Providence University Field Trips

Sun Moon Lake is the largest natural lake in Taiwan and attracts millions of visitors each year. The lake is named after the round sun shape outline of the lake and moon crescent shaped island, Lalu Island. There are a variety of attractions at Sun Moon Lake, such as the Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village, Cien Pagoda, as well as several temples such as the Dragon Phoenix Yue Lao Temple and Sun Moon Lake Wenwu Temple. Similarly, there are hiking trails and boardwalks for walking and biking surrounding the lake. This well known scenic area, located in the foothills of Nantou County, is approximately an hour and a half car drive away from Taichung.

We started our day off at the Formosan Aboriginal Cultural village and spent time enjoying the rides and the sights. From there we took a cable car over to Sun Moon lake giving us an amazing view of the lake. Once there we walked along the lake to our lunch destination where we ate some amazing traditional Taiwanese dishes. Following lunch we got to explore the the local shops and market before taking the cable car back to our bus.

Our Taichung City Tour was a great opportunity to explore to city we would be spending our first three weeks in. We started off by taking the bus into downtown Taichung. This gave us an idea on how to get around using the bus, which was very useful. We made our way over to the National Taichung Theater where we were given a tour. We learned about the history of the opera house and its design and structure. Following the theater we went and sang Karaoke! It was a lot of fun spending time singing songs and eating fruit with everyone on the trip. We finished off our tour at Din Tai Fung, an amazing restaurant where we had some of the best food in Taiwan.

Our final trip with Providence was a two day trip to Taipei! We started day one at the National Palace Museum. This was a great place to look back at some of the History and culture of East Asia. There was so much interesting information and art that we got to experience. We then continued on bus to Jiufen, an old mountain town about an hour outside Taipei. Jiufen is packed with street food, local shops, restaurants, and teahouses. We broke up and got to explore different parts of it. We finished our first day back at the hotel to rest for day two.

The next day we traveled to Taipei Fine Art Museum. There were so many amazing pieces of art that we got to see. It was interesting to see different perspectives to many art styles and how art has changed throughout the years. We then had some delicious lunch and then explored around town for a while. We finished day two at Taipei 101. We took one of the fastest elevators in the world to the top to see the city. It was quite cloudy, but luckily the sky cleared a bit for us to see the beautiful lights of Taipei. It was a wonderful experience.