Once a year, for just about one month between November and December,  Xinshe holds a flower fair, called Sea of Flowers. What Luck!  I just happen to be close to the region and I didn’t even know about the festival…saw a picture about it on Instagram. Speaking of, you can also follow us on Instagram, the name is momentstocreate.

Thom and I decide that this is not something we can miss, so we hopped on the scooter and drive out to Xinshe.  We got a little lost along the way and we had a few rest stops. By the way, I always thought that the word toilet is a pretty universal language, but it’s not, as I came to find out the hard way.  We were at 7-11 (or was it Circle K this time? ) and I really had to use the little girls room. So I ask the nice clerk, “Toilet?”, and she just looks at me, a bit confused. So I say, “WC”? Same reaction.
“Water closet.”
“Loo.”
“Bathroom?”
So now I say the word toilet in all sorts of different “accents”‘ like how Germans would say toilet, or the French, or Indonesians.  Nothing. Blank. I really need to go, so I start miming using the toilet and she still has no clue what I am talking about or what I want. Clearly she doesn’t play charades very often. I finally just leave and Thom then tells me the word for toilet in Mandarin, I go back inside and repeat it and she still looks at me like I am tripping balls. Now Thom comes in and says cesuo (which is EXACTLY what I say) and she goes, “Aaaaahhhh!” But they don’t have a toilet. We go back outside and realize that the bathrooms are around the building. Hehehe.

We finally make it to Xinshe and start our little adventure in the Sea of Flowers. It was difficult to find any information there because we couldn’t find anyone who spoke English and pretty much nothing that would have helped us understand the set up was in English. But what did I expect? I am not in Europe or Australia, and many people already ask themselves why I would want to go to Taiwan. Taiwan doesn’t get too many Western tourists, but they are always happy to see some. 😀

The Flower Fair is free of charge (!!) and worth the visit. It is pretty large, many many acres, and there are flowers everywhere! My mom would enjoy it there. They prepare all year long for this event. There are different areas with different themes. Some of them are quite cheesy, but also cute and nice. My favorite part are the fields of flowers (Sea of Flowers 😉 ). There is also a type of food court (similar to those at night markets) where you can eat and drink.

After walking around and taking an obscene amount of pictures, Thom and I decide to go to Taichung. In Taichung, we found a very nice little night market, but we were in a time crunch, so we literally ran through it and got on the scooter and drove back home (again getting lost, but I think Thom knows the way now).

After riding on the back of a scooter for about 5 hours, I can tell you, for sure, you will have a very sore bum.