Taiwan Day 2: Sun Moon Lake, Yuchi, Nantou

Still in central Taiwan, Pipkin and Domo explored Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan's largest body of water, located in Nantou county, which happens to be the only landlocked county in Taiwan. The lake surrounds a tiny island called Lalu, and is named Sun Moon because its eastern side resembles a sun, while the western side resembles a moon.

It was raining when Pipkin and Domo first got out on the lake, so they stayed inside their fancy ride (above). When it wasn't raining, they took a couple shots of the lake from the bow of the boat:

Pipkin's guessing this thing out in the lake is for catching fish, but Domo's kind of hoping it's the most awesomest giant hammock. Really, they could be used for both. But...that would be a pretty smelly hammock.

On the northern shore of Sun Moon Lake is the Confucius Wenwu Temple. In its early days, there was no road around Sun Moon Lake to reach the temple, and visitors had to travel across the lake by boat and ascend a steep set of stairs. Dubbed the "stairway to heaven", it was renovated later when the road around the lake was completed. Now the Wenwu steps number in 366 and each step represents one day of a leap year. Pipkin and Domo posed on 5.18, the date they visited.

You can see on either side of the steps that people have hung prayer bells. They made a gentle chiming sound in the wind, but the further you descended down the steps, the fewer bells were hung, and the fewer visitors you'd see. Pipkin and Domo enjoyed the quiet, and took in view around them.