Venturing Around Nearby Places

Last weekend Matthew and I decided to try and fix up some old bicycles that have been abandonned at our place. We got them cleaned up and in working condition, well, as long as you don't want to change any gears that is. We cycled around Erlin, and mostly ventured in the direction away from the downtown core. We came across a lot of green. I was actually a bit surprised at how many farms there are, and how many different types of crops people seem to grow. Some of the stuff I could not identify, but they each had some pretty intricate looking irrigation systems. I am sure there was a bit of trespassing on our part, but I feel like no one really cares too much about that here. I do not know what kind of plant this is, it's not very tall, I was crouching down when I took the picture, but there were quite a few farms with these crops. You wouldn't be able to tell that there are so many farms from our place. We live pretty close to the downtown core (and within a week or two will be in the downtown core), but a 5 minute bike ride will get you to farmland. It's as if someone decided that the apartments and townhouses would stop at a certain pointt, and behind them would be farms. It's a bit odd. We get the noise associated with city life, yet, a bike ride 5 minutes away will get you the peaceful sound of nothing. We didn't see any cows or big animals. Most of them seem to only have crops and a couple had some chickens. We did find one farm that specialized in raising duck and one for frogs, but other than that we didn't see any traditional farm animals, so the smell of poop wasn't really a factor, excluding the chicken ones.

We continued to venture towards the outskirts of the township and we found a cute little temple but it was closed. I am not sure if it is still in service, it was located in the middle of nowhere right beside a river. It wasn't too far from a deer farm we found. The deer farm was depressing though. Essentially, it's a place where they raise a lot of deer, pen them up in tiny cages; they don't have enough room to move, just stand there in the same position all day, and then kill them. They kill them for meat but they also make some kind of drink from the deer as well. I have no idea what kind of drink or whether it is alcoholic or not. It is of a light brown colour and is sold in bottles that resemble wine bottles. We didn't stay long there, just long enough to realize what the place was about.

Our bicycle ride came to a halt when people were stopping traffic and loud music was playing. We thought it was parade, so we figured we'd wait and watch it. It wasn't very long, but there were big drums, costumes, fireworks, the whole nine yards. At one point we thought perhaps it was a funeral because of some of the traditional things they were doing, like burning paper money. When someone dies, or when you visit their grave, you bring offerings so they can have these things in heaven. For example, you would leave some fresh fruit at the grave, or you can buy this paper money that you burn so the deceased person will have money to spend in heaven. During this parade, they made a big pile of this money in the middle of the intersection, and then they set it on fire and left it there! The only thing that made us doubt the funeral idea was that everyone looked too happy. We watched it all until they turned down an alley, and then we continued onwards. We came across a huge space of rice fields and when we were almost home we found a temple that looked fairly new. It is very small and hidden between small traditional houses along narrow roads. The sun was starting to set so we decided to head home and Matthew was very unsure how much longer his bicycle would last; we almost didn't make it.


The next day we headed to the nearby city of Changhua. I had wanted to see the big Buddha, also known as the Buddha of Baguashan; it is 100 feet tall and you can walk inside of it, climb to the top and get a beautiful view from the eyes and ears of the statue. We took a bus to Changhua, and walked to the buddha, there was a little hike involved as it is located atop Mount Bagua. I got quite the exercise that day as well as a ton of mosquito bites. I do not understand how I can be that much tastier than Matthew, he seems to have gotten none. There were a couple of temples to see and a great view of the city. The weather was nice, it was a little overcast, but no rain. The buddha was huge and within it were some gods you can pray to, as well as some statues depicting some scenes of Buddha's life. We kept climbing narrow staircase after narrow staircase as I had told Matthew that we are supposed to be able to get a breathtaking view of the city from the head, as according to National Geographic. We were both surely disappointed as the top floor was closed off. No view from the eyes and ears for us that day.

We headed back out the buddha and looked at the nearby temples. Matthew tried to set up a picture with us standing at each of the elephant statues located near at the entrance. He didn't want to ask someone to take the picture for him, so he set up his tripod and everything. He shoots with film, so we never know if the picture was a good one or not. He put the camera so far away, because he wanted to get the whole temple, that he had to run like mad in order to be next to the statue before the shutter went. He tripped on the first attempt and totally botched that picture; the locals got quite a good laugh out of that. And so we had to try a couple more times, as we didn't hear the shutter click the next time. Eventually we got it. After exploring the temple, we found a koi pond, and in case you didn't know, I seriously enjoy feeding fish. It's kind of weird, but I always have lots of fun feeding them; so simple.


After I had my fill of fish we headed back down to the city and went for Teppanyaki; you sit down and they cook in front of you. It is considered Japanese fast food here and it's pretty cheap. Matthew is obsessed with it and he hasn't found a place in our town, so anytime we our elsewhere we have Teppanyaki. After being stuffed with chicken, beef, cabbage and beer, we hopped on the bus and headed home.