Day 3

Here everyone is somehow my dad's cousin. He has too many cousins to count, and today we toured around central Taiwan with his cousin Wimpy who owns a sock factory. Yes his name is Wimpy, although it's really pronounced Wimby, so it's unfortunate that it is not spelled that way. He picked us up and we went into the factory where there were a ton of sock-making machines. When the machine finished the sock, the sock would travel through a clear tube Willy-Wonka style and a hatch would open and the sock would pop out. Uncle Wimby gave me lots of little sock keychains and some with little panties.

Next we went to a famous temple by the sea of the deity Ma-jzou. She was a daughter of a fisherman and her father died at sea. The temple is extremely old, one part we saw was built in 1616, and the city Lugang where it is located has an ancient district. People burn incense to worship at temples, so the statue of Ma-jzou and the inside of the temple is all black from hundreds of years of incense. You cannot take a picture of Ma-jzou, but I took pictures of other parts of the temple. They are pictures of the outside gate of the temple and the ceiling which was from the year 1616.

The temple was very extensive and contained a courtyard in the middle with a Koi-fish pond. There were temples all over the area; my aunt said there are many temples close to the ocean because fishing was (and is?) such a dangerous profession.

After the temple we went to a fishmarket on the Taiwan Strait. I have never seen so much fish in my life, and since was Friday afternoon business was not that good, so vendors followed us through the market, yelling prices at us or trying to coax us into buying fish.

From the fishmarket we went to one of Taiwan's famous Night Markets. There are Night Markets all over Taiwan; the one we went to was in the city Taizhong which means 'middle of Taiwan.' There were people everywhere and street after street was loaded with vendors selling delicious food. We couldn't figure out what to eat, and all of the food looked really tasty so we stood in line at a random vendor which turned out to be a bad choice. It was noodle sandwiches, so they fried noodles, put them in a baguette, and drizzled different sauces on it. It was so gross, I didn't eat any. :) We ate other really delicious things however, like fried popcorn chicken and airy fried sweet potato balls. We also tried a free sample of stinky tofu, which was predictable stinky but not actually that bad.