Sun Moon Lake
Finally, the car arrived in Taichung, not only the third largest city (about 2,6 million citizens) but the home of igus® Taiwan Ltd.
From Taichung, we start to explore the entire island, a very green island with a sub-tropical and tropical climate. This goes hand in hand with an extraordinary high humidity that at this moment, the atmosphere is at a humidity of 80%.
Despite the small size (about 58 times smaller than the adjacent country China), the island offers a high variety of landscapes. We plan to drive to drive a mountain road terrain up to more than 3000 meters, to visit National Parks, tropical beaches and stunning waterfalls. While doing this, we will meet many of our customers from a wide range of industries.
The last days were determined by organizing the immediate tour and by freeing iglidur® from Taiwanese bureaucracy.
Although we spent most of the time dealing with this issue, I did however get the chance to discover parts of Taichung. The night markets in Taiwan are definitely not to be missed!
Within these night markets, a high variety of food shops, that are offering well known Asian food as well as specialties such as a cake made out of rice and pig blood (not my favourite food but better than I had initially thought) line the pavements invitig you to try traditional dishes.
As the first of May is also a bank holiday in Taiwan, we decided to take a trip to the sun moon lake; the biggest lake in Taiwan and a famous tourist attraction (in particular for visitors from the neighbouring country).
The name of the lake comes from that the east side resembles a sun while the west side resembles a moon. The bright colour in the water and the moon-like shape of the lake in general combined to make quite an eye-catching collaboration.
Already the way to the lake is eye-catching. As soon as you leave Taichung, everything turns completely green and becomes hilly. Due to the lake being situated in the centre of Taiwan, you come close to the green mountains that divide the island.
After a short half an hour drive, the impression and general feeling if being in the middle of the rainforest was already prominent.
A sign warning visitors of poisoned snakes and huge “killer” bees, only reinforced this feeling of being within the rainforest.
People that are living in the forest, predominantly know three ways to create income: Either they harvest the betel palms that are everywhere along the streets, they pick Bambus or they live out of the trade with black tea.
A black tea field near Sun Moon Lake
What really surprised me was that, despite the impression of being far away from every kind of civilization, suddenly a magnificent temple appeared out of nowhere.
The Kong Ming temple dates back to 1901. The temple has the largest image of Kong Ming, who was a well-known leader and became famous with the title of best strategist of his time.
I’m really excited to explore more of the island. I will keep you up to date and show you more of beautiful Taiwan soon.
yours Sascha
