Sun Moon Lake - 日月潭

Sun Moon Lake. How to describe. Well, based on the forecasted weather I wasn’t sure that during the trip I’d be able to see the sun, moon, or lake.

First view of the lake. Mostly a gray cloud of rain.

This particular trip wasn’t arranged through CET, rather it was planned through ICLP. Within the first few minutes on the bus, our ICLP 老师 (teacher) said in really quick Chinese “guys, I’m sorry to say but we’re going to cancel all of the activities that we had planned for the trip. We were going to go bike around the lake later today and then take a boat tomorrow. However, due to the rain we are just going to cancel because we don’t want any accidents to happen. Even though we’re going to be canceling the events we’re going to take you to a few good picture stops so you can still experience the lake. Don’t worry, because of the weather you’ll be able to have the lake to yourself!”

To put you into the mindscape, if you research the different times to come visit Taiwan online, basically every website says come in the fall/winter but DO NOT come during June to August. That time is typhoon/rain season. This week specifically has been labeled plum rain season, so basically more rain has been coming down than this Arizonan is used too.

Close to noon-ish I was able to join a group of other students on the group who weren’t part of CET and get to know them a bit more over lunch. We went around the table and said some of those good icebreakers about each other. Through those good old “orientation get to know you techniques” it inevitably led to some “jewpordy” happening. I met a kid named Duncan from Phoenix, who knows this kid John from my high school. Apparently they met on an ASU led trip to China where they were roommates. That’s when I thought “whoa, small world.” It became even smaller when I told the group of Yale-ies that my sister also went to Yale. When I told them her name one of them went “OMG! I know her. Alison was on my foot trip!” At that point I felt the game of jewpordy had been successful!

My first view of the lake was… oh wait. You couldn’t see anything. It was raining that much. The only thing visible was a wall of wet gray. That stuff that just makes people want to walk into the nearest dry building. Instead of succumbing to this desire, the students that came on the trip decided to continue on our endeavors and see this temple that we were brought too. I mean, the crap weather allowed us to get almost a “personal” experience of the temple. Even though we were a tour group, we didn’t get that traditional tour group “And over here is this thing from this many years ago. And to our right is…” experience. All I know about the temple we visited is that it is called Wen Wu Temple.

The amount of rain coming down was simply inconceivable. Especially for this Phoenician. However, living in Boston for a year has definitely helped to acquaint me with island rain season. I’ve just accepted that I’ll be wet, but I know that I’ll dry and it’ll be all good. Everyone was worried for me because I was without an umbrella, but those with an umbrella just got annoyed that they were still getting wet (the sky was angry raining. IT WAS RAINING SIDEWAYS). Despite the angry rain we were able to really see the temple and look around without the typical issue of having too many people at the location.

Following the sideways rain, our tour guides deemed it time for us to go to the hotel. Mostly because there was nothing else that we were able to do. It was wet, and our activities were canceled. Arriving at the hotel at 2:30 they said in Chinese “guys, you have free time until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon. Have fun!”

That was when we all split our ways to inevitably group up and we got to know a few of the other non-CET kids a bit better. Thankfully, the weather cleared up enough for us to go find food in the little town 10 minutes away. We were able to find some over priced (in terms of Taiwanese food) “Italian” food that was simply meh? Honestly, not the most exciting food that I have had in Taiwan. However, the dinner place was right on the water and I got some pretty cool sunset pictures. Or at least as much of a sunset that I could see through the pretty thick clouds.

I understand that there are some repetitive images above. However, I feel like they all serve their purpose. As they appear the images of the lake are from later in the night to more in the afternoon. You can understand more about how disgusting the weather it was when I arrived in the afternoon and how it actually did "clear up" in the evening.

The following day we were supposed to depart from Sun Moon Lake at 1:30, according to our ICLP teachers who were with us. As a collective group of students we were able to decide upon departing earlier.

Reflecting on the trip, I felt a little bit like I had just repeated my winter break trip to Iceland where everything was marginally crappy weather. When I “saw” Sun Moon Lake I had that same feeling of “Dang, this would be amazing IF the weather wasn’t like this.” Thankfully, it did let up for a bit long enough for us to go see the lake. Somehow I’m having a lot of deja-vu-esque experiences here in Taiwan that are reminding me of my past travels. Who knew that could happen!???