Dragon Boat Festival

We were dropped off by a friend at the road and then we walked down to the water where the dragon boat races were taking place.

Above is a long distance picture of the entire festival. We were so excited.

Above is a picture of the many people watching and probably betting on the races....

Here is a picture of the dragon boat races in case the video doesn't actually work for you. 

Here is a picture of the festival part of the dragon boat festival.

I really wanted to get an awesome balloon of Hello Kitty, but I knew it wouldn't last until August so I could take it home with me and show everyone. So we just took a picture of one of the balloon ladies. It's a pretty picture huh?

There were so many cool things to see at the festival. 

It was very hot outside so we took refuge in the buddhist temple next to the festival. (see above) It was air conditioned and a nice place to be despite the overwhelming amount of incense being burned. At first we were really timid about taking pictures, but then we noticed that there was this Taiwanese guy who was straight up taking photos of everything inside the temple so we stopped being shy and took some photos too. 

Above is a picture of some of the money people would send to their ancestors by burning it. (sorry it is blury)The money was free inside the temple. You just take it and burn it.  The belief is that you can send money or other items to your ancestors to use in the after-life.  They will need money, cars (they are made of paper so don't worry they do not burn real cars.) food, which is actually real food and even jewelry. You can see the baskets of things in the picture below. There is a giant furnace outside where people can burn the paper money to their ancestors. This temple also has one of the cleanest and nicest bathrooms in Taiwan so we were told and so we experienced, but we did not get a picture of it.  :(

Above is a picture of one of the shrines inside the temple. 

 Here are some people praying for their ancestors/praying to. 

This video is first a homage to the WomanStats waka waka dance that I did with the WomanStats research project at BYU. Unfortunately, I could not remember the dance...at all. How sad is that? Then we cut into an exciting dragon boat race. It was one of many. They raced from probably 9am to around 5pm that day. We did not stay for it all because it was super hot. (Hence I had an umbrella.)  Then there was dancing and karaoke while the races were going on. So we caught one of the dances that is considered a native dance here in Taiwan. Unfortunately we did not catch the later performances of some girl slaughtering, Bon Jovi's, "It's My Life." That was a classic moment. The family sitting next to us in this great shady spot we found on the side,were laughing at her. The mom said I would pay her $5 if she would just stop singing. Then the teenage daughter said, I would pay her $1000. So we weren't the only ones thinking that this live performance wasn't up to scratch. Haha. We finished off our day at the festival with some awesome food. I had some fried tofu and watermelon drink and Alan had a corn dog and some fried pancake that I don't know how to write, but I can say. Then our friend that dropped us off picked us up and took us home to cool off in our nice air conditioned apartment. 

The end.