Taiwan

We are back!!! Steve and I just got back from a two week exploration of Taiwan and Thailand. What an adventure. The reason we went to Asia this Christmas is to visit Steve’s parents who are missionaries for our church in Taichung, Taiwan. I’ll break the blog into two sections: Taiwan and Thailand.

Taiwan: After a 13 hour flight out of SFO Steve and I landed in Taiwan and took the high speed rail train to Taichung. Bill and Ruth had emailed us a bunch of Chinese characters to show to taxi drivers to help get us there, and it worked! Taichung is the 3rd largest city in Taiwan. In many ways it was similar to big cities in the US, except everything and everyone is Chinese. There are not many tourists there. We got stares and smiles where ever we went. We even had someone ask for our autographs. We kept a very busy schedule to help with our jet lag and had an abbreviated Christmas eve together. Next morning Bill had arranged for a rental car to be delivered so we grabbed breakfast and were off to Sun Moon Lake and the Buddha Monastery for the day. Sun Moon lake was beautiful! There was a large temple on the hill with a gorgeous view. All of the temples there were very colorful and elaborate. We opened our presents Christmas evening. It was an interesting Christmas b/c most of the Taiwan are not Christians, so Christmas was like any other day there. We were able to load up on the culture of Taiwan with visits to LuKang, the Taiwan Cultural Center, the Science Center, local Buddha and Confucius temples. We went on a cool hike at Dakung where Bill persuaded all to take the unknown trail which turned out more scenic but much harder going. We left on the 5 am bus for the airport Friday and headed for Bangkok. It was so great to see them after a year. All of the missionaries told us what a great job they are doing and how much they loved them.