13062011 Horse ridingin Cyongling

Mr Li promised to bring us to Cyongling to show us his horses today, which prompted us to actually wake up early and climb out bed (something which we hadn’t been doing in quite a while since summer came by in Taiwan) After calling at his place, he asked us to wait for a while as he sliced some carrots into sticks and washed them with some sea salt for his horses.

Finally set out for Cyongling when he was all done, but called on a shop for breakfast first. Had another round of Taiwanese styled buns with a fried egg and a meat patty.

Headed to the stable and the owner was already waiting for us and introduced us to first horse which was a black one with an injured hove. The stable master then walked us through the small stable, introducing his horses one by one while we fed them with carrot sticks which Mr Li had prepared earlier.

There were also a group of special children who were receiving treatment through horse riding. A special seat was made for them so that even if they couldn’t walk, they could still ride a horse like normal. For some, a trainer and their nurse would walk them beside a tame horse to calm them down, but you could see that most of them were happy just being able to get up close with the horses.

The trainer then brought out this old female horse and lead her out into the sun. He then got up and showed us how to ride a horse, but first-timer like us, even getting up onto the horse’s back is already a challenge itself. And as simple as how the trainer demonstrated, it was not easy to ride her, even if its an old tame horse, but it was fun while it lasted. We soon brought her back to the stable and left to head back to Neiwan.

Back in Neiwan, headed out to interview the Mudan’s boss, and he was in high spirits as his muachi was recognised as one of the best in Taiwan. Also got to head behind the scene to see how the brown sugar cakes were made, with rice from Yuanli, a place which we stopped by on our earlier train hopping.

The rest of the day was spent editing our articles and interviews, then headed to the nearby hot spring for a quick dip which became 3 hours long, and ended it by getting dinner at 7-11.