After New Year's Eve, we were given a four day weekend which I decided would be a good opportunity to get out of Taipei and explore the island a little more. My colleague Eliza and I have a friend who's originally from Kaohsiung and whose parents live there, so we decided that we'd head down South for the weekend and stay at their family's in Kaohsiung. So after a surprisingly comfortable 6 hour (due to traffic) bus journey, we were in Kaohsiung! Kaohsiung is Taipei's second biggest city and located at the opposite end of Taiwan in the far south. It's a coastal city and sunny and warm all year round, also lacking the intense humidity that there is in Taipei. The city is known for having a much more laid back feel than Taipei (which itself feels fairly laid back for a capital city) and this, along with the beautiful weather really helped me to relax and feel like I was on vacation after the two six day weeks which we'd had before New Year's.
During our time in Kaohsiung, we were pretty busy and saw a lot of things, so it would be a little hard to put the whole trip into just one blog post. Instead, I've separated the trip by the different attractions we went to, so hopefully over the next week or two, I'll be able to post everything we did!
On the first day, we decided we'd go see the harbour and take a ferry to Cijin Island which is a small island just off the coast of the city with beaches, streets filled with food stalls and a lighthouse on top of a cliff. On the way, we made a quick stop at Forumosa Boulevard Station, famous in Taiwan for it's magnificent Dome of Light. The glass dome was designed by an Italian artist and depicts fire, earth, water and light. It was pretty striking and definitely one of the more attractive subway stations I've seen in my life.
The 'earth' portion of the dome.
Outside the station
After the station, we walked down to the harbour, where there was a very long queue of people waiting to get on the ferries to Cijin Island.
Kaohsiung's best food is supposedly its seafood, due to its position as a port city. In the line for the ferry, we spotted these delicious looking fish. While I didn't try anything like this, I did eat fish, crab and grilled octopus in my attempt to overcome my aversion to seafood.
The harbour where we waited for the ferry.
A picture of one of the many ferries carrying people to Cijin Island.
Upon arriving, we quickly came onto what seemed to be the main street of the island, which was filled with food shops and food stores. Sunny and our friend Tim, who's originally from Kaohsiung insisted I tried various traditional Southern foods along the way. These included grilled squid (in which a whole squid is grilled on a stick, then cut into pieces and given to you in a bag), tomatoes which you dip in a mixture of garlic, sugar and soy sauce as well as these incredible fried sweet potato balls which were filled with some unknown syrupy substance in the middle.
On the street, we found this funnily dressed man collecting money for charity (or some cause...my Chinese is no where near good enough to actually what I donated 25NT to).
On this main street, there was a cool looking temple which we decided to check out.
My colleague Eliza, and Sunny, whose house we stayed at while we were in Kaohsiung,
Supposedly all the different artwork covering the temple recounts various traditional stories.
Along the main road, we stumbled upon this cactus ice cream stand. The ice cream itself was bright red and very fruity tasting-I'm not sure which bit of the cactus, or what kind of cactus it came from, but it was very tasty and refreshing!
At the end of the main road, we came across the beach!
I decided to write my Chinese name (Lan1 Shang4 Ming1) in the sand.
Kaohsiung as seen from the island! The black building on the right hand side is the biggest building in the city.
At the top of a cliff on the island, there was a lighthouse, which was fairly modest, but interesting all the same!
After visiting the lighthouse, we headed back to ferry, where there was an even larger line waiting to get back into the city. While standing in it, I spotted this cool duck artwork.
After Cijin Island, we headed down to our friend Sunny's favourite duck noodle restaurant (which seems to be pretty popular based on the number of people eating there) before heading off to Lotus Lake which I'll be writing about in my next post. Until then!
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