WuLai Aborigines

Food, glorious food. Haha!

Well, I think that I’ll stop talking about the food in Taiwan for now. I’ve come to the conclusion that if you want to survive in the food industry in Taiwan, you’ve got to sell good food. Otherwise, you’d be out of business in a jiffy.

After breakfast this morning, we visited the Wulai cultural village where the main highlight was the native people living there. We attended a show where they storied us with the birth and lifestyle of the Ayatal people.

I thought to myself that it is quite a shame that the native shows that we have in Malaysia (particularly in Borneo) do not have the kind of production quality that this show had. While our shows are full of dancing and singing, they do not enjoy the over-arching plot-line that the Ayatal show here did.

Another thing that impressed me was the amount of effort that the people put into the tourism business. The local staff were conversant in Mandarin, Hokkien, English and also Japanese. There was a huge crowd of Japanese school kids with us and I was actually mistaken for one – must be the spanking new camera.

We went to the museum and did some shopping in their old town. Here, I learned that the Wulai area is full of hot-springs and that the government had built a special irrigation system for the hot-spring water to supply the water to all the various baths in the area.

I’ve also noticed that people here seem to be really big on alternative energy. I would find wind turbines on random roof-tops at Wulai, which enjoys a strong breeze. My hotel was situated right next to a hydro-electric dam. The farm that we were in before this had solar panels on the roof.

Interesting.