Moon Festival and Penghu

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Sorry it has been a few months since I've blogged, but life in Kaohsiung has pretty much been same old same old with a few exceptions. Last month we celebrated the Moon Festival. This is a holiday that everyone has off from school and work and it is a day to have a bbq with family and friends, eat pomelos and look at the moon. That day there were many people lining the streets with their small grills barbecuing with co workers outside their shops and with family outside their apartment buildings. Since the holiday was on a Wednesday, Marco and his employees at the tea shop decided to have their barbecue on Tuesday after they had closed up the shop. That afternoon I decided to make a stop at Costco... big mistake. As soon as I drove up to the parking lot I realized that no matter what country you're in, you should never go to Costco the day before a holiday. The place was a zoo. After I got out of that madhouse, I loaded up my scooter with a case of beer under my feet and some chips and salsa between my legs and headed home. Even though there were only a few people I could speak English with at the barbecue, I still had a great time. They had 2 small grills lined up outside that were full of seafood and some delicious veggies. The chips and salsa were a hit (for many people, it was their first time trying it... one guy asked me if it was Italian food.) After all the beer and wine, I tried some food that I probably wouldn't have tried if I had been sober and if I had not just been told that this was voted one of the top 3 strangest foods in Taiwan. I was told that the Chinese name was 'zhu xie gao' and it was rice on a stick that had been congealed together using pigs blood. I tried the tiniest bite... surprisingly, it wasn't bad.

Other than that, not much else is new in Kaohsiung except for the fact that I'm ready for summer to be over (it's still super hot over here). Also, I haven't been getting too many sub gigs the last few weeks, so last week, I went on vacation instead of waiting around to possibly get called in to work. I decided to go to an island off the coast of Taiwan called Penghu. Penghu gets super windy in the winter (it's actually one of the best places in the world for windsurfing) so I wanted to see it before it got too cold. I was planning to just go on my own and take the 5 hour boat ride from Kaohisung and stay in a super cheap hostel, when the sushi lady that works next to Marco's tea shop (Mickey) invited herself to come with me. Even though her English isn't the best, I was excited to go with someone who knew where to go, what to do, and what to eat in Penghu. Also, she booked us tickets through her travel agent, so for 5,000NT (about $150) I got a plane ticket to and from the island, 2 nights stay in a nice hotel, airport pickup and drop off and about 4 free meals in the hotel- such a great deal!

We got to Penghu around 10 am on Monday and decided to walk around a little bit and grab some lunch. After lunch, we walked to a place called the 4 Eyes Well and ate tea eggs (eggs boiled in Chinese herbal tea- they're supposed to be really good for you). After that, Mickey's friend who lives in Penghu drove us around the island. It was funny because he didn't speak any English and he would drive us from place to place, but he would just sit in the van and wait for us to finish our sightseeing. The first stop on the tour was to the windmills. I thought it was funny that we stopped here because they weren't like the windmills you see in Holland, but rather more like the ones that are lined up along the highway outside Palm Springs. We drove up right underneath it so that we could hear the 'woosh-woosh' sound every time it went around. Our next stop was to an old banyan tree. It was really cool because it looked like about 40 trees outside this small temple, but really it was just one big banyan. There I tried cactus ice cream which was surprisingly tasty. Then we rode across the 'great bridge' to the ancient residences. It's an area where there are all of these old houses (hence the name) and I was surprised that many people still actually lived there. My favorite part was seeing the walls that had been constructed out of coral rocks. We walked around for a bit and I tried some almond tea. At our final stop, we checked out the columnar basalt and took a few pictures before making our way back to the hotel. On our way, we decided to stop for dinner where there was definitely some miscommunication... I ended up buying 3 dinners that night. First we stopped to pick up some sushi and then we pulled up at a veggie restaurant where Mickey told me to get something for dinner. When I asked why (since I had just gotten the sushi) she told me that things are not open late in Penghu and that we got the sushi in case we get hungry later on. So, I went through the buffet and loaded up my box and then hopped back into the van to go back to the hotel. Only when we got out of the van, we weren't at the hotel, but another restaurant so that Mickey and her friend could eat a non veggie meal. We ended up sitting in the restaurant and they ordered several veggie dishes for me to try. By the end of that meal, I was stuffed and still had 2 more dinners waiting for me in the car!... oh well.

The next morning, we went downstairs and had our free breakfast at the hotel before renting a scooter. Mickey said that our first stop would be to get some peanuts. There was a lot of confusion at first because she didn't pronounce the 't' in the word peanuts, so it sounded more like penis. I wondered what in the hell she meant when she said we were going to "eat sweet peanus together". It was only after about 5 minutes that I realized she was talking about peanut brittle. That wasn't the only confusion for the day. I thought that we were only going to pick up the peanuts, but soon after hopping on the back of the scooter, I realized that I was on Mickey's Penghu tour. First we stopped at Aimen Beach. She asked me if I wanted to go swimming and had I known we were stopping at a beach, I would have brought my bathing suite. It's probably for the best that I didn't though- it was super windy and I could only imagine trying to dry off with the sand blowing all over the place. After that we went to get the peanuts that are made in an old house by an 80 year old man. It took us a bit to figure out where he was, but it was definitely worth the hunt. Mickey said that we were lucky because the past 3 times she'd been to Penghu, he wasn't there when she came by. Then we hopped back on the scooter and continued on the Mickey tour. We drove under the Shuncheng Gate and into an interesting community with a mix of old houses that are in ruins with inhabited places next door. As I was walking around taking pictures, I got an eerie feeling... maybe it was because I could see inside these houses that looked like someone should live there besides the fact that the door was broken and there were leaves in the kitchen or maybe it was the shriek of the wind, but suddenly I turned around and went to go find Mickey as fast as I could. We went to get a cup of coffee and after that, we were planning to go to the next stop on the Mickey tour, but the thought of getting on that scooter again made my back hurt and my legs fall asleep. We got some hei sha tang (Taiwanese ice dessert) and then we rested for a bit before heading over to the Rainbow bridge (an area that was super windy). Then we stopped off at the Guanyin Temple before going to dinner at a veggie restaurant I had read about in my guidebook. And that was pretty much the end of the trip. We didn't leave until the next evening, but on Wednesday morning I woke up with stomach pains and ended up puking several times. Once it was time to check out of the hotel, I was still feeling like I couldn't keep anything down and I was super nervous for the plane ride home, so I went to see a doctor. I started feeling better after that and luckily, I didn't puke on the plane. So, aside from the last day, it was a great vacation filled with a lot of eating and some sightseeing along the way 😉

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