Day 1-Keelung and Jiufen Village

After our sightseeing on our own, Mr. Yeh picked us up at 1:30 to take us to the port town of Keelung and then to do some shopping at Jiufen Village. Our first stop though was for some Bubble Tea, which is a hot tea that I am guessing has milk and sugar in it and at the bottom it has lots of tapioca balls, hence the name Bubble Tea. It was VERY good!!! Mr. Yeh also got us some fried noodles that were also quite good. They were very fat noodles and they had a sauce on them kind of like a chicken wing sauce and there were pickles to eat with them as well. Sounds odd/weird, but they were pretty good. And he also had a curry puff/bun for us, which I didn't really care for, but Alan liked!!

The weather was not very good for us for our trip, which was kind of a bummer, because Keelung would be very pretty with the sun shining!! We enjoyed the drive around did get out at the big buddah statue to take a look around. The views were great, but were greatly limited because of the weather.

The entrance to the Buddah statue area

the birds sure like the Buddah!

You are supposed to ring this bell either 3 or 5 times for prosperity. The gong is MUCH heavier than you would think!!

Alan stopping the gong before it hits the bell a 4th time.

The giant Buddah behind us is said to be looking over the port/harbour and the lions are the protectors. We got to climb to the top of the Buddah! You can tell by my hair just how windy it got!!

This is the worship temple

A view from inside the Buddah

these little buddah statues lined the inside

I'm guessing this was the main buddah as it was all by itself on a table

look how steep our climb was...the stairs are so narrow you have to put your feet sideways!!

Inside the worship temple

these "trees of light" (my term) were pretty! If you or someone you know is having troubles you write their name and date on a piece of paper inside a little case with a light and then you ask the buddahs in the temple to take their troubles away.

On our way out

a view of Jiufen Village

Another view

Puppets are VERY big in Taiwan so we got one of these red dogs for Brady and a pink one for Emily!! (FYI, future travelers, they are VERY cheap here!!!)

I always love all the lanterns!!

The shopping in Juifen was a lot of fun and I think we got some really good things for the kids for future birthdays/Chritmases/Gotcha Day celebrations!! It's fairly common for people in the adoption world to buy their kids one gift for each future birthday (or whatever) so we're also trying to do this. I'm not sure how many years we'll cover, but we're making a dent, that's for sure!! We got the puppets, puzzles, flutes, drums, shoes, lanterns, t-shirts, a barrette for Emily and a few other things so far!! It's definitely been fun!!!