Here's a fence disguised as bamboo.
Through the Streets of Taiwan
I was staying at a friend's house in
the suburb of TienMu, which when translated means "sky
mother". It wasn't an actual house (like the kind in
the US) but it was located on the roof landing of a small
7-story condominium building. It was small, but it did
have a small refrigerator and an air conditioner, which
was absolutely essential for the hot summer days. We did
buy two small plastic fans (in Kaohsiung) to use, but
everyone thought we were nuts for buying fans, since we
could get them in the US. You couldn't go anywhere
without sweating, but beware if you keep guzzling down
liquids- there are very few public restrooms! The gas
wasn't turned on, so we had no hot water- but it was so
hot that it was nice to take cool showers.
Here's a fence disguised as bamboo.
We visited a number of different sites during our stay in Taiwan. We passed by the outside of the CKS Memorial Hall, which was built for the former dictator for which the airport is named after. We also passed through the 228 Peace Park, which honors those killed in the riot between the Taiwanese civilians and the Chinese police on February 28, 1947. We hopped on the mass rail transit, like the commuter trains in the US, to travel down to Taipei City Hall and passed by Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. We took the bus up to Yangming Shan (Yangming Mountain) one day and it started raining briefly. Too bad we had left the comforter covers outside to dry!
On one particular evening, we stopped off at the Shihlin Night Market, which is in the suburb of Shihlin. The area is filled with vendors sellign traditional Taiwanese foods like Taiwanese sausages and shaved ice desserts. Hundreds of people file through the night market, buying evering from food to watches to underwear! (It's kind of like a flea market).
On Monday, we traveled down to Kaohsiung, which is the second largest city in Taiwan. It is the biggest harbor in Taiwan. We took the Guo Guang Hao, which is like the Greyhound Bus. There wasn't that many people on the bus, so I got two seats to myself! It took us about 5 hours, stopping off at the Westlake Resort for a bathroom break.
While in Kaohsiung, we visited Chengching Hu, which is a large park with a lake. Many of the local residents exercise by walking through the park early in the morning. One of my favorite sights was the fences masked as bamboo. We also visited HsiZi Wan, which is a beach. We didn't go swimming but we did visit the university nearby and caught glimpses of bright lime green butterflies!
HsiZi Wan (Sign at the entrance of the tunnel to the beach)
We also visited the city of T'ainan, which is around an hour away from Kaohsiung. "T'ai" means "terrace" in Mandarin Chinese, and there are four cities in Taiwan that have this character- T'aipei (North Terrace), T'aichung (Middle Terrace), T'aitung (East Terrace) and T'ainan (South Terrace). T'ainan county is where the current president Chen Shui-Bian grew up and took a brief visit to his childhood home. Many flock to visit this site and the road leading up to the house was filled with vendors selling Chen Shui-Bian memorabilia.
Cheng Ching Hu front gate sign