Tuesday, May 12th

Today we loaded the bus at 9 to travel south to Giant Bicycles Co. We had McDonald's for breakfast while traveling since we left early. After about a two hour drive we arrived to take our factory tour. It was amazing to see how efficiently the assembly lines were run to produce a mass amount of bicycles per day. It was also really cool to see how the engineers had made so many different bicycles customized for all demographics. There are bicycles made for women, for mountain biking, for street cycling, and for the elderly which includes a little motor. After we finished the tour of Giant we went to a very nice but also interesting lunch where five courses were served on a lazy susan in the middle of a big round table for us. The food was quite different but I tried as much of it as I could. Next, we visited a Saxophone which was run by the family of the man who made the first saxophone in Taiwan. We also got to hear one of the girls play which was unbelievable. Then, we went to a local winery where we took a tour and also had got to taste all the different wines made there. After the winery and visiting a beautiful orchid greenhouse, it was off to the "love motel." Our suite consisted of a huge bed, an indoor pool, a massage table with massaging showerheads above it, a jacuzzi tub, little fish ponds, a massaging recliner, and several couch beds. There was a 45 minute bus ride back to the hotel following our three hour party but afterwards we all planned on going to the bars around the Taipei 101 area. We took the MRT to the bars and not realizing that almost everywhere had a certain dresscode restricting sandals and shorts, we were turned away by two bars and finally wound up at Bar Bados.