Advertisement
Published: January 9th 2009
Edit Blog Post
My travel crew, Xiao Liuqiu Island
Off the south-west coast of Taiwan For more of my photos, or to buy my book, please visit www.nickkembel.com New Year's Eve for me this year had nothing to with the countdown; and getting stuck in a huge line-up of people trying to get on the MRT to downtown Taipei wasn't my cup of tea either. But taking advantage of four days off and getting out of the city for a little road trip to southern Taiwan is what was on my mind.
After some midnight beers and shots with close friends at the pub, we caught a 4am bus to
Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second largest city. We were happy to find that our bus of choice offered enormous lazy-boy style chairs as well as fold out TVs with a variety of Nintendo games to pass the the time.
I enjoyed having a chance to get a feel for Kaohsiung, to compare and contrast how life would have been in this city, which I almost chose to live in when moving to Taiwan. One immediately noticeable difference is that the air quality in Kaohsiung is substantially more poor, given that Kaohsiung is located at the heart of Taiwan's south-western ultra industrial area. It actually
Kaohsiung Harbour
The 6th largest port in the world reminded me of being back in China, that's how bad it was!
A more pleasant point of observation is that Kaohsiung is built around
one of the largest ports in the world, giving much of the city a real pleasant waterfront feel. There are many vantage points from which you can catch great views of the city and harbor, including the
Old British Consulate and Teahouse at Dakou, which includes a Taiwanese temple dedicated to two Dutch gods (colonialism does some strange things...).
The pleasant
Love River also runs through the heart of the city, and supposedly in recent years the local government has made a real effort to clean up this area, lining the sides of the river with decent walking paths, eateries, and parks. Our hostel was located just adjacent to the Love River, a perfect base for exploring the region.
For our second day we got out of the city by catching a taxi to Dong Gang (Western Harbour), passing through a major industrial zone, which I can confidently say was the ugliest place I have ever been to in this country, with some of the worst air pollution I have ever seen. At
Cheesy, I won't deny
Rocking the scooters on Xiao Liuqiu Island Dong Gang we caught a ferry to
Xiao (Small) Liu Qiu, a tiny island off the south-west coast of Taiwan.
At the pleasant little
Baisha Harbor we rented some scooters and cruised around the island for the afternoon. We saw a variety of lookout points, cliffs, beaches, temples and caves. Riding scooters in rural Taiwan, and especially the small islands off the coast, is almost certainly one of my favorite experiences of this beautiful country. It is times like that remind why I am here.
On day three we walked north along the Love River to
Chaishan Nature Reserve, also known as
the Monkey Mountain, thanks to it's highly visible macaque population.
We started our ascent of the mountain within the
enormous Longchuan Temple, even cheating a little by taking the only elevator I have ever seen inside of a Buddhist temple. We peeked into different sections of the temple, including a massive kitchen area, and we were greeted by passing monks and nuns with 'Ami Tuo Fo', a term that literally means the Buddha and is chanted as a meditative mantra, but in southern Taiwan is also used as a sort of 'hello'.
Exiting the
rear of the complex, we continued on into the forest, where we meandered into the network of trails in the mountains. After about an hour we came across a
small army of resident macaques, which were particularly fearless and aggressive. There were many Taiwanese people passing through, but very few were giving much attention to the monkeys, because they are known to come after people and grab for any objects they can. We took some photos, and then witnessed a small territorial clash between a small and much larger monkey, and then decided to make our way back down as the sun was quickly approaching the horizon.
On the way back to down we again passed Longchuan Temple, but this time in the dark, with a beautiful setting of
glowing lanterns throughout the complex, and a great view of Kaohsiung at night.
For our final day we moved on to
Tainan, the
oldest city in Taiwan, with ancient temples, city walls and palaces at every turn. Truthfully speaking, I was not as impressed with Tainan as I had expected to be, though it was interesting nonetheless.
We started our day by strolling through the
Traditional Food Alley,
a pleasant walkway of food stalls, tourist junk, and traditional palm readers and fortune tellers. At the end of the street there is a 250 year old stone arch, and then across the street is the
Confucius Temple, which I found very serene, simple, and extremely reminiscent of the main Confucius temple at Qufu, Shandong Province, China (see my older blog). It is interesting to note that all of Confucius' descendants are traced to this day, and this elite family fled China to Taiwan at the time of Communist takeover.
After that we strolled though the city, taking in a variety of temples, with names like
Wufei (Five Concubines) Temple, the
Altar of Heaven, the
Official God of War Temple, and finishing off the day at the
Eternal Golden Castle. That was our dose of history and temples for a while, and so we jumped on the High Speed Rail to whiz back home to Taipei.
For more of my photos, or to buy my book, please visit www.nickkembel.com
Advertisement
Tot: 0.093s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0364s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb