Day 5-Cing jing farm,sun moon lake

Day 5

We woke up early again to catch the sunrise but there were too many clouds.

Then we had our complimentary breakfast provided by minsu. 

Best breakfast by the minsu!!

So we need to catch the bus at song gang bus stop at 0945. There were few other timings such as 1030 and 1200, but we wanted to get to sun moon lake as soon as possible so we took the second earliest. The earliest bus was at 0720. The minsu boss fetched us to the bus stop and we board the bus to puli. Puli is the midpoint of taichung and cing jing farm. So from puli, we took a bus to sun moon lake at 1100. The bus ride was 55nt and we had to stand almost half the ride as it was Saturday and the bus was fully packed. 

                                               At puli bus interchange, take bus at platform 3
The bus ride took around 1 hr plus to reach sun moon lake.

At the sun moon lake bus stop, i went to the boat service station to find out more about the bus service from sun moon lake to taichung HSR station. As my cousin read through the details on the sun moon lake brochure, there was a direct bus from sun moon lake to taichung HSR. We were told to purchase the bus tickets when we board the bus tomorrow. There was a visitor centre next to this counter, and we collected all the necessary information and brochures before we began our adventure. Then we called up to the 好聪明之家 minsu boss to pick us up. He offered to bring the luggage back to the minsu so that we can start our adventure first. This really saved us quite some time and have more time to travel around as we were quite worried that it will be quite packed as it was a Saturday.

So we went to the shui she(水社） boat terminal to take the boat to ita shao.（伊达邵）There were 2 main ferry terminal which are shui she(水社）and ita shao.（伊达邵）For people who wants to get a good view of the sunrise, then you would want to stay in shui she(水社）and sunset at ita shao.（伊达邵）As the only transport to get around the lake was the lake surrounding bus and the last bus to get back to shui she is 6pm, you will miss the sunset if you stay in shui she.

First stop of the adventure was to get to the other side of the lake, ita shao（伊达邵）. There were quite a few things that were introduced on the tv shows, the red tea(阿萨姆红茶）and some other aboriginal food. Then we went to the bus stop to take the bus to cable car station. Small incident: We did not ask before boarding the bus and we took the wrong side and went to 玄光寺。Then we tried the famous mushroom tea egg at the 50 years old store, and I think it was too salty for me.

Then I went to the cable car station to take the cable car up to the theme park（九族文化村）This is a theme park combined with some aboriginal culture performance and introducing the nine different aboriginal in taiwan plus some exciting rides. We have decided to give it a miss as we reached there at 3pm and it will be too rush to take all the rides before 6pm. And we bought some local snacks back from the souvenir shops. We thought that the price was quite reasonable and cheap but we realised that the price was the same at the cable car station. Then we took the lake surrounding bus again to tour the lake. We stopped at the temple(文武庙）and bamboo garden(竹石园）We thought that it is a big garden with lots of bamboos but it was just a few bamboos bundled together. So we went to take stroll on the wooden pavement which links to the 朝雾码头 and took the bus back to shui she.

We had simple dinner with a plate of fried rice and noodles. We also tried the special mushroom ice cream and a fried fish(奇力鱼）

The mushroom icecream is a must try.. Then we head back to the minsu

                                                          Nice room and clean!!