Continuing from the first half day at Sun Moon Lake 日月潭…

After a few hours of walking, we found a cafe and sat down to have a drink.

Ice blended cappuccino.

Milk tea with pearls 珍珠奶茶.

Green tea latte 绿奶茶.

We then headed back to the hotel for a rest as our boat tour was scheduled for 4pm and it was still early. It wasn’t long until 3.30pm came and we had to walk down to Shui She Pier 水社码头.

It was another round of photo shooting as the boat has yet to arrive. It was really beautiful, the scenery at Sun Moon Lake that is.

We boarded the boat for a tour around the lake which lasted about two hours. The boat would ferry us to the small island right in the middle of the lake, a foot hill to visit a local temple and also a township right across the lake.

Us, on the ship.

The island is called Lalu Island 拉鲁岛 and it belongs to the aborigines that live in Sun Moon Lake for ages. There’s no one living on the island nor does it have any buildings, except a smaller pond right in the middle of the island. A pond in a pond, that’s what it is. There are some histories behind it but I barely listened to the tour guide or even read the information board setuped on the island.

As you can see from the picture, the air / environment was “dusty” / misty and I couldn’t get a crisp clear shot.

The tour also dropped us of at a foot hill so that we could climb to the top of the hill to visit Xuan Guang Temple 玄光寺. However, we visited the same temple the next day, hence, I shall write about it in the next post.

By 5pm, Sun Moon Lake eas as dark as our Malaysia’s 7pm and the ship headed back. We had our dinner at a restaurant at the pier that served aboriginal food.

Ginger and leek wild boar pork rice 姜葱山猪肉饭套餐. It has three side dishes, a bowl of rice, a bowl of soup, a pudding and a cup of red tea. The amount of meat wasn’t as much as you think as underneath the meat, there was a pile of bean sprouts.

That’s a hotel actually.

The main street of Sun Moon Lake.

Me!

That’s for day 3!

I may not be a sport person (My size has spoken all.) but I certainly know what is going on in the arena. I may not be as knowledgeable as those hardcore fans, but the basics are there.

Sport (especially football) is a common topic among people and one just need to know a bit of here and there to help and keep the conversation from dying off. On top of that, when it comes to sports, be it on the track, field or court, some names are just impossible not to be heard of.

Cristiano Ronaldo and David Bechkam have been hailed as the “God” on the field for their amazing skill with their feet. Rafael Nadal, the tennis king that has not only won many tournaments but also hearts, especially the females. What about Lewis Hamilton that became the world’s youngest F1 champion in just two seasons? Also, Michael Phelps that bagged eight Olympic gold medals in Beijing recently?

These names and individuals have stunned the world with their skill and made an impact in their field respectively, inspiring others to work harder to achieve their dreams.

Together with ESPNStar, SportsCenter India, Asia & Malaysia, Score Tonight and many other on-air program has started a joint initiative online and on air voting contest to select the most popular sport celebrity among the 16 nominated “champions”.

The 16 nominees are Manny Pacquiao, Valentino Rossi, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Torres, Sir Alex Ferguson, Tiger Woods, Sachin Tendulkar, Rafael Nadal, Michael Phelps, Cristiano Ronaldo, Nicol David, Usain Bolt, MS Dhoni, Sourav Ganguly, Kobe Bryant and Abhinav Bindra. You can click on this link to check out their profile.

Honestly, while doing a compilation for the picture below, I could only recognize 10 out of the 16. Haha! Amusing, but that’s more than half already, not too bad for someone who doesn’t keep up to date with sports news or read the sports section.

Anyway, yes, you read it all right, our Malaysia-born world No.1 squash queen, Nicol David is in the list. Seriously, to be nominated itself is already an amazing feat and pride of the nation.

The mechanism to decide the winner is as follow:

- 16 sports personalities have been shortlisted.
- They will be introduced 2-per day on ESPNSTAR.com with specific pages from November 19.
- The Open Draw will be conducted Live on SportsCenter on the evening of 28 November.
- The process will be streamed Live on ESPNSTAR.com
- Voting will open immediately after the draw.
- The voting mechanism will be in the form of a knock-out.
- The 16 will be paired against each other.
- The pairings will be made available for the public to cast their votes for a set period.
- The winner with the most votes will go through to the next round.
- This is repeated for a quarter final, semi final and final.
- The Winner will be announced Live on the SportsCenter program of December 31.

Whether Nicol David is voted as the champion or not, it doesn’t really matter. I am a realist, I don’t think she can win, but the least we, Malaysians can do for her is to vote her into the second round, at least. She has been treated rather “unfairly” and unjustifiable for her efforts and hard work that she has put in to be the No. 1 squash player.

To cast your vote, just click on the link here. Seriously, vote for Nicol as I think she deserved more than that.

On another note, I hope my favourite sport personalities aren’t teamed up together. It would be a very difficult choice for me then. One thing for sure, I ain’t voting David Bechkam! Heh!

Click on the picture for a full size 3096 * 4023 resolution.

We woke up early as we needed to catch a bus to Sun Moon Lake 日月潭.

Sun Moon Lake is the largest body of fresh water in Taiwan and has one of the island’s loveliest natural landscapes. At an altitude of 762m, the lake is backed by high forested mountains and boasts good weather year round.

Lonely Planet.

While we were walking towards the bus station, a taxi driver came up to us and offered us to fetch us up to Sun Moon Lake for a price. After a lengthy discussion with Ah Yong, we decided to take the cab instead of the bus in order to save time and also, the price difference between the cab and bus was not that big. The taxi was a 7-sitter Toyota Wish and we were definitely amused with our “backpacking” style.

“I thought we are supposed to be backpacking?”
“We are, backpacking with style mah!

The taxi driver dropped us off in front of a hotel.

The good thing about not booking our hotels in advance is that we get to bargain on the spot.

“NT2400 for a room of four.”
“But our friend last time rented a room for only NT1600.”
“Is it? Hmm… Like that, NT1800. Ok?”
“On!”

The NT1600 was real, but it was meant for two, not four. Ha!

Obviously, the room was meant for couples, with the red / warm lighting and hearts all over the room, pillows and blankets. The room was definitely worth every single dollar spent. LCD TV, clean toilet, soft beds and pillows, working and powerful air conditioners and strategic location. What more can you ask for RM180?

We put down our “burdens” and went out for a walk and also to have our lunch.

Off we went to the tourist information center to get some information on what to visit / sight see and do in Sun Moon Lake. A guy there gave us some tips and even suggested a solid plan for our journey to Alishan National Scenic Area 阿里山国家风景区 tomorrow.

Lunch was at a restaurant just opposite our hotel. I had beef stew with rice.

Sarsi 黑松沙士.

Braised egg 卤蛋.

Beef stew with rice 茄汁红酒牛肉饭.

We walked towards Shui She Pier 水社码头 and there was nothing to do except enjoying the cool breeze, beautiful scenery and photo shooting.

After loitering around the port for some time, we walked along the trail and went up hill.

Me!

That was our half day tour at Sun Moon Lake village. We later took a boat tour around the lake, but that’s for another post as I don’t want to flood this post with too many pictures.

I was taking pictures of my food and interior of the restaurant, just how like I always do whenever I visit a new restaurant or cafe.

It was until when the boss, who looked like a late 20’s chao ah beng that has quite about 30% resemblence to Singapore’s famous actor Mark Lee 李国煌, came over and spoke to me.

The boss stutters (A speech disorder involving hesitations and involuntary repetitions of certain sounds.).

Conversation was in Mandarin, but translated for blog usage.

“You… You… You… You cannot take pictures, do you know that? Why are you… you… you… you taking pictures? Do you… you… you… you know that you are scaring away my customers?”

“Huh? How does me taking photos scaring your customers? Why I cannot take pictures? I love photography and I want to take pictures to keep, that’s all.”

“You… You… You… You still cannot take pictures.”

“Why? You tell me why first, then I shall see.”

“You… you… you… you still cannot take pictures.”

“Why lah?”

The boss left.

Not satisfied with the answer, I proceeded to continue to take my pictures. However, with respect, I took off my external flash and proceeded to take pictures without any flash, to avoid disturbing other customers. On top of that, I have always choose a corner table at the end of the restaurant or a mcuh more quiet area to avoid disturbing other people when I take my pictures.

After finishing my meal, I proceeded to call the boss for the bill.

“Boss, I just to love to take pictures. Don’t worry too much.” (I was trying to be nice.)

“You… you… you… you still cannot take pictures, do you… you… you… you know that?” (The boss said with a very disgusted face and bad attitude.)

“What’s the problem?” (I said in a very agitated tone.)

“You… you… you… you still cannot take pictures. I… I… I… I CAN CALL 999 AND ASK THE POLICE TO COME AND CATCH YOU.”

“……” (I was dumbfounded for 3 seconds.)

“Boss, you actually want to call the police to come to catch me just because I take pictures of my food? Are you out of your mind?”

“……”

He left.

I left the restaurant in a very agitated mood and not wanting to go back there again even though the food was quite good.

I would have politely keep my camera if you give me a valid reason, but definitely not when you don’t have a valid reason, speak to your customer in such tone and with that disgusting look. Moreover, all you ever know how to say is “You… You… You… You cannot take pictures.”, like a three year old child arguing.

If you are selling designs, I understand. If you are selling unique items, I understand. However, it’s food. How can I copy the ingredients used, method of making / cooking, tastes and etc. through a picture? It’s just pure bullshit. If you are confident with your food, why are you afraid of people exposing your business or eatery? If you know your food sucks, why bother to start a restaurant in the first place? Most importantly, there was no “No Camera” sign,

Later, after coming back from home, when I tried to reenact the scene by speaking like the boss, I realized how funny it was.

I wouldn’t have laugh at him for his stuttering, but when he threatened to call the police to catch me because I was taking pictures inside his shop, I couldn’t help it but to find it amusing, ridiculous and absolutely ridiculous.

Amusing, indeed.

Continuing from Taiwan - 2.2.1 Taichung 台中…

The first stall we came upon was a beverage stall. Taiwanese love their milk so much that they add milk into almost any beverages they can come up with. Papaya milk, mango milk, watermelon milk, kiwi milk, bitter gourd with honey and milk, strawberry milk and so on…

The first food we had at the night market was this really, really, really weird man tou 馒头, which the Taiwanese called Ge Bao 割包. It has probably all four tastes, sweet, salty, sour and a little bit of bitterness. Inside the man tou, it has a slice of braised lean meat, peanuts, sugar, pickled mustard and probably a few more ingredients.

Our first bite left everyone speechless and had a WTF look on the face. I wouldn’t say it tasted badly or heavenly, it was just plain weird. I certainly don’t know how to describe the taste. That being said, we ended up ordering another piece.

Continuing our walk, we saw a lady preparing a huge pot of oyster noodles 蚵仔面线 and some other food.

We sat down, ordered a bowl of oyster noodles, glutinous rice with minced meat and a plate of fried oyster.

Glutinous rice topped with minced meat 米糕.

Oyster noodles 蚵仔面线.

Fried oyster 蚵仔煎. The Taiwanese’s version of fried oyster is very soggy, wet and slimy. Also, they top it with loads of peppermint leaves, which make the dish tastes even weirder for us Malaysians.

We had mua chee 麻芝, featured in the travel guide book that we used and also by many local magazines. You can have your mua chee stuffed with red bean paste, black sesame pastes, finely crushed peanuts or have it plain.

Walking further down the street, we saw another stall which was featured in the book we used as a guide. It’s Big Sister Xu’s deep fried stall. There were a number of people queuing up to buy whatever the stall was serving.

You can choose whatever you want to eat, ranging from chicken chops, sausages, tempura, tofu, eggs to vegetables and many more. Select your stuffs and hand it over to the guy, they will deep fry it and spread it with their home made special sauce.

That was the end of our first visit to Taiwanese’s night market. However, our food tasting journey didn’t end there as while we were walking back to our hotel, we saw a shop that sells nothing but milk jellies and puddings.

We bought one for each flavour.

Clockwise from top left, mango, aloe vera, black sesame, original / milk, red bean and lotus seed.

The shop claimed that not even a single drop of water was added during the process of making the jellies and puddings, which I think is highly believable as the taste was strong and full flavoured.

My favourite, black sesame pudding.

That was day 2 of our Taiwan trip as we got ourselves ready to go Sun Moon Lake 日月潭.