Kenny and Annemarie Come to Taiwan: Episode I - Kaohsiung

… Not that long ago in a city not that far away, our good friends Kenny and Annemarie came to visit us in Taiwan, first landing in Kaohsiung. Amanda and I met K&A at Kaohsiung Airport and therewith our “Island-Style” adventure began. 

We started with three days in our favorite city, showing K&A all the things we love so much about Kaohsiung, and why it has become a home away from home for us. 

On the way to our hostel from the airport, we stopped at Formosa Boulevard MRT stations’ “Dome of Light”, recently voted the second most beautiful subway station in the world (although there are differing opinions and rankings on this most controversial of matters). After a short photo shoot, we headed on to the Tuntex Skytower (85大樓 Ba Wu Da Lou) where we had made a reservation at the restaurant on the 77F so that we could celebrate Kenny’s fortieth birthday. 

Dinner was really nice, albeit a fairly “deep-end dive” into Taiwanese cuisine. We all had a set meal that included a number of small courses such as abalone, ducks foot, langoustines, sharks fin soup, steamed grouper and then for dessert, a sweet soup with fresh fruit and pastries. Kenny was the only person in the right frame of mind to eat the ducks foot, and when it came to clearing that course from the table, our waitress was very concerned (borderline distraught) that we had not eaten our ducks feet. We assured her that everything was great and that our stomachs weren’t used to such food. For ethical reasons, we opted out of the shark’s fin soup course and we were presented with additional langoustines to make up for the difference. Although, after the fact, a Taiwanese friend of ours assured us that it would have been shark’s fin “style” soup and that serving real shark’s fin is now illegal in Taiwan. 

The following day, we took K&A to the Lotus Pond, then met up with our good friend, Stanley, who took us to one of our favorite spots, a cafe on the ocean-side of Cháishān 柴山. There, we had some iced tea, coffee and biscuits, and enjoyed watching the sun slowly descend as a multitude of large container and freight ships came and went into/out of Kaohsiung harbor. By this point, we were “well-basted” from the +30C temperature and the +90% humidity, and so, we retired to our hostel to freshen-up before again heading out to be taken to a “very Chinese hot-pot restaurant”, as described by Stanley. This turned out to mean that it was spicy enough to burn a hole through a NASA space shuttle’s reinforced carbon-carbon heat shield. It was a delicious meal, albeit, Amanda and I elected to “temper” our spices with the addition of some dairy-based broth intended to lessen the effect. 

On our last day in Kaohsiung, we visited the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, the Love River, Lao Song Beef Noodles Restaurant (one of our favorites), Yuánhēng Temple, went for shaved ice, and finished the day at Central Park at a small live outdoor concert put on by a local band. After the concert, as if we hadn’t eaten enough that day already, we then had some delicious snacks and sake at a Japanese BBQ restaurant in Central Park. Quite bloated and ready to burst, we then said our farewells to Stanley and Vicky and retired for the evening, ready to start our Penghu adventure the next day with our train ride to Taipei (to be penned by Amanda).

Kenny, Annemarie & Amanda at Formosa Boulevard's Dome of Light

The Lotus Pond

Annemarie & Amanda at the Lotus Pond

The Spring Pavilion at the Lotus Pond

Amanda, Annemarie & Kenny

Lotus Pond Temple

Cold drinks at a cafe on Chaishan

View of the ocean

Ships!

Vicky & Stanley at the spicy Chinese hot-pot restaurant

Kenny, Brett & Amanda

Kenny can read good and do other things good, too!

Yuánhēng Temple

Yuánhēng Temple interior

Shaved ice with Stanley (angry Stanley)

Japanese BBQ Farewell meal

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!

Takao Railway Station

A father and son kite flying at Takao Railway Station

Octopus Kite!

Yuan Heng Temple

Stanley and Vicky!

Vicky, Amanda and Stanley!

The Tuntex Sky Tower in the background

Brett and Stanley about to enjoy some chua bing.

Amanda and her mom at Takenori Temple (武德殿)

Brett, Milton and Amanda after a delicious meal at Amy's

Dumplings, dessert, and Yuan Heng Temple (元亨寺)

Yesterday Stanley took us for some delicious rice dumplings (filled with pork, egg, mushrooms, and covered in a warm peanutty sauce), rice cake, and intestine soup. This was our second day in a row eating intestines as Stanley had served us some the night before as an appetizer at his restaurant. Once you get past the idea that you’re eating entrails, they’re not so bad! Fittingly, they kind of taste like hot dogs. Think about that next time you have one of those! 

We each had a bowl of intestine soup, rice cake with pork, and rice dumpling with pork.

 
After our delicious lunch, Stanley drove us to Yuan Heng Temple, one of the largest temples in southern Taiwan. It is on the side of Shoushan and is home to many beautiful structures as well as a large number of male and female monks. Brett and Stanley both took quite a few pictures, though I don’t know if ours will be up on the blog anytime soon. Brett’s been pretty preoccupied with sorting through his photos from Singapore!

A monk walks down a corridor at Yuan Heng Temple

Brett & Amanda

Stanley & Brett

Buddha statues at Yuan Heng Temple

One of many towers at Yuan Heng Temple

Yuan Heng Temple

After Yuan Heng, we went for chua bin or shaved ice. I had mango ice, Brett had mixed fruit with “milk ice” (made by shaving frozen milk), and Stanley had pudding and milk ice covered in condensed milk. Too delicious!

Mixed fruit chua bin

We spent the evening relaxing, but eventually went out to grab a snack to eat while watching the Godfather. For a long time we’ve suspected the people on one of the top floors of using the elevator to go between upper floors, thus making the wait at the bottom a long one. Last night we finally shared an elevator with the culprits - a brother and sister no older than seven years. When the elevator doors opened and the children realized a pair of waiguoren were coming aboard, the little girl almost lost her mind with excitement. She took in a huge breath of air and held it in her cheeks like a blowfish, while also grinning ear to ear. They both stared up at us, eyes twinkling with awe. As we got off the elevator and Brett called “Bye-bye!”, the girl looked ready to explode as she and her brother called “BYE-BYE!” after us.

I know no one will pity me for this sentiment, but I’m getting sad that our summer of funemployment is coming to a close! We’re handing back our internet device this afternoon but we’ll be reconnected on the evening of the 25th when we arrive at our training hotel.