Day 17 - Taroko & Flying Lantern

Today’s Programme
Morning	Taroko National Park
Afternoon	Burning stove / Go Fishing / To cook snacks / BBQ / Frying the flying Lantern
Evening
Hotel	Toucheng Leisure Farm, Ilan

That day, the original plan was to go to through the Tunnel of Nine Turns which is the tortuous course cut by the river that has produced a gorge of many curves and is the path of the highway that has been carved out of the cliff face. we called that “Taroko Gorge”. Unfortunately, the trip through the tunnels had been canceled due to the earthquake on the day before. It was not safe to be under the marble cliff after the earthquake. The Fu Dao Yuan had a new plan to bring us to visit the Stone Factory. There were lots of stone sculptures there. There were also lots of tiny things for sell. They looked like what we we can buy in Thailand, but at more expensive prices.

We then were told that we were heading for the Taroko National Park. I was wondering if it was already okay to visit the tunnels, but we only visited the Taroko National Park Visitor Center which held an exhibition and had nice scenarios around.


In the afternoon we again had a long distance trip along the east coast of the island. It made me have headache again ;-(

I had lots of naps until we reached Ilan, the city close to Taipei where the farm that we were going to stay was located. The farm was on the hill. There was no 7-11 for the boys who had to go to the mini-mart to buy their supper. It was raining when we arrived. The program to go fishing and do cooking had been canceled. What we could do was to burn the tapioca. The place was cool. They taught us to burn the tapioca by making stone caves on the soil land under the roof. We then had a cool buffet meal. They also provided BBQ food for us, but we had to stick the meat and vegetable to the sticks and paint the sauce by ourselves. We had fun doing that, but I ate only a couple of pieces because I was already full while waiting for the boy lightening the fire to make the stove ready to grill.

After finishing the dinner, we were arranged to sit around the table, 10 people each, to paint the big lantern. There were four sides of the lantern. We could paint everything we wanted. During the time we waited for the big lantern to dry, they distributed the lamp we painted in TaiChung and taught us to connect the light with the lamp, but well it was raining. The lamp got dirty because of the rain. The big lantern didn’t touch much water because it flied away once it was lightened. I then wrote my wish on the bamboo piece and hang it on the wishing tree. No idea if my wish will be granted.

The night activity was to view the pictures we had taken and was to let the Fu Dao Yuans express their feelings. It was a bit sad but some people (the Fu Dao Yuans and the translators) made us laugh a lot too.