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=0=| That is the end of the slides we made in Korea and so we will start with the trips we made while we were in Korea. Our first trip was to Okinawa, but the slides I took there came out really terrible. What to do? Our next trip was to Taiwan. This the Grand Hotel which was a major tourist attraction for Taipei. This view is from several miles away and acroos a valley. |
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| This is the gate at the entrance to the Grand Hotel. It is roughly the same from both sides and this is the view from the Hotel side. |
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| This is Barbara with one of the ShiShi dogs at the entrance to the Grand Hotel. In Okinawa we learned that in Japan ShiShi dogs are male if their mouths are open (saying 'Ah') and female if their mouth is closed (saying 'Umm'). In China, Taiwan and Korea, the ShiShi dog is male if it is standing a ball that represents the world and female if it is standing on a little ShiShi dog. So, this looks female as that definitely is not a ball, could be a stylized little ShiShi dog pup. |
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| This is the main building of the Grand Hotel from the driveway just inside the main gate. It is really quite large, about 12 stories high and with wings off to each side. |
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| This is the entrance to the Grand Hotel where our cab let us out. We were surprised by the Korean flag (on the right) next to the flag of Taiwan (on the left). We enquired and learned that a Korean delegation was visiting while we were there and the flags were for them (not us, shucks). Of course Korea and Taiwan were very friendly alllies and competitors at that time. The ceiling of this entrance is done in much the style of Chinese temples as we will see later. |
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| This is the lobby of the Grand Hotel which certainly lives up to its name. As is common in Asian hotels, they go for a REALLY impressive lobby while the rooms are often pretty ordinary. With the carved marble staircases and parquet wood floors the lobby certainly meets expectations. |
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| This is the view of the ceiling of the lobby which was also quite impressive with its indirect lighting. |
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| This the view of the main building from one of the side wings where there were a series of tea rooms (or our equivalent of conference rooms). The Grand Hotel had quite a few rooms and many of them were more moderately priced, perhaps only $20 ro $25 a night (these would be the more ordinary rooms at more ordinary prices). Presumably you could pay really outrageous prices for rooms that would match the lobby, but that doesn't seem like a very likely thing for me to do. However, we did not stay at this hotel at all. There was still an American Army base on Taiwan, though there really weren't many soldiers there. So there were plenty of facilities and we were able to stay in the transient barracks which was just a simple room, but also quite inexpensive. |
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| From the Grand Hotel, Barbara did what we came to enjoy quite a lot and just took one of the city buses and let it take us where it would. We enjoyed seeing the real city that way (versus all the tourist attractions) and also how the people lived and such. This particular bus stopped and we were about to take the bus back when a Chinese man said, 'Oh so you are here to visit the temple'. We were intrigrued and headed in the general direction he had pointed. We started getting a little disillusioned as we encountered a lot of muddy roads and constructions, but then we saw this beautiful view of the terraced rice fields. As an aside, while we had figured out that it was more fun to just travel the city buses and what there was to be seen, the pictures I took seem to have been the usual tourist pictures and not of the interesting things we saw. What to do? |
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| As we continued on the path we saw various statues which were life size or sometimes even two or three times life size. This was what we presumed was Buddha after a fast, though in introspective it could have been Ghandi or any other yogi who has been practicing depravation. There were inscriptions at the base of each, but they were in Chinese and weren't much help to us. Below, there were statutes all along the path, some of the up in the fields and not really accessable. |
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This page was last updated on September 17, 2005.
