More Than an Hour at Sun Moon Lake

I have a lot of trouble traveling in Taiwan.  It’s not for reasons that you would think.  It’s not because I can’t read the highway signs.  It’s not because I can’t sit comfortably in a car for long periods.  It’s not because I can’t read maps or understand the GPS.  It’s not for any of those reasons.  I have a hard time traveling because my schedule doesn’t really permit it.

I’m a pastor and guess what…Sunday is always just around the corner.  Between writing two sermons and a Bible study each week, my own personal studies, outreach, preaching, teaching, two blogs and all the other things that come up, I don’t have much time to hang out.  If where I want to go is more than a day trip away, I’m not often able to go.

For example, we have always wanted to go to Taroko Gorge.  It’s probably one of the most beautiful places on the planet.  If you’re an American, it compares favorably to Yosemite.  It is gorgeous.  I’ve been there once; I spent about an hour there. 

A friend had had an accident in Hualien and was stuck in the hospital there.  My wife and I left on a Tuesday night to go visit him.  Hualien is about four and a half hours from Taoyuan City.  We got there and visited for a while and stayed in a hotel.  I had to be in Taoyuan the next day before noon, so we got up early and drove to Taroko Gorge.  It was about twenty minutes from the hospital.  We drove a half hour into the gorge and turned around and drove back out.  For my sixtieth birthday though, my family and I took two days off and went to Sun Moon Lake. 

Sun Moon Lake is located in about the center of the island.  It’s the largest body of freshwater in Taiwan.  The scenery is spectacular.  The temperature is cool.  It’s also a relaxing resort type atmosphere.

The main entrance to the lake is Yuchi Township in Nantou County.  I’ll include a Google map at the end so you can find it.  We stayed At the Tanhui Hotel, an inexpensive hotel across the street from the lake.  We could see the lake from our hotel if we looked through the glass of the hotel across the street.  The room was very inexpensive.  It was set up for four people, (Our daughters came along with us.).  The hotel served breakfast of eggs and cooked lunchmeat.  We weren’t really expecting much for what we paid.  The staff was nice and friendly; the room was clean although I could only face one way in my wheelchair.  I had to go out into the hall to turn around, but hey, it was a good way to meet my fellow travelers.  On the whole I’d recommend the hotel if you are just looking for inexpensive. 

The lake was beautiful:  Soaring mountains, cool breezes and fresh air; all things that can be difficult to find in summertime Taiwan.  The locals are mostly aboriginal and very nice and friendly.  The only thing that was a letdown was that we went to dinner about eight and had a difficult time finding any place to eat.  We ended up eating street food from a small night market. 

The highlight of the trip was a boat ride across the lake.  These guys lifted my wheelchair onto the boat and we powered across the lake to three locations.  We could get off at any of the stops and explore.  The place we stopped had a tram that went up over the mountain.  I don’t ride on things like that for reasons that I cannot reveal, but it has to do with mountaineering and hanging around.  That sentence seems sufficiently vague.  So, if you’re adventurous you can take the ride over the mountain and discover something.  I can’t have all the fun. 

I’m certainly glad that my family arranged this trip.  It was well worth the extra work to get caught up, we went on a Monday and stayed over night, but guess what…Sunday was just around the corner.

Photo Source:  Tanhui Hotel: Booking.com 
All other photos:  Elizabeth Banducci

Other Posts You May Be Interested in:

Taiwan Travelogue:  The North Coast
Taiwan Travelogue:  The National Palace Museum
Taiwan Travelogue:  The Huaxi Night Market

Rolling East: Traveling in a Wheelchair

International Symbol for Disabled Person




This is a bit of a departure from my usual posts because it doesn’t speak directly about some aspect of life in Taiwan. I recently traveled to the US for an opportunity to attend a conference and catch up with some friends and relatives. Most of my traveling is done in a wheelchair. Oh, I can walk, but airports present a bit of a problem for disabled people. There are often long distances that must be covered, long lines (like at customs), or movements between gates, especially between domestic and international gates that must be traversed in ridiculously short periods of time. I can walk, but I’m afraid it looks a lot more like the “Zombie Shuffle” than walking, and running is completely out of the question.
Fortunately, most airlines provide wheelchair service to disabled passengers. They coordinate with the airports to transfer you between gates and airlines, to the luggage carousel, through customs and immigration, even out to the curb to the taxi stand. Wheelchair passengers are the first ones boarded and the last ones off. One real benefit is that the “Wheelchair Operators” are knowledgeable about the airport; transfer procedures and security processes and can just take you through the process without any hassle.

There is one drawback to wheelchair travel…security. Wheelchairs, for obvious reasons, can’t pass through metal detectors. For me to get out of the chair and try to walk through is a extremely difficult, so in every instance I was required to endure the dreaded TSA Pat Down Procedure.

I’m fairly pragmatic, I don’t like the intrusion into my personal space, I don’t like the erosion of my rights, but I really hate missing my flights, so I’m willing to endure it, if it will keep old women and babies with bombs off of planes. I’m not so sure about the effectiveness of this system, though, because we are so careful to avoid profiling and looking like we’re picking on people, that I’m afraid the ones who are the real threats are just getting on planes, flying around, and laughing at us.



Part of the Dreaded TSA Pat Down

 The TSA agents that I encountered were professional, polite and thorough. They explained the entire process, asked me if I wanted a private screening and then told me exactly what they were going to do just before they did it. Actually, I was impressed, with the care with which they violated me. I even had the thought that they probably didn’t want to do the pat down anymore that I wanted them to do it. As with anything professionalism varies from person to person. Maybe I was lucky and encountered only agents with a high degree of professionalism, in any case, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

I have to tell you after watching the videos and reading the reports I expected it to be horribly humiliating and dehumanizing but, really, it wasn’t. What was horribly humiliating and dehumanizing was high school PE class: Guys standing around snapping guys with towels and yukking it up about each other’s shortcomings, THAT was humiliating and dehumanizing. But throughout the entire pat down process, in three airports, I didn’t even see one rolled up towel and there were no snickers or nicknames.

I still think the whole thing is an intrusion on people’s rights and privacy. I still think the policy needs to be changed to be more realistic, but for the guys on the line who do the pat downs, when it’s handled professionally like it was with me, I appreciate their willingness to endure a lot more pat downs than I will have to endure. I travel occasionally; they have to do that every day.

But it didn’t stop at the US, when arriving in China, on the way to Taiwan; I had to go through the exact same process I did in the US. The only difference was that a young woman gave this old man the TSA Pat Down. My emotions in that situation were somewhat different.

In all other ways traveling in a wheelchair is a comfortable and less stressful way for disabled people to travel.

Other posts you may be interested in:


Cultural Unawareness:  The Wheels of Bureaucracy Turn Slowly
Random Asianess:  The Rest Stop

Photo Credit:  Pat Down procedure:  www.butyoudontlooksick.com