IMHO In My Humble Opinion

This morning didn't have the sunrise I was hoping for: instead, it was pouring
rain when we woke up at 5:10 in the morning. Rather than suffer through a
breakfast of eggs, bread, and jam, a couple of friends and I decided to make
some noodles at our room. Even using only about a fifth of the spice packet,
it was still pretty spicy, but I didn't really want to overdo it at breakfast.

We then headed down the mountain. I'm amazed at the speed the bus drivers
take those turns, and especially amazed at how they do things like pass on
blind corners (they honk so people know they're coming.)

Our first stop of the day was at a silk brocade factory:

Silk Loom

The embroidery here didn't impress me as much as one of our previous stops,
but the looms were still pretty impressive.

We later stopped at an old shrine, the only such to commemorate both an emperor
and a prime minister. Unfortunately, while I was busy admiring the grounds,
the tour guide was marching on ahead, so I didn't get too much of the story,
but I've just about reached my saturation point for Chinese history, so it was
definitely the right tradeoff for me to make. In one of the courtyards, there
were little statues scattered around of animals and fruits:

Pomegranate Statue

The next stop was at a tea factory. I didn't end up buying any tea, but we
tasted 4 different kinds. The demonstation was quite impressive:

Tea Preparation

One woman was lecturing to us in Chinese about tea as one of our guides
translated. The woman seated at the table was busily brewing tea the whole
time, while two additional women poured and distributed the tea. And of
course, after the presentation, everything we tasted was available for
purchase.

Dinner tonight was advertised as "western" cuisine, which wasn't something
that appealed to me (or a few others) so we ended up going out to a hot pot
restaurant. This is one where they heat a pot of broth in the middle of the
table, and then bring various things (raw meats, vegetables, noodles) to
throw in to the pot to cook. We didn't really know what we were doing, but
the wait staff was intent on helping us out. The full meal, including drinks,
ended up costing less than six dollars a head, and was quite delicious.

Hot Pot

It turned out that "western" in this case meant western Taiwanese, in spite of
the fact that this isn't what the guides advertised it to be, so the rest of
the group's meal ended up being somewhat interesting as well. Still, having a
little adventure where they didn't speak a lick of English was well worth it.