The flights were mostly fine (thankfully our kids don't get air-sick, although I had my moments), and jet-lag meant early mornings (and yummy breakfasts) for 3 days. We spent most of the trip focused on eating great food and meeting up with family and friends.
We stayed with my parents in Taipei (4 flights of stairs up and down everyday!). We had a packed schedule, meeting with relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins) for pretty much every meal. We had a couple fantastic meals at Din Tai Fong (hsiao long bao, pai gu mien, yum!), a great Taiwanese style dinner at Shin Yeh (my favorite gium la-ah, aka clams), and amazing pigs feet off of Si Ping St.. The chicken in Taiwan simply has more flavor, and even a simple lunch we had at home tasted better than most Chinese food in the states.We also took a 2 day trip to Sun Moon Lake with our relatives (23 of us in total).
Unfortunately, it was rainy and very foggy, so we didn't get to enjoy the views of the scenery when we took our boat tour of the lake. The next day though, it was clear and sunny, and the view for our very nice hotel was spectacular. But I wasn't able to enjoy it much, since I got food poisoning that night. After the bus dropped off everyone else at a local tourist spot, the driver and tour guide took my mom and me to a hospital 30 min away so that I could get looked at by a dr. Fortunately, I pretty much recovered a day or so later, but I was much more careful about not overeating.
The hotel at Sun Moon Lake was very nice, and the kids really had a great time on the trip. Ally made fast friends of Chi-Yuan's girls, and they (including Griffin) all played nicely together at this very nice kids play area in the hotel. It was great to see Ally interacting with them and speaking Chinese to them. In fact, it was pretty cool to see that Ally could communicate with all of my relatives quite comfortably. Griffin was a completely different story -- that boy needs to work on his Mandarin!! Probably partly because of the language barrier, Griffin was pretty clingy to us and my parents.
The kids did bond nicely with Chi-chung, Nako, and Han-Ting. When Ally left, Ah-gong asked her who she liked the most in Taiwan, and she didn't mention the little kids. Instead, she said Han-Ting Ge-ge and Ah-diong Ah-gu!! Very cute. (Although I think it was mainly because Han-Ting would carry her around, and Ah-diong was plying her with gummy candies non-stop!)All in all, it was a great visit (minus the food-poisoning), and I am already looking forward to a future visit with the kiddies!
More Taiwan trip pix are here.
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