Taichung & Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan
Views of Sun Moon Lake
The lowdown
We spent our last five days in Taiwan working our way up the rest of the west coast (Taichung) and heading inland to the popular destination of Sun Moon Lake. We termed Taichung the “second city” not only because it was our second favorite city in Taiwan in many regards (e.g., food, art), but also because it felt like the Chicago of Taiwan (Chicago is often called the second city in the US). We lived our best urban life in Taichung and soaked up our last taste of the Taiwanese city life (and city life in general as our next stop was Mongolia) that we had grown to love over the course of our three weeks in the country.
From Taichung, we backtracked slightly south and central to explore Sun Moon Lake. Sun Moon Lake, a massive lake surrounded by idyllic mountains, is a well-known tourist destination in Taiwan and internationally. Our plans here were to relax after a busy few weeks, catch up on writing, and enjoy walking around the lake. We mostly accomplished these goals, but our newfound Yahtzee addiction did slightly hinder our progress on writing
Day 1: Taichung
Per usual in Taiwan, our transportation (and sadly our last train) to Taichung from Chiayi was seamless. We walked from the train station to our accommodation, the Doudian DDin Hotel (which we affectionally pronounced as the doody inn), and were warmly greeted by Debbie at the front desk, a young, sprightly woman that had been to Chicago.
After striking out on vegetarian options at most places in Chiayi, we were enthusiastic about the number of veg options on offer in Taichung. We settled on Bulao 125 for a lunch – a cute spot near Taichung’s university area where grandma figures served up delicious and nutritious lunch sets. For dessert, we had their famous milk tea tiramisu (scrumptious) and exchanged tokens we had been given for tiny fruit popsicles that one of the grandmas joyfully handed us. Easily one of our favorite meals in Taiwan!
Clear eyes, full stomachs, we set our sights on the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts for an afternoon dose of culture. We enjoyed the walk along the river, which reminded us of the Han riverwalk in Seoul, and stopped at a different type of artistic site along the way – Painted Animation Lane. The name was a perfect description of the place – a narrow alley tucked between two buildings that artists had brightened with detailed renderings of animated characters. Among them we recognized Yugi from Yugi-Oh, the Dragon Ball Z crew, Mario and Garfield, but reckoned most of the unfamiliar characters were from anime.
Next up was the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (a bit of a mouthful in English, maybe more streamlined in Mandarin) which was situated in a park with contemporary statues. We learned that the main exhibit was set to open the next day, but got a sneak peek at some of the featured works and the other open exhibits. Our favorites were a trippy video that was meant to capture peoples’ dreams, a half-painted half-sketched painting, and a brightly colored painting with a few bananas on a table. We talked about going back to the opening of the featured exhibit if we had time the next day.
It was time to eat (or at least think about eating) again after an art-filled afternoon. We decided to head to Wenhua Night Market, the hallmark night market of Taichung, which required an hour bus ride from the doody inn. Our bus driver was a crazy driver, barely coming to a stop when he picked or dropped people off, but he got us there in one piece. Thus, the night market food crawl commenced!
We started at Taiwan King Spicy Noodle which served up piping hot and spicy bowls of udon noodles. This place had a challenge for $500 NTD ($17 USD) that required participants to finish a plate of insanely spicy noodles to get their picture on the wall. Figuring we probably wouldn’t be back to celebrate our achievement, we settled on two small bowls of the level three spicy noodles which was plenty hot for us. Working off the noodles and airing out our mouths, we strolled up and down the vibrant night market, scouting out our next food conquest. We happened upon an arcade with pop a shot, played a few games of that and a handful of other games, and earned ourselves enough tickets to get a multi-colored pen (we were in need of one anyway).
We ended up walking back to a place right next to the noodle joint, Ming Lun Pancake, that made vegetarian pancakes with shallots and egg. We waited in line and when we were called up, we ordered one pancake with their special sauce and pepper. It was delicious! Of course, we needed to top off our night market meal with bubble tea. We had the best bubble tea of our time in Taiwan at Tiger Sugar. It was so good that we went back for seconds after a quick stop at 7/11 to play a Pokémon game.
Day 2: Taichung
We started off our first full day in Taichung with a trip to Taichung’s Second Market. It was clear that it was a Saturday – the indoor market was crowded with young and old Taiwanese enjoying traditional fare. We did a lap around the market, scouting out our options for lunch while reconciling our desire to eat ASAP with the long lines at most of the stands. Luckily, one of our front runners, Yihu Cold Noodles, was largely a take out option with a limited line. We sat outside and scarfed down two spicy, sesamey bowls of cold noodles, a dish that sounded unappealing a few weeks ago but had quickly become one of our favorite.
As we were slurping down our noodles, Doug spotted a store with a Nikon logo just behind us. We had been lugging around our old, chargerless camera for a good month and intended to send it home as soon as we sent our next package back, but we figured it could be good for our upcoming weeks in Mongolia. We were in luck – the store was a camera store that had the exact charger we needed!
We walked back to the doody inn, tested the camera charger to make sure it worked (hazah it did), and headed over to Miyahara to celebrate. A cross between a West Loop loft and Gringotts, Miyahara was a neat-looking building that offered many Taiwanese sweets. It is most famous for its artisanal ice cream shop which was immediately apparent by the long line outside. When it was our turn, we each ordered two scoops of ice cream – fudge brownie and banana milk for Doug, dark chocolate and salted caramel for Jessie. The best part of the operation was the elaborate selection of toppings where we respectively opted for almond tuiles and ruby black tea shortbread and assorted floral cake (the best topping) and almond meringue. Best ice cream that we’ve had on our trip!
To stave off the sugar rush, we walked to Taichung’s Creative Cultural Park which was an old distillery. It was neat to walk around, but we found other creative cultural parks around the country more interesting. We popped on the bus (really took advantage of Taichung’s public transit system) to Paochueh Temple, a Japanese Buddhist temple that pays homage to Japanese soldiers killed in WWII. At first, we thought it was odd that there would be a memorial for Japanese soldiers in Taiwan, but then we remembered that Taiwan was a Japanese colony during the time of WWII, so they were actually Japanese soldiers of Taiwanese descent. We were the only ones at the temple outside of an elderly man and we found it to be quite the contrast to the ornate, colorful, occasionally funky Taiwanese temples that we had seen over the past few weeks. The Japanese temple was quiet, old, and peaceful with a massive, laughing golden Buddha on one side and a memorial full of the photos and names of the tens of thousands of soldiers that had perished on the other side.
There was a large supermarket across the street from the temple, so we stopped in to pick up a few things for our upcoming trip to Mongolia. Backpack filled with vegetarian instant noodles, new toiletries, and dried prunes (toilet situation won’t be ideal), we took a long walk back to the Fine Art Museum to catch the new exhibit before the museum closed. We’re not in the habit of visiting places twice on our travels, but we’re happy we circled back to the museum. The contemporary Taiwanese art exhibit was fantastic with a mix of visual art works (our favorite was a series of televisions on delay that filmed whoever was in the exhibit), audio art works (most notably a quartet of instruments that shut off individually as you approached each one), and paintings.
After round two at the museum, it was time for a beer and Yahtzee. We toyed with going to our favorite local watering hole, 711, but settled on Taihu Brewing instead. It was our favorite taproom on our trip thus far with delicious citrus IPAs, delectable fries, and other fun craft beers. We spent the better part of our evening sampling Taihu’s offerings while chatting about our time in Taiwan, reflecting on our travels more broadly, and playing copious games of Yahtzee. We lost track of time and soon realized that we were famished. After a failed attempt to go to a night market and some hanger, we ended up at old reliable after all – 711 – for a late night feast of instant ramen, seaweed, and shockingly delicious truffle-flavored Lays
Day 3: Taichung to Sun Moon Lake
Sad to say bye to Taichung, we embarked on one last urban meal before heading to our final stop in Taiwan, Sun Moon Lake. At first, we had trouble spotting Guan Shi Yin, a small vegetarian spot open in the morning. We doubled back where the pin was located on Google Maps, only to realize that the Chinese herbal medicine shop we had walked past a few minutes earlier was also the restaurant. Off to a fun start!
Two lovely older ladies who didn’t speak a lick of English took our order, shaking their heads when we had clearly ordered too much. We cut a dish and settled on the spicy sesame noodles, dumplings, and a side of okonomiyaki (a Japanese-style cabbage pancake that’s one of our favorite dishes back home). It turned out that each of these dishes came with steamed veggies and soup with tofu, so we ended up with a total feast. Everything that we ate was delicious – we hope to try to replicate this meal when we’re back in a kitchen.
The three-hour bus ride to Sun Moon Lake flew by as we listened to our book of the week – Cody Keenan’s Grace. Upon arriving at Sun Moon Lake, we remarked on how impressive it was that we could get from a major city to nature using entirely public transit. The equivalent back home would be like getting from Chicago to New Buffalo using a CTA bus, totally out of the realm of possibility thanks to federalism (amongst other constraints). We stayed in Ita Thao for three days, the less touristy, quieter side of the lake that is known for its street food.
We checked into our place, the family-operated Ace House, and happily settled into our spacious room where we planned to spend a decent amount of time writing. After a quick rest, we made our way out to the street for dinner and laundry. We had one of Ita Thao’s specialities – braised tofu sandwiches – where the “bread” is actually the braised tofu and the sandwich is stuffed with kimchi, peanuts, cilantro, and other good things. Jessie pledged to eat it every day we were in Sun Moon Lake, which sadly didn’t come to fruition as the stand she ate at was closed for the rest of the week. We ate our sandwiches while walking towards the lake.
Recognizing that we only had a few days left in Taiwan, we zeroed in on finding bubble tea for dessert. We ended up having the worst bubble tea we’ve ever had (in the world, not just in Taiwan). Agreeing that life and our remaining time in Taiwan were both too short to have bad bubble tea, we tossed it in the garbage (we had to go back to the laundromat because there were no public garbage cans in a 2-mile radius) and found a much better one.
Day 4: Sun Moon Lake
Our plan for our first full day in Sun Moon Lake was to walk around the lake which would take about 6 hours. Though we didn’t know for sure, we figured that there was a walking path that encircled the lake (we were half right). We started down the main lakefront path in front of our place and walked until we got to the end of the path, listening to Grace and enjoying the beautiful, though receded, lake views. We learned that the lake was at one of its lowest water levels in history, but we still found it lovely.
When we reached the end of the path, we decided to walk on the road until we reached the next trail. Though it didn’t look too far on a map, the walk was along a very windy and narrow highway with no space for pedestrians. After 15 minutes of run-walking along the highway, we decided to audible and looped back to Ita Thao.
After our failed walk around the lake, we hopped on the bus to Shiushe so we could pick up another lakefront trail there. Cody Keenan recounting his time with Obama in our ears, we strolled along the lake for another few hours taking in the scenery and loving the fresh air. It was the perfect place to lay low after a few weeks of go-go-going in Taiwan. We waited an hour for the bus back to Ita Thao, filling the time with snacks from 711 and too many games of Yahtzee.
When we finally got back, it was dinner time! Back to Ita Thao Shopping Street we went where we settled on a bao stand with options for both of us – vegetarian for Jessie and pork for Doug. As we were finishing our bao, we saw two guys being filmed and a small crowd gathering around them. Intrigued, we walked over and were approached by the manager of one of the men. She told us the men were filming a show that was very famous in Taiwan – Wassup Man – and was curious to learn what we were doing in Taiwan and how we were finding it. We declined a photo opp with Wassup Man, but did have fun following them and the excited crowd around town for awhile. We capped off our night with our daily bubble teas 🙂
Day 5: Sun Moon Lake
On our last full day in Sun Moon Lake, we wanted to accomplish our second goal of our time there – catching up on writing and pictures. We walked to a nearby cafe that we had spotted the day before in hopes of a strong espresso (check) and a place to chill for a few hours. The barista pointed us to the rooftop – the perfect place to sit and write while looking at the lake. We sat there until the laptop ran out of battery, conveniently around when we started to get hungry.
For lunch, we hit up our favorite street (and really the only notable one) in Ita Thao. We stopped at a sit-down place with vegetarian options (surprisingly plentiful in Sun Moon Lake). Jessie had delicious noodles with tofu and veggies, while Doug had mediocre noodles with minced pork. On the way back to our place, we picked up our last two bubble teas of our time in Taiwan, settling on the biggest size.
We spent the rest of our afternoon writing, playing Yahtzee, enjoying one last walk around Sun Moon Lake, and taking advantage of the convenient coin laundry spot. We squeezed in our last street food on Ita Thao street, our last stop at a Taiwanese 711, and our last failed attempt at a claw machine.
