by Vincent Chen and Salim Alvi:
On this hot, humid, and sunny day we left at an early 8:20 am to visit a spiritual place close to many Taiwanese people’s hearts. The biggest Buddhist Museum: Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum.
This Museum has a massive Buddha statue with beautiful surrounding architecture wonderful for pictures.
After learning background information about Buddha and his message, and then taking a group photo, we were off on an adventure to explore the museum by ourselves for 40 minutes. Those that decided to go closer to the statue were greeted by a wonderful friendly monk who was happy to take pictures with us.
Those who were hypnotized by the beautiful Buddha statues and cold ice cream at the shops went back to the entrance to look at beautiful carvings and buy cool souvenirs like scrolls, gems, and keychains.
After, we took the bus for a few minutes to a veteran general’s house where we got to see all their uniforms, clothing, and the food they ate.
For today’s lunch, we went to a restaurant for a delightful Chinese style hotpot meal. We started with some cold veggie salad snacks and then the hotpot was brought out.
At first, it was layered with cabbage, pork or beef, and fish balls, but it quickly diversified after rounds of foods came out, consisting of a plethora of different dumplings, tofu, and vegetables.
Dessert was a steamed red bean nian gao which was quickly devoured.
While cooking everything, we had to make sure the level of broth in our hotpot was high enough so the food inside did not burn. Along with the different foods came the sauces. The mix of spicy, sweet, salty, and umami flavors of the meat and veggies with the sauces made each bite divine.
At Shoushan park, we gazed at the beautiful city and monkeys as we hiked in the near 90 degree weather. At first, we saw very few monkeys and many people doubted we would see more than 10. However, after hiking for a little bit, we came across a small group of monkeys on a small cliff overlooking the city.
While hiking, we also saw some wild stray dogs and cats which was not something we were expecting. After a quick stop at a platform overlooking a wonderful city view, our group split into two with one group staying in a small wooden structure and the other hiking further to see more monkeys.
As part of the group that continued to hike, we quickly came across a family of the monkeys. There were mothers and cute little baby monkeys along with the larger chief monkey who had bold red features.
After the amazing but slightly scary encounter with mountain monkeys, we were off to the train station to take a bullet train back to Taipei. The speed of the train intrigued our unknowing American eyes.
After only about 90 minutes we were suddenly back in a familiar place, TaiPei.
It was nostalgic getting back into our bus which we hadn’t seen for a few days.
Dinner was another hotpot restaurant, this time a Taiwanese style one. Each person had their own stove and soup in front of them and they got an array of different vegetables and meats. There was a wide selection of mushrooms, seafood, pork, beef, and even lamb. It was an awesome experience and was a great last supper to conclude this trip.
