We stayed one night, and that was plenty since many of the popular Sun Moon Lake activities are very active, and after our trip to Taroko, we weren't very interested in hiking or biking! It's pretty easy to find places to rent bicycles or scooters and there is a bounty of trails all around the lake. There are a lot of temples and scenic outlooks around for photo ops. And there are plenty of places to stay and eat and tons of options for taking a boat across the lake between any of the three main piers.
We stayed in Shuishe, which is one of the main villages around the lake. It's very touristy but still quite small. It has a very nice pier with eateries and hotels and boat tours. You can take a trail from the pier that goes around the lake. Very nice views and lots going on.
Probably my favorite part of the trip was recommended to us by the people at our hotel. We got up early (not quit enough early for sunrise, which was the original intent - hit snooze on that alarm!) and headed out to the lake. It was so quiet and calm, something we don't experience much here in Taiwan, and the silhouette of the mountains over the water was gorgeous.
We took a boat across the lake to Ita Thao, where there is a little street market and a cable car ropeway up the mountain. The ropeway is definitely a tourist trap for the price, but you get a great view of the lake. And the ropeway is actually more for the purpose of transportation to the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village amusement park. We didn't go because it was a little pricey, and we're headed to Disneyland next weekend, but we've heard it's pretty fun.
The last stop on our boat route was the Xuangang pier. Be warned that there is literally nothing at this pier but a temple, unlike the villages at the other piers. The temple does have a nice view of the lake, though. And most boat tours automatically include a stop at all three piers. And it was here that one of the strangest things happened to us. An elderly Asian woman came and sat down next to us on a bench and tried to communicate to us (in Chinese, of course) that she wanted her husband to take a picture of her with us...presumably, because we are white people, which is apparently on par with celebrity here in Asia. That's something that would never happen in the Western world.
Overall, Sun Moon Lake was a nice little trip and is fairly easy to get to. We took a train to the Taichung station and hopped on the Nantou Bus that went all the way to the Shuishe Visitor's Center (a few minutes walk from Sun Moon Lake). The bus also stops at the Taichung High Speed Rail station.
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