Our Trip to the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village (九族文化村) - Part 2

After our morning of cultural exploration, it was off to the amusement park section to check out the rides. Our first stop was the modern feet-dangling roller coaster the Mayan Adventure. Although there were no terrifying drops, it was one hell of a cork screw and overall a great roller coaster.

AND there was no one else on the coaster, so we got to ride in the front seat!

After this it was time to go in search of all the other rides. We had heard of a Pirate Ship, a Disney-like "Space Mountain," a dinosaur ride.... lots of stuff, but for some reason, Nick and I could not manage to find the rides. After we had literally walked around the whole park, we decided to walk into an arcade area to look for space mountain.

What we found was an indoor amusement park!

I guess I kind of understand the point of this... it is a way to beat the heat (it definitely was cooler in here than it was outside) and avoid the rain and sun (the Taiwanese people do not like to be out in the sun), but I found the whole thing a little bit odd! The park is set up in the mountains in a beautiful part of Taiwan, but you kind of miss that when you're in a massive aluminum warehouse.

Although it was inside, we enjoyed the amusement park rides.

The space mountain roller coaster was certainly no Disney Space Mountain, but it wasn't bad. It was funny because you could see that once upon a time, they had a bunch of black-light decorations - planets and such.. but it was sooooooooo old so you really couldn't see any of it anymore. It was just a roller coaster in the pitch black, but it was fun! I couldn't stop laughing the whole time.

We also rode the 2-story carousal

and the balloons

After we were done with all the rides, we headed back to the park entrance to meet up with the bus, but on our way out we took a moment to check out the European geometric garden (complete with it's own palace!)

What Taiwanese aboriginal culture center is complete without it's own European-style garden!?

What can I say - the whole concept of the place was a bit bizzarre, but it seemed to work well and we had a great time!