Everything's Better with a Rollercoaster!

I went on my first solo excursion on Sunday! My really awesome co-worker gave me half-off coupons for the Formosa Aboriginal Cultural Village (FACV from now on because good Lord that’s annoying to type), but none of my friends could go, so I went on my own. I rarely go places by myself, so it was exciting. On the bus I was thinking to myself, “Look at me, traipsing around the boonies of Nantou County on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean all by myself knowing only forty words of Chinese! I’m so brave.” I think the word I was really searching for was stupid. But regardless, I had a good time with myself. I was a little nervous, given my history of being stranded in the mountains waiting for buses that never come, but the bus came and I made it back just fine. Yipee!

I took the bus from Taichung to the FACV, which is quite close to Sun Moon Lake. After some confusion at the entrance about exchanging my coupon for a ticket, I found my way inside. The FACV can be described as an outdoor museum, amusement park, and Europe all rolled into one. Lonely Planet says, "It's an unlikely business model, a cultural showpiece combined with amusement park rides, but the village comes highly recommended." I imagine someone planning to create the aboriginal villages, and then another dude asserting that no one will want to go just to learn some boring ol' history...better to have a rollercoaster or two. And while I would still love to see the villages sans amusement park, it's true that everything really is better with a rollercoaster, no? Kitschy? Yes. But awesome? Yes.

Anyway, the first thing I found was the European Palace Garden, which is a very big garden with a fountain and big European-style building. The place was almost completely empty! I figured the place would be packed on a Sunday, but it wasn't busy at all. It was a little weird being in Taiwan in this kind of garden, but it was quite pretty. They had statues all around of aborigines doing various aborigine-like things, like killing deer, and then they had a couple dudes getting wasted. Nice.


Then I found my way to the amusement park. I walked through this aborigine-style entryway only to encounter a turquoise spaceship. It was really weird. I took this picture of what was behind me…


...and this picture of what was in front of me. It really is symbolic of the entire park.


The first section I found myself in was the Mayan Adventure section. There, you can find “Mexico ice cream” and Mexican-style buildings and crafts. I also found a free-fall UFO ride, which I promptly got on. It was kinda cool because it spins you slowly around as you ascend so you can see the whole place from up high. Then, of course, you free fall to your death. It wasn’t as high as other free-fall rides I’ve been on, but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying.


I first noticed these hammocks after I got off the UFO ride. They’re all over the park. Not entirely comfortable, because they’re wood, but what a great idea!

The park has a lot of trees so it’s not always easy to know which road to take, because you can’t see where it’s leading. But it’s very beautiful and peaceful.

I then encountered “the” rollercoaster at the park, called “Maya Adventure.” It’s similar to the Batman ride at Six Flags Great America, if you’re familiar. It was fun, but it wasn’t particularly smooth, and that’s a pretty important quality for coasters that have multiple corkscrews, in my opinion. Corkscrews hurt. I was a little achy at the end of it, but it wasn’t anything like that evil, evil rollercoaster at the Six Flags Magic Mountain that has face-down drops, cars that spin 360 degrees, and fire that shoots at you as you whiz by. I’ll never forget that experience.

I sat down on a hammock to figure out the showtimes for the Aboriginal dance shows. Then I headed over to the Naruwan Theater to a show described as “the performance of energy and elegance, masculinity and delicacy.” Sweet. I passed through all these village recreations on the way, and they were virtually empty. That’s because everyone was at the Naruwan Theater.

I found a spot mostly in the shade and waited for the show to begin. Before the show there was a dude talking to the audience. Audience members would shout numbers at him and then other performers would throw out gold-painted pinecones at the audience members. I’m still not really sure what was happening.

So the show started. They played aboriginal music over the loudspeaker while a woman narrated the whole thing--I guess--explaining what we were seeing. They did all kinds of interesting dances. While I was watching these half-naked men dance around, I pondered the fact that today, in America, it’s women who are usually half-naked during these things. Yet here it was--half-naked men dancing around while the women were fully clothed. I felt better about the world after that.

At one point they threw a dude inside a canoe into the water. Then they took turns running, jumping, and swinging on a rope. And sometimes missing…

My favorite dance included these long sticks that they used somewhat like jump ropes. They’d lay them on the floor and two people would move the sticks around while a few other people would dance on top of them, trying not to get their feet caught. I liked how it progressed, from just the women doing it to everyone joining in.

It was a great show!

Then I wandered back through all the aboriginal villages I had passed on my way to the theater. The different tribes represented at the park are: the Ami, the Paiwan, the Tao, the Rukai, the Puyama, the Bunun, the Tsou, the Thao, the Atayal, and the Saisiat. No one lives in these homes, they’re just recreations, but I believe the performers and people working within the villages are aborigines. Although, I can’t be sure. The rooms within the houses were all quite dark, so I don’t have very good pictures. A lot of people had pigs living in one section of their house, and I can't imagine what that must have smelled like. It didn’t seem like you had much privacy either…there were like four or five beds in some rooms with just a bamboo sliding door shielding you. Good times. But it was pretty awesome!



One of my favorite features was the wall of enemy heads (sadly, none of the skulls were real).

My other fave was the tribe for whom it was popular to remove teeth.


Many tribes had mandibles decorating their homes. I'm not sure which animal they're from, but they seemed like foxes or wolves or something.


Facial tattoos were big with one tribe...the Saisiat maybe? I know you're disappointed this isn't a kissing picture. I didn't want to defame a culture while an aborigine was looking...

After walking through the aborigine villages I encountered an indoor section full of games and a few rides. I wanted to ride the indoor roller-coaster, called "Space Mountain," which doesn’t go upside down but is almost completely dark. Each car holds two people, one in front of the other. However, there is nothing separating the two people, so one of you is in the other’s lap. I almost had to ride on the lap of a sixty-year-old man, but they had him wait for the next one. THANK GOD. It was a nice coaster. After that I went on this thing you sit in that just knocks you around in the air. Then I went on “Jurassic Cruise,”--which is like It’s a Small World meets Jurassic Park--mainly because I wanted to see a stegosaurus. It was a pretty hilarious ride, in that the robots and decorations were pretty old-school. I think I liked the rubber bats hanging and bouncing on strings the best.

That was it for the park, so I decided to head to the bus stop. The bus came, no problem, and I made it back to Taichung. If I had gone with my friends they probably would have wanted to take scooters there, but I like taking the bus. Sure, sometimes I think I’m going to die, and I don’t always know how to buy tickets or where or when to get on the bus, but I like just relaxing and looking out the window.

So overall it was a fun excursion! Four stars for the Formosa Aboriginal Cultural Village.