Rainbow Village

On Saturday, we went to Taichung and visited Rainbow Village. It was beautiful! Info taken from this website, 

Huang Yung-fu, an 86-year-old war veteran, started painting his village 2 years ago. "Huang lives in a village in a corner of the Taiwanese city of Taichung, a community that was created for Nationalist soldiers in the 1940s and 50s"

It's now listed as one of the must see spots in Taichung. It was so cool!

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What's really incredible though, is seeing something on the computer at home, and then actually getting to see that place in person.

When I first decided to come to Taiwan, I looked up Taiwan attractions and saw Rainbow Village on a bunch of lists. I was stoked.

There was literally color everywhere, even the sidewalks were painted. It was incredible.
 We timed in perfectly too, as about 30 minutes after leaving it started to pour rain.

It's always nice to have a travel companion to take pictures of you.

This blue lady reminded me of the Gross sisters from The Proud Family on the Disney Channel. Can you see the resemblance?

This ox was one of my favorite paintings in the village. I feel so privileged to be able to see some truly amazing things.

Trying New Things

 We took the HSR (High Speed Rail) from Taichung yesterday and it was great. If I could choose a train to love forever, this would be the winner.

Come On Barbie, Let's Go Party

The kids love "Barbie Girl" over here. I think my favorite part of this video is the fact that Ian has his sweats pulled up almost to his chin.

Downtown Jhunan

I thought I'd give you guys a photo recap of how we used to get to downtown Jhunan. We've since found a more efficient way to get our bikes under the train tracks rather than drag them up and down stairs as you will soon see.

We live in a fairly rural part of Taiwan. Jhunan doesn't have much going on in the way of night life and shopping etc.  This little backstreet pathway was kind of eerie, but also cool.

I saw a cat on top of this shanty next to the path, and tried to get a picture for Katie, but it ran too quickly. Wild cats aren't as common as the wild dogs around, but I've seen a few.

This tunnel thing goes under the train tracks and lets us off on the other side near downtown Jhunan.

I was a little scared the first time Craig showed me this. We went at night and I was fairly certain we would get beat up and mugged and no one would find us for days. It seemed deserted.

This is on the other side of the tunnel. I HATE stairs. I think I was giving a big sigh in this picture. Stairs are everywhere in Taiwan. They don't build out here, they build up. Every fast food restaurant is like 3 stories high.

 

This is a mural you see right as you hit the top of the stairs.

The tunnel from the corner across the street.

 

Walking towards the main street....

This is a little corner fruit stand right near the main street in downtown Jhunan, It's always so busy.

And voila! Downtown Jhunan. It's much more impressive at night when all the lights are lit up and scooters are zipping in and out of traffic. We come down probably 2-3 times a week to hit our favorite chicken stand that I'll post about soon. Later!

Wugu

This is the Wugu Temple. I haven't been able to find any information on it, so that's not even the legit name. I actually went visited Wugu, probably the 3rd week I was in Taiwan. I'm a bad blogger.  Oops.

Wugu is the god people pray to when they want to have a plentiful and delicious rice crop. You can see the temple from the front of my apartment.We were allowed to go in and take pictures. It was super cool!

This is a GIANT candle. Pretty awesome.

This is a ginormous lighter used to light up incense worshipers use to honor Wugu.

Not to seem all tacky American and bastardizer of ancient cultures, all I really thought for the first 10 minutes was how much I love the movie Mulan and that I kept expecting Mushu to awaken and wake the ancestors. The dragon motif was everywhere.

The incense pit.

Each one of these little red things had an individual light glowing. I'm guessing that this is kind of like lighting a candle for someone.

The view of the entrance from the 2nd floor.

This temple tour was the first touristy thing we did in Taiwan, and it was very fun.

On our out, they had this music playing and this candle tree thing, lit up and spinning. Check the vid.