Tour Of TaiwanSouth Central Chiayi

The drive from Taipei to Sun Moon Lake is almost entirely on the west coast, which is city upon city, rather than any kind of country scenery. Taipei suddenly becomes Taoyuan, which dissolves into Hsinchu. The cities get smaller after Hsinchu, but they never separate. Until you are back in a large city, the second largest in the country, Taichung. There might be some interesting things in Taichung, and I should probably go there someday, but we wanted to go to Sun Moon Lake, which is more natural than the second largest city in the country. You almost have to go through Taichung to get to the lake. There is little to no scenery on the drive between Taipei and Taichung, but at least there is the choice of two freeways, running parallel. After a few days of winding mountain roads, letting loose on a freeway made my new car happy.

From Taichung, Nantou is due east into the mountains. Once you hit Nantou, Sun Moon Lake is a curved, mountain road south. The scenery was better than the west coast freeway, but that winding mountain road really slowed things down. It took an hour and 15 minutes to drive the 160km from Taipei to Taichung. It took almost the same amount of time to drive 75km to the lake.

Everyone in Taiwan says you have to go to Sun Moon Lake. It is the largest and most famous lake in the country, and home to one of the smallest indigenous tribes in Taiwan. Someone told us it is the most popular tourist sight, though claims like that have to be taken with a large block of salt. Everyone in Taiwan seems to think their best thing is the most superlative thing in the country. But as a large lake with its own tiny island in the middle, almost in the dead center of the country, surrounded by scenery and hiking trails, Sun Moon Lake is likely one of the more popular sights. Summer is supposed to be the most crowded time, but the typhoon probably made a difference.

There are plenty of boats to take people across the lake and/or to tiny Lalu Island, but I think the best way to get around is on the bicycle paths, some of which were built directly over the water. Like most scenic or recreation areas, renting a bicycle is easy and inexpensive. Also common are the temples all over the place. Since Lalu Island is sacred to the Thao people, it only makes sense that the Japanese and then the Chinese would build temples in the area. Unfortunately, Lalu Island was mostly destroyed by an earthquake in 1999, so it no longer has the sun and moon shape. Unlike a lot of places in Chinese-speaking countries, the English name “Sun Moon Lake” is a literal translation of the Chinese name, 日月潭. Now that Lalu Island is basically a large rock in the water, the name makes less sense.

There are plenty of hotels near Sun Moon Lake, but we had other plans. It is a nice enough lake, and we could have easily spent the night, but we come from Manitoba and Minnesota. Lakes are not extraordinary to us.

From Sun Moon Lake, we drove southwest instead of west back to Taichung. We were headed to Chiayi, and taking the mountain roads to the freeway was faster than taking the small Nantou freeway. We passed through Yunlin, the poorest county in the country, and the one place where no one has ever advised us to go. Since it is on the west coast, which is all about cities, there is less scenery, and Yunlin suffers from no cities that anyone seems to want to visit.

Just south of Yunlin County is Chiayi County. Chiayi City is smack dab in the middle of the county, and where the freeway goes, but we were headed to Taibao, just west of Chiayi. Rather than spend the night in another themed B&B, we stayed at a friend's house. That was really the only reason we went to Chiayi.

There were no national parks or hiking trails in Chiayi, but just like the government buildings in Taipei, the government buildings and museum in Taibao turned out to be a good place to ride a bicycle. Just north of the museum is a cultural park, with plenty of bicycles, and a long path that went pretty much nowhere. The flat plains of Chiayi were not nearly as challenging as a mountain trail, but the bicycle paths were separated from the streets, making them infinitely safer to ride.

The plains were also the easiest place to teach Lily how to drive my new car. She knows how to drive, of course, but that right hand drive steering wheel intimidated her. Most of the trip before Chiayi was mountain roads and Taipei, not the best places to drive an unfamiliar car. It also helped that Chiayi is tiny. I have never seen a single street in Kaohsiung without other cars, but Taibao is a little smaller. It is technically a 市, but it feels like a 鎮. Kaohsiung has about 7500% more people. The street from the front door of the museum to the back door of the high speed train station was empty, by Taiwan standards. The area around the train station also turned out to be a good place to practice driving. The street at the front of the station was essentially a parking lot, with taxis and relatives competing for the best spots to drop off their passengers while blocking the most traffic. But the other side of the station was a small neighborhood of absolutely nothing but short streets and empty fields.

The deserted roads only went to two different streets that headed to the station, but they were wide. Two of them were three lanes in both directions. The palm trees were trimmed and the empty fields were manicured. Someone clearly thought there would someday be something more in the neighborhood than a train station. I can't predict what will become of the area in the future, but for our purposes, it was ideal. The streets were too short for Lily to see what a Porsche can do, but she would have never been comfortable with speed anyway. Our goal was to get her used to the right hand drive. The lane markers in the road made it easy for her to position the car, even when she wanted to veer left. She quickly adjusted, as I knew she would. It is not that complicated. But she was never comfortable enough to drive on streets with traffic. That had more to do with the horrid driving habits of Taiwan than the car's steering wheel.

She has no driver's license, so we should probably stick to empty roads whenever she is behind the wheel.