Today was the grand finale of my Hualien trip~ And it really was a grand finale. I woke up to bright sunshine outside the hotel, and the weather was perfect xD. I heard that at the same time it was pouring rain in Taipei and Kaohsiung, and the rain in Kaohsiung was so heavy that many shops had closed? I had originally planned to go out and have fun in Kaohsiung on Friday, but my aunt there said it was raining hard and there was nothing fun to do, so I didn’t go. My mom said we would go another time once the rain stopped, and then I could meet up with some internet friends while I was there :D

Our first stop today was Liyutan (Carp Lake). We had originally planned to go whale watching, but my mom thought the whale-watching boat was too expensive: 700 NT per person, so 2,100 NT for the three of us = = So we went to Liyutan early in the morning to soak up the sun ^^ In the morning Liyutan was very quiet, with few tourists, and only a handful of people on the bike path around the lake. At Liyutan you can rent bikes, and you can also rent a boat to paddle around the lake. But the boats for rent are ordinary pedal boats, not speedboats, because operating a speedboat is dangerous ～ People who haven’t learned how can get hurt (and if they only hurt themselves, that’s one thing, but they can hurt other people too). My mom kept saying it was hot and that she wanted to take the boat first. I kept persuading her to ride the bikes first, because we reached Liyutan at around 9 a.m., and it was already quite hot. If we took the boat first and biked afterwards, it would only get hotter (closer to noon), so we biked first and took the boat after that~

▲▲ A view of Liyutan ▼▼ ▼▼ Mom

Riding around Liyutan once takes less than 30 minutes, so afterwards we also rode over to the area near Chinan Tribe. The indigenous houses really are different from the houses of the Han Chinese. We also stopped at a Giant bike rental shop, though we only went in to rest. At the rental shop I found an event I was very interested in: Giant’s bicycle round-the-island event. I can’t take part in a round-the-island ride ～ Cost is one problem, and distance is an even bigger one. Even if I somehow managed it, I would be wiped out when I got back to Taipei. But Giant also runs smaller rides, like one around the Kenting peninsula, and those are cheap. I think I could handle the distance…… ▼▼ The scenery is gorgeous ▼▼ Me, XD. I edited this photo~ I brightened my skin a little (I’m so honest) ▼▼ Another selfie~ ▲▲ Chinan Tribe ▼▼ Indigenous architecture After riding bikes, my mom and I also rode the swan pedal boats on the lake. My brother didn’t join us, because… he said he’s afraid of water = = (really, he’s probably afraid I’d push him into the water…). Pedal boating isn’t very tiring. Even though it’s a pedal boat, two people pedal together so it’s fine, and when you’re tired you can drift slowly across the lake. Boat rentals don’t have a time limit anyway. But be careful when drifting: if you drift to the shore you might run aground. I almost did. I let the boat drift so happily that it ended up at the bank, and then I had to speed away XD. On the way back we ate at a very ordinary KFC, and we also stopped to see a Japanese-style temple, Keishu-in. That temple (in Japan it would probably be called a shrine~) was basically a living social studies textbook. Almost every feature of Japanese shrines that we learned in social studies was there. There were also some things the textbook didn’t cover, like the hyakudo stone. The textbook never explained what it was for. I looked it up later and found out it’s used for counting. Japan has a ritual called hyakudo mairi (100-times worship), and I had originally guessed it had something to do with the famous line “searching for him a thousand times in the crowd.” The staff also told us that Keishu-in mainly follows Esoteric Buddhism. I know what Esoteric Buddhism is, but after being poisoned by the novel The Grave Robbers’ Chronicles, I had always thought Esoteric Buddhism only existed in Tibet. I didn’t expect to find it in Japan? ▲▲ Boat ride on Liyutan, 300 NT for a two-person boat ▼▼ ▼▼ Liyutan had only 3 boats in total, but the lake was very clean, and nobody was littering at all (shocked) ▼▼ Entrance to Keishu-in ▼▼ A view of Keishu-in ▼▼ Japanese shrine tradition: ritual purification ▼▼ I thought this hyakudo stone was the one from “searching for him a thousand times in the crowd”~ ▲▲ 88 stone Buddhas, symbolizing 88 afflictions and 88 vows ▼▼ Did I just call it a garden landscape?

Quoted from Yahoo! Knowledge:

The hyakudo stone is used for counting. Japan has a tradition called “100 visits,” where worshippers walk around the temple or climb the temple steps back and forth one hundred times to pray to the gods and Buddhas and fulfill their wishes.

On the way back we also passed Qingshui Cliff, but after Qingshui Cliff I was stuck in a dizzy state. Mountain roads really make you carsick… and it’s especially miserable when you’re too carsick to sleep. After we got to Yilan I finally regained some consciousness, and then I fell into a deep sleep XD

After I got home, a disaster struck….. While processing the photos from these three days, I accidentally deleted them = = Luckily I recovered them later with a program, otherwise I would have really cried @@. Here are the photos from these three days.

Return trip ▼▼

Qingshui Cliff ▼▼

▼▼ Sweat… my brother’s silly look