Yuanlin (pronounced You-en-lean) - "Real Taiwan"

This weekend we went on an adventure as a family to the town where Kevin taught English when he first came to Taiwan in 2006.  Kev has wanted to take me to Yuanlin for a long time, and we've never done it, so we finally did!  We took a two hour and forty-five minute express train from Taipei Main Station, spent the afternoon walking around Yuanlin, and then caught the 5:39pm express train back to Taipei.

We got to see the main downtown area and do a little bit of shopping. Yuanlin has a lot of little shops, temples, scooters, and SUV drivers.  Religion was much more striking in the rural areas than in Taipei, as I expected.  We see people burning fake paper money and putting out food sacrifices as acts of worship in Taipei. Once in a while we see a god parade.  But we saw tons of temples and god statues on our trip down south.  It was a good reminder to pray for the people of Taiwan.

Although it's fall, we were pretty hot after walking around and exploring. Good thing Yuanlin also has tea shops galore!  We found one with some outdoor seating, sipped guzzled our tea, grabbed a bite to eat, and fed Ruby her dinner, which is much easier now since she really prefers to feed herself and has mastered picking things up and getting them into her mouth (most of the time). Here's a video from dinner at the Spring Charming tea shop where she entertained the tea shop workers.  My apologies for the shaky videos.

The train rides were comfortable and pretty easy. Ruby slept for about 45-55 minutes on each train ride.  On the way back to Taipei, an adorable Japanese girl entertained her pretty well for a while.   Here's a video of that.  You'll want to have the volume up to hear her adorable giggles.

I'll end with a few pictures from our journey.

This picture was taken from the train window.  Can you see the huge god statue in the distance? It's a locally-worshipped god in Zhunan looking down over the city.  It's really pretty big.  We saw a few of these statues along the railroad tracks.  Here's a link that shows a closer picture. Kinda freaky. 

On the train - Ruby was flailing her arm  in her sleep when we took this picture.

Now she's awake!  

Trailer puppet show stage in the park right outside the Confucian temple/school which was holding classes that afternoon. The puppet show featured Taiwanese gods.  We sometimes see these trailers traveling from city to city like carnival rides and booths.

Yuanlin park

Ruby and her daddy at a tea shop in Yuanlin

Trying to climb the train seats - almost back to Taipei at this point!