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An adventurous voyage to Wuling Farm

2003 summer

An unforgettable trip does not always mean a good trip. We had an unforgettable trip to Wuling Farm with two other families of friends. We first got together at the campus of Academia Sinica. In year 2003, there was no Snow Mountain tunnel. Lin led us driving through Shihding (石碇) and Shuangxi (雙溪) towards the north east coast. We tightly followed his car through the mountains so that I felt very sick in stomach. Out of the mountains, we sat down in a coffee bar by the seashore and had lunch in the Wushi (烏石) fish market. Unfortunately, I never appreciate local but oily food. After lunch we drove to Yilan (宜蘭). Lin recommended a famous ice cream shop called Tai-Da (台大). Their traditional ice desserts were delicious.

While we drove towards Wuling, I got a phone call from my student who told me that my wallet left in the ice dissert shop. This was the first time I embarrassed myself. Lin drove me back to get the wallet, and others waited for us in a gasoline station.

We got back to meet all the people and then set out to the Wuling Farm. However, riving on winding roads in the mountains made me terribly sick again. We finally got there in the late afternoon. We treated all the people to dinner because I was sorry for my carelessness. At night, people chatted in the living room and enjoyed beer and snacks. In the beginning, the topics were about our youth time and science. Near midnight, men turned to talk about politics involving green and blue opinions. I lost my interest in it at all and went to sleep.

I got up early and wake him up, and then we took a walk nearby. After all of the people had breakfast, we drove to煙聲瀑布. However, we did not walk much further because it was near lunchtime. Due to some kinds of misunderstanding, Lin urged us to leave for Yilan to get lunch but he and his family would stay in Wuling to meet his brother.

Our misfortune began from the time when we drove toward the west, instead of  the east. We stopped at梨山for a while. I bought a bag of local apples. However, I could not find so called honey glands within the apples as the famers said. We then drove through a road called力行產業道路. Not only the road was very narrow, bumpy and winding, but also many trucks full of cabbages passed through. The heavy rain also made this tour more dangerous. We all did not have lunch and felt exhausted. When we almost arrived at霧社, Ben hit to a safety barrier. Our car could hardly move. We tried to drive to霧社to repair the car. However, till evening. we were told that the car could not be immediately fixed up. Because our friends had already left for home, we had to take buses back Taipei. It sounded terrible, particularly in this country town. We got to the downtown of霧社and then waited for a bus to埔里and then to草屯. We finally got a bus bounding for Taipei near 10 p.m. God played another joke on us. We were forced to get off on the highway near苗栗because of a problem with the bus. The time was near midnight. We were standing on the highway and phoned our friends complaining our distress.