Taiwan part 5 - A Week of Chinese New Year -

What a week! For Monday - Wednesday Lisa, Patrick and I went down to Kenting. Located on the southern end of the island. We took the high speed train down there (which travels from speed upwards of high.) The High speed train got us to Kaohsiung. From there we took a 4 hour bus ride down to the YoYo restort in Kenting. I think we took the wrong bus because the bus we took back to Kaohsiung only took us an hour and a half. I should also note the aggressive underground cabbies that aggressively try and get you in their cabs for a pretty cheap price. I’ve read about them in my lonely planet travel guide, and they drive like maniacs because they get paid per job so they drive around like crazy. We (obviously looking like tourists) got confronted by them a few times.

So Kenting was gorgeous! The southern part of the island is tropical, so the climate is completely different. Yoyo is a 4 or 5 star resort. Our first day there Lisa and I went to the spa and got a relaxing massage. After that we went to the resort restaurant for an incredibly tasty buffet dinner! We went into Kenting after that to look at the different street vendors and for some drinks. We decided to have drinks at this one nice looking bar, I went to grab a table while Lisa and Patrick went to go use the bathrooms, while I was sitting at the table waiting, the bar had this male dancer who came out and was dancing around in a thong, apparently the evenings entertainment…

Later on at the bar a local bought us all a round of beer and some peanuts and welcomed us to Taiwan! We joined the other expats that he bought beer for and met some sketchy guy from Ottawa (we think he was messed up on drugs.) Another expat from Victoria British Columbia was at Kenting on Vacation from China. He was saying that Taiwan is the nicest place to be teaching English because in China and Japan they don’t care if your there or not, and in South Korea your seen as lower class because you are a foreigner. Taiwan is nice to the expats because they don’t want to be associated with China. I can agree that this is very true from the people that go out of their way to understand and help us!

So after the bar we went back to the resort. The next few days we hung around, shopped and went to the beautiful beaches. Unfortunatly We didn’t bring a camera, so I’ll post links to some sights were you can see pictures.

Wednesday we came back and went to a bar in Taipei called Carnegies. There were a lot of expats, all of which were over 30, and none of which taught English. It was nice to talk to people who didn’t teach English for a change, and it was interesting to see the people dancing on the bar.

Saturday we went shopping at a grocery store called Jasons ( which growing up in Ottawa still reminds me of the strip club.) They have foods from all over the world including Kraft Dinner! Shreddies at $10 Canadian a box! Cheese and Yogurt!! We still have yet to find brown sandwich bread, because all the bread here is dessert bread, and its too sweet to eat as a meal.
The weather is freezing and it will be raining for the next week or so. It was very nice to be able to travel down south for a few days. Traveling around here is teaching me very much to relax and go with the flow of things, because you can never quite plan exactly how you are going to get places. Thank God for the friendliness of the Taiwanese people, because they have been very kind at showing these “clueless” expats around.

So no more vacation for a few months now! Some of my family is planning on coming down in April or May, so that will be the next vacation time! Now its getting back into the grind and finding things to occupy us. We are going to be taking Chinese lessons soon, and Lisa is looking into meditation classes to do on the weekends (we’ve grown tired of the bar seen….for now)

So I hope everything back home is going well! And for you and me both its back to the grind this Monday!

Till next time…
Jenny


Kenting link:
http://www.ktnp.gov.tw/eng/home/index.asp

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