Taiwan Day Three

We started the day again with the hotel breakfast, it was the same as the day before. Our first tour stop was Leofoo Theme Park. I would describe it as Lion Country Safari meets Knotts Berry Farm. The whole tour went together on the safari bus ride and as we drove through the animal enclosures we saw Bengal Tigers, not just one but 10, baboons straight out of that scene in the Omen and enough Lions to start two prides. It’s amazing how many animals there were just roaming around or relaxing. One of the baboons even jumped up on the bus for a free ride around the enclosure. After our safari we hurried to ride as many rides as we could in the scant hour and a half we had left before we had to be back at the tour bus. Greg and Gabriella had a great time riding a few rides while I ordered lunch. Greg said that all the visitors in line at the rides wanted to take pictures with Gabi, she was a mini celebrity. We made it back to the bus 15 minutes late but no one seemed too upset by it. On the way to our next stop Gabriella made the fatal mistake of reading her Princess magazine while driving on a windy road after wolfing down lunch the combination caused her to throw up theme park chicken nuggets all over herself. Needless to say it was a terrible mess that was difficult to clean up and she was forced to spend the rest of her day in Greg’s oversized hoodie and no pants. The flower Oasis was probably nice but I spent most of the time washing out her pants and then trying to will them dry. The next stop was Chiang Kai Shek’s tomb and statue garden. It was interesting to see so many statues of this both beloved and despised dictator. We did make it back to the hotel for a brief rest before heading out for dinner. I was able to shower off Gabriella and get her a new pair of pants before dinner. We went to dinner at a lovely dumpling restaurant. Gabriella’s favorites were the pork dumpling in soup, she must have eaten at least 4 or 5 of them. We learned the proper way to eat a dumpling, with soy sauce, vinegar and ginger shavings on a spoon. I also added hot peppered soy sauce to mine and they were delicious. Everyone was so full we didn’t even want to stop to sample some local Taiwanese delicacies on the way back to the hotel. We were going to go to ice cream but that idea fell by the wayside.