To Taiwan and Back Again...: Kaohsiung with Mom, Day 2!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Kaohsiung with Mom, Day 2!

On Monday we woke up in Kaohsiung ready for another day of sight seeing. We took Mom to the rail museum and gardens that we visited over CNY with Stanley, and then went for lunch at Stanley’s restaurant. It was Mom’s first time using chopsticks to eat pork ribs in soup, and she did very well! I always knew I got my superior hand-eye coordination from somewhere. Stanley’s awesome family treated us very well, as usual, and my mother was declared to be very, very tall. Fair enough. She’s 5’11 and towers over many other women back home, but in Taiwan she’s a marvel.

After that, we went with Stanley and Vicky to the gigantic Yuan Hen Buddhist temple for some photos and touring around. We took a walk all around the exterior of the temple, reading about the life and legend of Siddharta. After that, the day was declared hot enough that we needed to have some shaved ice for dessert. We had a lot of different things going on at the shaved ice place, including soy jelly, strawberry milk shaved ice, and chocolate shaved ice topped with sliced bananas. Vicky also ran out and got us some Hong Kong style waffles, a popular street snack that is too delicious for words. They were so good, they prompted my search for this amazing thingie to make them at home. That’s going on my Christmas 2012 wish list, by the way.

Stanley and Vicky headed back to work, and we went back to Harbour 60 to get out of the rain. The lovely Eric at Harbour 60 let us chill in the common area for a few hours despite having checked out that morning. Our luggage had been hanging out in his office all day because he’s awesome. We eventually headed back out, Mom’s rolling suitcase in tow, to meet our dear friend Milton for lunch. We were sad to miss Jenny as she’s studying in the US at the moment, but it was so nice to catch up over Shanghai-style food with Milton. He told us lots of interesting stuff about Taiwan’s history (as usual... our Taiwanese friends know so much more about their country’s history than we do about ours). It was really nice to see our friends again so soon after our CNY visit. After dinner, we headed back to Taichung via HSR. Another great weekend in Kaohsiung!