Thursday, May 30, 2013

Taking my parent to Taiwan

My parent are very young, only mid 70's so I felt it would be great to bring to Taiwan, my second country after marrying Wen. Wen supported the idea 100% as she wanted to present her country for them as they have presented our country to her. To make a long story short, we invited them to Taiwan with us, and we just cam back from a full circle of Taiwan.
After landing in Taipei airport we took the bus shuttle to the High Speed Rail (HSR) station nearby and bought tickets to take us to Taichung. This sounds complicated, but it is not.

As the plane was delayed, we were running out of time on our meeting with Wen's small brother with family and big sister, who all live in Taichung. For this reason  we rushed to the restaurant to meet them and to have a lovely dinner with them all. The night was very successful and everybody was getting to know each other despite the small common language we had. My father and mother brought presents fro the kids, and they seem to enjoy this danish tradition.

Next day we took my parent to have breakfast in our local small street breakfast shop. Breakfast habits are hard to break, so the Taiwan style was a bit hard to accept, although after some time, they got to taste everything.

After breakfast we went to Wen's brothers house and later we took off on a half day trip with Wens brother and his young son Yoyo. Unfortunately his lovely daughter Rita had to attend some school activities with her mother, so we were just a small group.

First stop was the old family house which is now a public museum for everybody to visit, this place is described elsewhere in my blog, so I will not tell too much, just say, that visiting the place again was a great pleasure for both me and my parents. I share a few photo;


AS we were leaving the place, Wen's brother pointed at one of the houses and said; "If the house was not taken from us by the government, I would be living over there. How lucky I am!" I am not sure how honest he was, but that is what makes it a great remark.

After this visit we went to a place where people come to meditate and study philosophy. This was not planned but turned out to be a great experience. Very calm atmosphere and nice people there.


After this pause, we went on with our trip and had a great time in Lugang, which I have also presented elsewhere on this blog. This place is fantastic, even we only had time to visit one of the temples this time. For a real visit, plan for a full day there - it is worth it.



After Lugang it was time to drive home and rest for a bit - after all, we are not teenagers.

After resting we had energy to enjoy a great dinner in Taichung all by ourselves.


And then we went to sleep after the first 48 hours in Taiwan.

More later....