{"id":50999,"date":"2025-07-10T22:05:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T03:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=50999"},"modified":"2025-08-04T23:28:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T04:28:22","slug":"taiwan-day-5-part-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=50999","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan Day 5 Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Taiwan Day 5 Part 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\nThat’s pretty old.<\/p>\n

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\nWe are dropping down into a valley.<\/p>\n

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\nReminds me of a sequoia national forest. In the groves of trees, there’d be a few that would just dwarf most of the others.<\/p>\n

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\nGetting sunny out there. It’s getting a little warm if we are walking under the sun.<\/p>\n

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\nSiblings. CL hitting Little KL in the stomach. Those two have been picking on each other this entire trip. Also, little KL was acting up this whole time so RL kept “jokingly” threatening to throw him off the mountain as a sacrifice to appease the forest gods.<\/p>\n

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\nThe girls refused to stand by little KL.<\/p>\n

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\nGo stand together and pretend to like your brother!<\/p>\n

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\nI waited for the kids to get on the suspension bridge then jumped up and down.<\/p>\n

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\nThree generation tree.<\/p>\n

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\nBack at our hotel. The whole hike took about 2 hours. Not a bad start to the day, just enough to get some steps in.<\/p>\n

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\nRest and chill time for the kids.<\/p>\n

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\nRest and chill time for the grownups.<\/p>\n

In other news, Ah Ma succeeded where I failed. She managed to sweet talk one of the managers of the hotel restaurant into selling her one of the Taiwan Beer bottle openers!!! Thanks Mom!!!! This will make an amazing souvenir.<\/p>\n

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\nBright blue sky today.<\/p>\n

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\nAnother photo of the landslide that took out the rail track from our hotel. This train route is almost always under constant repair due to landslides and whatnot…maybe it’s not the safest train to take.<\/p>\n

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\nWaiting for our hotel shuttle to take us back to the visitor’s center by the Alishan station. From there, we wait for our transport to take us down the mountain.<\/p>\n

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\nTraveling is tiring, traveling with kids and parents is even more tiring.<\/p>\n

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\nSo cute.<\/p>\n

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\nPL was very excited to give the hotel driver a tip.<\/p>\n

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\nA short drive and we are back at Alishan station. Now, we’ve got about an hour to walk around before our driver shows up.<\/p>\n

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\nTrain!<\/p>\n

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\nOf course, there’s a 7 Eleven up here. Love it.<\/p>\n

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\nMy face says it all about being a father.<\/p>\n

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\nThat’s quite the fancy building for a post office.<\/p>\n

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\nMemories of my childhood. Green for regular mail, red for rapid.<\/p>\n

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\nWaiting.<\/p>\n

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\nMy haul from 7 Eleven, gotta get my fill in while I’m in Taiwan.<\/p>\n

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\nWhat…I looked inside and it looks just like a regular family type toilet. I guess it provides more privacy?<\/p>\n

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\nAt the visitor’s center, you can buy boards of cypress.<\/p>\n

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\nOur driver arrives, and down the mountain we go. We all expect this to be a really rough one and a half hour windy ride down the mountain, and it’s proving to be true. It’s one of the windiest I’ve ever remember being on.<\/p>\n

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\nGroves of diseased dead bamboo.<\/p>\n

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\nI guess some logging is still allowed here.<\/p>\n

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\nRoad repair due to landslide.<\/p>\n

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\nDespite dramamine, CL starts to feel very carsick and threw up. Our driver had throwup bags for everyone in the car because so many people get carsick on this drive down. Poor girl.<\/p>\n

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\nWe made a little rest stop part way to let her throw up some more and see if she’ll recover a little. She’s feeling better after throwing up, and let’s hope she can hold on for the rest of the way down. We are only about halfway down the mountain.<\/p>\n

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\nNothing but curve after curve.<\/p>\n

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\nAbout halfway down the mountain, we started seeing some tea plantations.<\/p>\n

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\nMore tea plantations.<\/p>\n

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\nGetting closer to flatter and more straight roads.<\/p>\n

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\nMade it!!! CL was able to hold it together for the second half. That was a rough trip for most of us, even with dramamine.<\/p>\n

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\nLotus fields.<\/p>\n

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\nChiayi, this area is known for their turkey and rice specialty.<\/p>\n

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\nAt the HSR station. We were supposed to visit several more sites on the drive down the mountain, but that would put us back to Taichung at around 7:30pm, which would be way too late for our energy level. So we told our driver to just drive us straight down and we can catch an earlier high speed train back to Taichung. Think it was a good call.<\/p>\n

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\nOur turkey and rice bento that we got for dinner.<\/p>\n

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\nYum…tastes like turkey and rice.<\/p>\n

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\nNo, not ah gong’s head. 282 km\/h, so 175mph. Pretty fast.<\/p>\n

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\nBack in Taichung. My grandma’s apartment is right next to the Ferrari dealership, fancy.<\/p>\n

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\nBeen a long day of hiking, getting car sick, and transportation. Some chill time before dinner.<\/p>\n

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\nDinner is at a hot pot spot at the mall across the street.<\/p>\n

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\nHonestly, we were all pretty tired. Eating out tonight felt more like a hassle than anything else. We ate to fill our tummies, jetlag kicking in. RL and I took the crazy kids back home early and left all the other grownups to slowly finish their meals. Time for bed.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Taiwan Day 6<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Taiwan Day 5 Part 1. That’s pretty old. We are dropping down into a valley. Reminds me of a sequoia national forest. In the groves of trees, there’d be a few that would just dwarf most of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":53403,"menu_order":8,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-50999","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/50999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50999"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/50999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53436,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/50999\/revisions\/53436"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}