Where are we going?

So the Tomb-Sweeping Day holiday is this weekend. 

We get a whole three-day weekend out of it — both Saturday and Monday off work — which means that I obviously have to get out of Taoyuan so I can go do some exploring.

A few weeks ago, I asked Leila (my partner in crime for the Chinese New Year Island-Wide Trip) if she would like to go with me to Sun Moon Lake. I figured that was the next big tourist site I needed to go to that would take more than a day in order to get there, do things and come back. 

Then it turned out the weather at Sun Moon Lake is supposed to be terrible. 

So I checked the forecast and the only places in the whole country that were to be sunny were Kenting and Peng Hu.

Well, Kenting was out. They're having the big Spring Scream Music Festival this weekend and as much as I love a music festival, I need a chill weekend exploring not another fantastically drunk weekend to add to the collection. 

So we changed out minds and decided we would go to Peng Hu. This was Wednesday-ish. 

Last night Leila and I started figuring everything out and then today I went to buy tickets to Kaohsiung for tonight where we would then catch a ferry to the island tomorrow morning.

As the guy is printing out the tickets and getting ready to ask me for $1400NT — for two tickets, don't worry — I get a message saying all the ferries to Peng Hu from Kaohsiung are sold out on Saturday. The next earliest one we could get is Sunday morning. 

Apparently everyone and their dog (I mean this literally, I am in Taiwan after all) had the same idea to go to Peng Hu. 

We mulled it over for about 20 seconds while the guy behind the counter at the bus station started to get very impatient with me and decided to switch back to Sun Moon Lake — Ri Yue Tan in Chinese if you were wondering.

So we're off to Taichung tonight and catching a bus inland tomorrow. (By the way, I totally rocked it with the Chinese today!)

It's probably for the best anyway. I don't mind hiking in the rain, but as of this morning Peng Hu is even supposed to be getting a bunch of rain throughout the weekend. I'm not down with hanging out on a flat, basalt island for three days in the rain. 

That would be torturous. 

That brings me to this legendary weekend. Everyone says that apparently Tomb-Sweeping Weekend — I realize this epically coincides with Easter Weekend — is renowned for terrible weather. People here tend to not make plans because they know the weather will kill it.

Now, I have about an hour to pack before I have class so I better hop to it. I get to use my brand-new backpack that I bought for all the traveling I plan to be doing soon.

Oh and you should be looking forward to pictures. Rain or night, I finally got my camera charger back. I now have two camera batteries and two 2GB memory cards at the ready. 

This trip is going to be "picturetastic" no matter what.