Be ready for a long post full of pictures and it all happened in 3 days!
Fantastic fellowship and friendship in Taiwan. Seeing Skylar, her parents and fellow members was so exciting and their hospitality fantastic!
You may have seen in previous posts that we had Skylar 3 months at home as Rotary exchange student and as we planned to go to Kuala Lumpur we gladly agreed to first spend Christmas and boxing days with her and her family.
You can see more pics on: Visit Skylar and RC Hsinchu Hsinhu in Taiwan Christmas 2016
You can also look at what we did eat during the trip in the following 2 albums:
Rotary Club Hsinchu Hsinhu meeting
When we landed in Taipei, Skylar was already present with her parents, a friend and another Rotary family. The war welcome was really enjoyable in the airport and it was already clear that we arrived in a place where hospitality, fellowship are key concepts.
So they did drive us first to the RC Hsinchu Hsinhu meeting and wow we have been hosted like VIPs in the club with the banquet you can see below, a concert of traditional drums from the members (you can see this on my Facebook wall). As you can see we did not have time to even take a quick shower and get dressed after our 12 hrs. flight… Clearly language was not an issue as Skylar has been proficient in managing Chinese, English and French, she keeps amazing me :-).
So that evening was a real blast as the food provided in the Sheraton was really delicious and the atmosphere was fantastic, time flew so fast. A perfect example of how to welcome a fellow rotarian from abroad! We will never forget this!
Taiping Mountain
After a short night, we just packed our stuff in a small trolley as we were moving to Taiping Mountain. Our hosts did hire a van with driver to take us away for 2 days… we had the luxury to see wonderful landscapes, visit a surprising bakery, staying in a beautiful hotel with great rooms (mini suites actually), experienced boiling eggs in a hot spring and enjoy fantastic duck based food! Food was exquisite…
Clearly that day was 200% full and the 8 of us made a nice gang to visit those places. Isabelle and I are so thankful and that visit of the local nature made us aware of the beauty of this island and for sure worth visiting and going back!
Taipei
After a great night sleep, we moved on to Chiufen a very busy Chinese market full of tourists from all over the place but mainly Asia… It is comparable to a bazaar or a souk, really colorful, busy, great fragrances, lots of little things and foooooood! So shopping was the morning sport 🙂 but unfortunately we did get wet wet wet as it did start to rain heavily but who cares, fellowship was great!
After this we did travel to Taipei 101 where we have been in the worldwide fastest elevator after having had the best Dim Sum in the world and seing the damper located placed at the top of the tower! Ooops and I forgot about the coral sculpture… It was so exciting and happy moments! I will not talk about the food anymore as you can see below that we had a great food experience with fantastic people.
So let’s be clear this post is for our Taiwanese hosts who have been so nice, caring, respectful, helpful and so much more. The next step is a Belgian experience for them!
Really looking forward to it!
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