Taiwan

We made it home from our fabulous trip to Taiwan. It was the most amazing place I have ever seen. I would LOVE to live there and it is so tempting. The people are so nice, the food is delicious (at least what we tried), the landscape is gorgeous. It was amazing. There is so much that we could tell ya but we'll try to keep it short. If you want the long story, let us know :) But here are a few pictures.
Here we are at a night market. Night market and morning market are the craziest thing anyone has ever seen. The night market in Shilin had thousands of people crammed in one little street. You could barely walk... it was more like being pushed around. Morning market was crazy because not only were there people everywhere but there were hundreds of scooters (they ride scooters everywhere) going all over the place. So you had to dodge them too. The markets were super convenient. You could find just about anything you wanted there.
Here are some of the scooters they ride. There are hundreds of thousands of them everywhere. And they do ride them everywhere including the sidewalks-so you aren't even safe there.
Here we are at Sun Moon Lake. It was super pretty. It used to be that nobody except a few certain people could go on the island behind us. Then a few years ago there was a big earthquake and the island sank a little. The island part that we are standing on was all man made. They had Buddhist temples everywhere. Some were really small others were huge. We went to one that cost over 5 billion Taiwan dollars to build. It was huge. This one in the picture was smaller but the thing that made it so cool was that it was made of seashells and different things you would find from the sea. It was amazing. There were some really ornate temples. They are a lot different than ours.
I think one of our favorite places to visit was Hualien and Taroko Gorge. They were the most amazing places I have ever seen in my life. Pictures aren't going to even begin to show the beauty that was there but we'll post them anyways. The mountains were humungous and were almost completely vertical. I have never seen so much green in my life. They were made mostly of marble. The rivers that went down the valleys were so clear and a beautiful blue color. There were waterfalls everwhere. It was amazing. Here were some of the waterfalls. They were absolutely amazing. There was one cave that had water coming through the roof. There were springs that would just come right out of the mountains and be huge waterfalls. Here is one of the springs that they built a temple around. There are actually 3 temples on that mountain that were built in rememberance of the over 200 people that died building the roads.
This was between Taitung and Hualien. It is by the ocean. It was absolutely beautiful. It was so fun to see the ocean and the waves crashing into the rocks. We live in such an amazing world.
Here is my favorite temple that we visited. We got to go and do a session at the Taipei Taiwan temple on the night before we left. What an amazing place. There is no denying the spirit there. The people were all so sweet and so kind. All the members in Taiwan are amazing. I left feeling like we will have lifelong friends.
We had the most amazing time in Taiwan. We are so sad that it is over and that we had to come back home. We LOVED Taiwan.