was French) but after declining, we were able to talk to her a little bit about our beliefs. Situations like these always push us to study harder so that we can have more meaningful conversations in Chinese.  

Sources:
Their Official Webpage
Wikpedia

Pintung Tropical Agriculture Expo

We had a fun trip out to the Pingtung Tropical Agriculture Expo. The whole thing was free, unless walking one block is too far for you, you could always pay for parking. It features many beautiful and perfectly placed flowers.

The main path you will walk down is a man made tunnel that has many different vegetables forced to grow around the tunnel and hang down over your head. This tunnel was way longer then I expected but I enjoyed the whole thing, even though that was so bare spots that didn't grow very well. All around the tunnel was plenty of food and other activities for children to enjoy.

One of the coolest pieces on display was a field of four differently colored rice plants that were strategically placed to form this beautiful picture. The picture is sponsored by a company called Pili that is famous for their traditional puppet TV shows which the rice is designed to resemble. http://www.pili.com.tw/en/