Taiwan, Day 3: Nantou Day 2

Day 2 @ Shangrila. Due to our awesome adjustment to the time change, Tammy and I wake up at 4AM. Which is lucky for us because we caught a pretty awesome sunrise. Breakfast consisted of congee, fruit, and an odd attempt at a Western breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham, a sandwich?, a beef stick?, mushrooms, and some weird creamy cheese that I thought was butter.

After breakfast we went for a walk with Tammy's grandmother and enjoyed the cool mountain weather. The mountains were beautiful and it's just amazing how much variation there is in the terrain of such a small country. Tammy's aunt wanted to take us to Cingjing Farm. Daphne and June were *so* excited by this... sarcasm. So the highlight of the farm was watching a guy do a demonstration with a whip. He was basically just making it crack a lot and then a guy held a balloon and they blindfolded him. The whip guy was supposedly going to pop the balloon with the whip but what ended up happening is that a guy walked over and popped it with a thumbtack. The lady announcer kept going "Isn't this amazing!!!" There were horses that people were paying to get on and walk in a circle and then there were sheep.

The best part was when we were sitting in "Cowboy Town" and Tammy's grandmother said (in chinese), "This isn't fun at all." During the whip demonstration, June murmured, "This sucks." Everyone was enjoying the farm equally. I think Tammy and I were just enjoying the absurdity of the whole thing. We got some edibles at "Cowboy Town" though and that was fun. Then we ate lunch, took a nap, and went to dinner (back at the CartonKing place which also happened to be a Honey Museum?).

Tammy posing with the mascot of the Honey Museum.

My dinner. Spicy hot pot with whole shrimp, tofu, tofu skin, clams, sliced pork, sliced beef, mushrooms, cabbage, broccoli, and taro root.

Dessert from lunch. I got the blueberry popsicle which let me tell you... there was no sugar added. It was fairly tart and not a good tart. Tammy got a raspberry/mango mix and it was a good tart.

My lunch. It looks a lot more outlandish than it was.

Peach smoothie. Made from fresh peaches from the Cingjing Farm.

Some kind of wok-cooked mushroom that was tasty. There was this huge mushroom that was tubular and it was shredded.

The everything is made from cardboard restaurant... and I mean *everything*

Meat on a stick. Delicious. Nothing more to say.

Tammy tried to get a picture of the whip demonstration. Look at how intensely these people are watching it!

Entrance to the farm.

Before we disembarked to the farm.

Congee and fruit

Mountain Valley with some body of water in it.

Sunrise from our balcony.

Scrambled eggs, ham, beef stick?, mushrooms, sandwich, and cheese/butter.