Saturday and Sunday composed a company retreat to Sun Moon Lake near the center of Taiwan. It went a little something like this...

SATURDAY. Getting up at some 6:40am, my mother, sister, and I got up, got ready, and got out to get to my company for the tour guide buses leaving my company's building at 7:30am. The first stop was roughly two hours away, with a pee break at the one-hour mark. The on-board movie was Alien vs. Predator (oh, you didn't know it was already out on DVD?). Our five buses arrived at the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village, which was an odd mix between amusement park and cultural shows. Getting there early meant there was no wait to hop on the limited number of exhilirating rides. My sister and my first stop was the UFO Gyro Drop, while mom watched from below. An 85 meter free fall (well, it slows down at the end), the UFO is similar to the Hellevator at PNE -- but free. Then we boarded the Mayan Adventure (what do the Mayans have in common with the Taiwanese? Nothing... but they have section of the park dedicated to them), a suspended looping coaster: one of those spiralling coasters where your feet dangle as you get whipped around and upside down. Thrilling. And to add to that, you get a massage as you bump in every direction in your safety "vest" -- everyone stepped off with red ears. Then we took our mom to some of the less heart-testing rides, the monorail, the carousel, the balloon race, and the Jurassic Cruise. One last stop for a second drop at the UFO site, and it was lunchtime. Lunch included an embarrassment to the pizza community - a pizza with cheese, corn kernels, green peas, and bits of ham. It was a confused salad/shepard's pie/pizza ensemble. Hideous, just hideous. Nothing like the picture.

The afternoon was spent absorbing the natural beauty from the top of the short mountain, whose face the amusement park decorated. We watched a few aboriginal dances, and my mom even joined in the group activity to learn to dance. I just sat at the side and filmed.

Another short bus trip landed us at our hotel, the El Dorado, on the brink of Sun Moon Lake. After dinner in the hotel, we headed outside and watched an unenthusiastic Sun Moon Lake Festival aboriginal dance performance. You know the performance won't be good when they introduce the following dance with a "We're not from this tribe, and we're not professionals, so the next dance won't be that good." Umm... ok. Next. Then we walked around the side of the lake for a short while and called it a night early.

SUNDAY. If I thought getting up at 6:40am the previous day was early, our pre-sunrise 5am decision was difficult too. But, nevertheless, we got up and headed down to the lake to embrace the growth of that day's sun. It was nice. Not awesome, but nice. Then we did more walking around. Towards 9am, we hopped on some boats and had a tour of the lake, stopping at certain places to take pictures and for the tour guides to get kickback from the local store owners. We departed from Sun Moon Lake towards noon and went for lunch in PuNi, known for their plums. Lunch was at a restaurant shared with a wedding party, and the food was excellent. Next stop was a short one at a wine market, although I didn't like the rice or plum wines enough to want to buy a bottle. Finally, we spent just over an hour at a paper factory where we made our own paper fans -- which was good because it was hot. Finally, back on the bus, with a "pre-released" French movie called Michel Vallant, we came back to Hsinchu.

All in all, it was a fun and eventful weekend where I got to visit one of Taiwan's well-known tourist spots, thus allowing me to strike it from my list of To-Sees. With just under 300 photos and videos taken over the two days, I think I have everything anyone else needs to save themselves the trip.