Flora, Fauna, and Loud Speakers

Yesterday Nick and I took a ride back out to Dadu Mountain (大肚山) to spend a relaxing day walking around one of our favorite places here in Taichung, Taichung Metropolitan Park (台中都會公園).

The flowers were so beautiful that I wanted to share some of the pictures with you all:

AND there was this really neat tree there that I had never seen before:

Take a close look at the bark:

Pretty cool!


Nick and I had a fantastic and relaxing day walking through the park for a couple of hours, most of the time almost completely alone.

One of the great things about the park is that it is located outside of the city and is so big and isolated that when you're walking through it you can forget that you're in the 61st most densely populated city in the world and enjoy the silence and peace of nature.

That is, as long as you can ignore the PA system which every 1/2 hour delivers a welcome message over loud speakers strategically placed throughout the park.

I guess when you live in a place as cacophonous as Taiwan, you become accustomed to the noise and maybe even feel uneasy in it's absence. We have found these kinds of speakers almost everywhere we've visited here in Taiwan from Taroko Gorge to Xitou, and now here in Taichung's Metropolitan Park!




But no matter, after living here for almost a year, we had no trouble tuning out this minor disturbance and enjoyed our day none-the-less.