So on our second day in Kaohsiung, we decided to check out a place known as Pier 2 to get a better feel for the city itself. Pier 2 is a collection of old abandoned warehouses from the 70's which has been transformed into a collection of cafes, shops and art galleries. Outside of the galleries and shops, the whole area was dotted with weird and wonderful sculptures and it was a really great place to just walk around and take everything in.
The Pier seemed to be gearing up for a steelworks art competition (or something of the sort), and there were many steel sculptures around, along with some people working on their constructions.
One of the many abandoned warehouses.
Walking along the streets, we found this cool swing!
There was a free gallery in one of the buildings, which was full of some really cool pieces of artwork!
This one reminded me of Max and Leila!
Even the bins were designed with art in mind!
I stumbled upon a huge statue of Bumblebee from transformers (much to the delight of one of my students back in Taipei)
So, as you can see, the whole area was full of great graffiti and sculptures, and this, along with the beautiful Southern weather, provided us with a really great start to the morning! Pier 2 was also full of cool shops (the kind full of awesome, expensive things that you immediately want, but would never actually need), which were fun to look around. And to top it all off, I enjoyed a surprisingly tasty focaccia and rosemary chicken sandwich!
On our first day in Kaohsiung, our friend had told us about a very cool sounding mountain which was a short bus journey out of the city centre, known by western tourists as Monkey Mountain, due to the Formosan Rock Macaques which inhabit it. Soon after getting off the bus, we were greeted with signs warning tourists to be careful of their food and drink (and even cameras!) which the monkeys had been known to steal.
After a reasonable amount of time using our rudimentary Chinese to ask people how we could find the hiking path, we eventually found where we wanted to be. And with minutes of getting on the path, we were greeted with our first monkeys who were relishing the attention given to them by all the hikers who were taking pictures.
One of the first monkeys we saw!
We kept walking upwards, through some pretty attractive scenery!
After some time, we found another monkey standing by the path. After we took notice of him and started watching him and taking pictures, we we were quickly joined by another two or three monkeys who came around the path to have a look at us. They definitely weren't camera shy and seemed to take an active interest in us!
Another monkey standing on the path who was more than happy to come right up to us!
The mountain itself looked onto the city, giving us some pretty cool views!
As we hurried to find a peak so that we could get a good view of the sunset over the city, we managed to get a little lost. Many of the paths were a little confusingly marked and we think we stumbled upon some older paths which were no longer in use. As we walked, the path seemed to get wilder and a little more disconcerting. This, combined with the darkness from the cover of the trees and the setting sun resulted us in getting a little lost. Although we think we were always on some form of paths, many of these seemed out of use and at times it felt like we were just wandering aimlessly in the increasingly darkening woods. Along the way, we would hear the intermittent sounds of stray dogs (who inhabit the mountains) barking and fighting with each other. Eventually, we managed to find a more promising looking path, helped in part by the meow of a cat (who I decided must have been some sort of guardian spirit of the mountain) who was sitting at its entrance. After walking and, spurred on by the snarling of dogs, running down this path for about ten minutes, we finally stumbled upon the main path with a clear view of the city,
As you can see, it had gotten pretty dark!
We still had a way to go to get down, but the path was wide and mostly clearly marked with signposts. This, along with the occasional person we'd see walking or biking down gave us confidence that we were going to get down ok!
To finish the day, we went to a small Thai restaurant where I had some great Thai red curry, along with some different stir fried Taiwanese vegetables and eggs.
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