Tainan → Kaohsiung
I came to Taiwan just a touch over 5 years ago, stepping off the cargo ship in Kaohsiung. My first little trip through the country i made my way up the west coast to Taipei, then flew to Hong Kong before crossing into China to do a circle around the country, after which i came back to Taiwan to do a bit more traveling and assess my options.
I've been wanting for a while to revisit some of the places i visited back then now that i can speak and read Chinese reasonably well. I spent about a month in Taiwan the first couple times around, but as i mentioned in my last post, some of the experiences i had didn't really stick with me. It's neat to have LiveJournal to look back on what i wrote, but even stuff i thought was interesting enough to record at the time has completely vanished from my brain. I wondered the other day if it might have been because i was drinking more alcohol back then. Without a doubt alcohol trashes your brain cells, but now i'm leaning more toward the idea that it's just the way my memories are stored.
I am not sure if everyone's memories work like this, but i compress together associated experiences and bundle them into a nostalgic fantasy of a time and a place that - once it's been filed away - no longer reflects the reality. And i don't care. I embrace the rose tint. Why not? I can't turn back time. It doesn't matter what really happened, it only matters how i remembered it. Sometimes i think my memories incorporate imagery from television or movies. Places i never went, things i never did - they're blended in with memories of the same genre, and now they're just as much a part of my past as the stuff that actually happened to me.
So when i wrote 5 years ago that i found a dive bar in Changhua that i absolutely do not remember at all today, i think it's because - while it might have been a unique experience at the time - it ended up compressed into the generalized nostalgia blob of visiting dive bars on the road, and most of those experiences have been pretty similar and ultimately unremarkable.
But every now and then when you're traveling there is an experience that sticks out, one that stays with you for years afterwards, for whatever odd reason. And for me, that was my day trip out to see the 草山月世界 Caoshan "Moon World" badlands of Tainan. It was thoroughly exciting for me back then, because i could barely read or speak Chinese, and i didn't know how to use the public bicycles (if there even were any in Tainan at the time) so i had to take a local bus out to an eastern suburb, then take a rural bus out to a village in the mountains, then walk along a mountain road to try get to the badlands, leaving enough time to walk back to the village to get the last bus of the day.
I never made it to the so-called 大峽谷 Grand Canyon. I didn't have enough time. I headed back to the village, night fell, the bus didn't come, a drunk guy tried to take me on his moped back to the city, then he thought better of it, so we kept waiting, and eventually the bus came. It was an adventure!
This time felt like less of an adventure. I biked out to the suburb of 新化 Xinhua and went straight to the place where last time i had had 杏仁豆腐 almond tofu. It was a dish i had never tried before and the lady at the counter had advised me to get it when i fumbled over my Chinese attempting to order 豆花 bean flower/tofu pudding. This time i just casually ordered a bowl. It was still delicious, but it was merely a pit-stop to cool off, not an adventure in itself. Then i headed out on my bike up into the hills.
Yeah, that was a bit more adventurous. I feel like i am pretty experienced with bike touring now, but it's different on a heavy share bike with only three gears that was never intended to be ridden up mountains. The hills out back of Tainan are hardly the kilometers-high Central Mountain Range, but they're not nothing. There was a couple hundred meters of climb between the city and the spot where i remember getting off the bus last time, with one especially steep hill leading up to a village with a leisure farm, a Michelin-rated restaurant and a handful of temples.
One of the best things about temples in Taiwan is that they are real places of shelter. Something that disappointed me in my travels across rural Canada and the US was that churches in that part of the world are not. Most of the time they are locked and bolted, like a nightclub that only opens Sunday mornings. In Taiwan, the temples are open all day, and some of them into the night too. And in rural areas, temples have free water. Some of them even have vending machines filled with cans of sweet tea, grass jelly and sarsparilla. When i made it to the top of the 大坑 Dakeng hill, there was a temple with a little 亭 tíng out the front with benches, electric fans, a sink and a hot/cold water machine! I gratefully sat down to cool off before continuing.
Funny thing about 岡林 Ganglin (the village at the badlands turn-off) - it has a large, stone Christian church with a steeple and everything. I think i went there last time seeing if i could get some help and - surprise, surprise - fucking locked. This time round it was Sunday, so i am going to guess it was open, but i didn't care because i was no longer dependent on the spotty bus schedule of rural Taiwan. The little eatery opposite where i had sheltered and met the drunk guy last time around was closed.
I actually think i met the drunk guy again. I headed toward the badlands and paused at the first lookout point, which was just as overgrown with bamboo as the last time. No view at all, but a good shade from the sun. And up rolled this old, toothless man on a moped. I am not sure if he recognized me or if he was just being nosy. I said i had been here before on foot and wanted to go see the parts of the moon world that i wasn't able to reach before, hoping he would remember. But if he did, he didn't show it. He explained me the route, while i was standing right next to the tourist map, practiced a bit of virtually unintelligible English on me, wished me well, then zoomed back off to the village from whence he came.
My original plan was to get to the Grand Canyon and then see how i felt about going on, because in theory i could go even further over the mountain back roads and pop out in Kaohsiung, although that would require several hundred more meters of steep climbs. The further i went up the road, the less inclined i felt to tackle those climbs. It was brutally humid, and even getting up the smallest hills took a lot out of me.
But what a place! It's full-ass jungle out there. Bamboo forests, which creak and groan and make the most hideously scary sounds in the wind. Palm trees and elephant grass and undergrowth so thick you wonder how any human beings made it up there in the first place. But somehow we did make it, slashing down the jungle and planting fruits instead. Everywhere there isn't wilderness, there's food. Pineapples. Bananas. Dragonfruit. Mangos. Longans. I find cycling through Taiwan incredibly comforting, because everywhere is food. On the plains you are surrounded by rice and corn and sweet potatoes and chives and cabbage and beans. On the hills, fruit and tea, far as the eye can see.
I did start to get a bit anxious, however. The sky was getting dark, and just like the time i got caught in the farmland out back of Taoyuan, my phone had been saying for a couple hours that it was going to rain, but then out there in the hills i didn't have any signal to download an update. I felt a few specks, and started taking note of huts and temples as i passed. Still, i pressed on. I had to make it to the Grand Canyon!
It's right here that i should have inserted an epic picture of Taiwan's (not so) Grand Canyon. But - although i did make it - none of my photos came out. The sky was so overcast it created an ominous twilight, and the air was so damp that my phone screen and camera lens kept steaming up. There was a car full of youngsters there who remarked 好厲害, "how tough/impressive"! They left. There was an older couple too who chatted with me and gave me a banana. I know i've said it before, but i'll say it again - there is nothing better that you can offer a bike tourer or hitchhiker than free water and/or fruit. Keep it on hand in your car and you could make someone very happy.
But this couple went the next step. She asked if i had 雨衣 rain clothes, and when i said no she pulled a disposable poncho out of her backpack and handed it to me. She said that they were down from Taichung...
YO! WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST.
Air raid sirens just went off and at first i thought it might be typhoon warning, but i didn't think it was that close yet. Then i thought oh crap, this is it, China has launched the missiles! I could hear some other hotel guests in the hallway outside my room chattering nervously. I was just getting up to see what was happening, then checked my phone and there was an emergency warning message on the lock screen. Ministry of National Defense alert, air raid warning system drill. They didn't have that last time i was here. Good thing i have clean underwear. Anyway, back to our regularly-scheduled programming.
...they were down from Taichung and that they were hikers. The best part about this conversation was that they said 爬山 so at least i know somebody in Taiwan will understand me if i use that terminology for going hiking. Before they left they offered me another gift - a dragonfruit.
Now, equipped with a dragonfruit and a poncho and a phone with no signal and no ability to take photos any more, i resolved to head to the T junction where i could choose to head to Kaohsiung, or book it back to Tainan. I didn't make it that far. The skies exploded. I quickly put the poncho on, but as has been my experience with these things in the past, they don't do much to actually keep you dry in a serious tropical downpour, they're just a ritual to give you a sense that at least you're doing something. I cycled to the crossing and checked the route to Kaohsiung. It was a single-lane road that started with a big hill. You know, fuck that. I decided to head back the way i came, which also featured hills, but less of them, and the first one was down.
I tried sheltering in a hut, then under a tree, but none of them were especially dry. So i powered through until i found a temple i remembered passing on the way in. This was my favorite kind of Taiwanese temple. The one that's just in someone's garage or front room. Some foreigners i've met dismissively call these things shrines, but they're wrong. Shrines exist in Taiwan too. They are just one orange and one joss stick and one statue in a nook under a tree. These mini temples, on the other hand, are actual temples. They are signposted and have their own names and there's usually an attendant nearby keeping an eye on things.
That's what this one was. There was an altar, a couple of statues, some fruit offerings, some joss sticks, banners hanging outside, but it still felt like some dude's garage. Desk piled up with various paperwork. Calendar and clock on the wall. A couch and some chairs. Tea set. Coffee machine. I pulled my bike up outside and the old guy pottering around said "come in, come in, it's a temple", so i did. He offered me a seat, and i refused several times because i didn't want to make his chairs wet. In the end we compromised and he gave me a plastic stool.
We chatted a bit as he brewed up some green tea. He said he had lived in Taitung for 17 years and then eventually came back to this little house in the middle of nowhere because it was his 老家, his ancestral home. He said his son was in Kaohsiung. It's interesting to talk to local people in the south because they really do stay in the south. In Taipei you meet people "from the south" who left it long ago because Taipei is where you go to make money and (for the especially ambitious) springboard out to Shanghai or Singapore or San Francisco. But then there's this other - much larger - group of southerners who just stick it out in the south, and i guess that's what helps to give it a bit of a different feeling to the north.
He offerered fruits, which i refused, then candies, which i accepted. They were these preserved fruit jelly type things that i've never bought for myself because i don't know if i'll like a whole bag, but actually was really good. I had a 橙皮 orange peel one and something that i asked if it was 山楂 hawthorn fruit and it wasn't, but it was a similar sweet and sour pit fruit that he earnestly told me was good for my health. It's part of that whole Chinese herbal remedy stuff where goji berries do one thing and jujubes do another thing and lychees do another and you have to drink all of it in balance because bla bla bla snake oil. But, you know, even though it's nonsense, i accept there is power in the belief. I mean, i've been slathering aloe all over myself for the past week, even though it's not scientifically proven to do anything for sunburn. So i'm grateful he balanced my yin and yang or whatever by giving me the right candy. It did cheer me up.
I asked if he knew when the rain would stop, since i had no signal in the hills. He said that it'd probably keep going to nightfall, and that it was the start of the fifth typhoon of the season. I thought it was interesting that in the English media they always refer to typhoons by name, but he just went by number. Perhaps if you live in the hills and you get rained on all the fucking time one typhoon just blends into the next one? At the time i had to rely on his weather report, but when i got back into signal radius i saw the typhoon was still east of the Philippines (although heading directly for Kaohsiung) so nothing to worry about just yet.
Together we plotted my route out of the hills. I said i had originally planned to go to Kaohsiung over the mountain, but the road didn't look safe to travel in the heavy rain, which is why i had turned back. He suggested that instead of going south back over the Dakeng hill, i instead go north to the main road, which would be a bit longer, but i could cycle right to a train station where i could leave the bike and then train it south. After committing the route to memory and finishing my umpteenth cup of green tea, i bid the kind man adieu. He wouldn't let me leave without taking two mangos ("please, just take them, we have so many fruits here"), and said that he hoped i stop by again next time i am in the neighborhood.
And then i went back out, into the pouring rain.
Eventually it stopped, so i checked my map, checked the weather report and snapped a selfie. My temple friend was right on the money with his advice. Going back to the main road was a great idea. The hills were manageable, and there were some shops and diners along the route, so if the rain started again at least i could get shelter and food. I got to the train station, went into the toilet and changed all my clothes, then bought a ticket to Zuoying - an outer suburb of Kaohsiung as recommended by temple guy. It's right next to the 蓮池潭 Lotus Pond and 龍虎塔 Dragon and Tiger Pagodas, a super duper Chinese-y corner of Kaohsiung that was still on my to visit list. I didn't go to his recommended "cheap" hotel, because i am even cheaper, but i did get a seedy motel with an in-room condom dispenser where i gratefully showered and crashed after a hearty meal.
The next morning i took a bike and lazily cycled round the lake, remembering exactly why i love Kaohsiung. It's bigger, wider and more laid-back than the cities further north. The roads are wide, the sidewalks are wide. The weather is hotter and more oppressive, but the architecture is less claustrophobic. There are way more restaurants and food stalls where you can eat outside. There are trees to shade under, and buildings with porches (even if those porches are usually crammed full of mopeds). Because of the outdoor vendors and more casual lifestyle, the smells of different foods hang in the air, instead of just the smell of vehicle fumes like up north. Which isn't to say there aren't a ton of mopeds, because there are. Very few roads have pedestrian crossing lights, if you're on foot you just have to go when the mopeds go and hope for the best. But it's a delight to travel by Youbike, whose stations are everywhere.
I decided to jump on the ferry and go over to Cijin, which is the barrier island that protects Kaohsiung harbor. The south side has one of the few commercial beaches in Taiwan. I sat down to eat and watched some locals tanning and surfing. Even in a country where the mainstream culture is to hide from the sun at all costs, and to never go out on the sea except to catch fish (or better yet just send Indonesian and Filipino migrants to do it), there's subcultures who buck the trend. That's something important to remember. All my generalizations about a place are just that. Any place with 23 million people is going to have groups of people into pretty much anything under the sun.
I tried to cycle to the end of Cijin island, which i am sure that i was able to do last time i was here, but perhaps it was one of those compressed memories. Maybe the memory i have of sitting opposite a control tower at the entrance to a harbor watching the ships come in wasn't from Kaohsiung harbor after all? Could i have done it in Shenzhen? Hong Kong? Where else have i visited with a harbor like that? Maybe there used to be a cycle route up there that was since closed off? I did cycle along a sea wall that Google Maps said was a greenway and then get blocked by a bunch of fences so i guess it's possible. But perhaps i just imagined the whole thing.
Never mind, i took the car ferry back to Kaohsiung mainland and then made my way downtown to find a hotel.
And it's at that hotel i remain. Yesterday, even though it was a very short ride that didn't leave the city, wiped me out. Perhaps my body just needs a break after 8 days of non-stop travel. Fortunately i still have a bit longer before i need to head back. Kaohsiung is such a comfortable, happy city for me i know i could chill here all week and then just take the bullet train home. But i do still want to see Taitung again, which was the other city in Taiwan that i really liked the first time round. Everyone says i should go to Kenting National Park down on the southern tip of the island, but i'm not sure if i want to take a bus out there since i'm worried i'll get stuck in a place that's very expensive and full of tourists. I expect that's what my week in the Peloponnese is going to end up like, so for this trip i think i'd prefer to stick to my more meandering version of tourism where i don't really go anywhere exciting in particular. I only have two weeks off work, so i want to make the most of not feeling bothered by anything, and the best way to not feel bothered is to not go anywhere in particular.
Well, except for the Caoshan Moon World, where apparently i am cursed to never go without drama, but at least the drama is memorable.
I've been wanting for a while to revisit some of the places i visited back then now that i can speak and read Chinese reasonably well. I spent about a month in Taiwan the first couple times around, but as i mentioned in my last post, some of the experiences i had didn't really stick with me. It's neat to have LiveJournal to look back on what i wrote, but even stuff i thought was interesting enough to record at the time has completely vanished from my brain. I wondered the other day if it might have been because i was drinking more alcohol back then. Without a doubt alcohol trashes your brain cells, but now i'm leaning more toward the idea that it's just the way my memories are stored.
I am not sure if everyone's memories work like this, but i compress together associated experiences and bundle them into a nostalgic fantasy of a time and a place that - once it's been filed away - no longer reflects the reality. And i don't care. I embrace the rose tint. Why not? I can't turn back time. It doesn't matter what really happened, it only matters how i remembered it. Sometimes i think my memories incorporate imagery from television or movies. Places i never went, things i never did - they're blended in with memories of the same genre, and now they're just as much a part of my past as the stuff that actually happened to me.
So when i wrote 5 years ago that i found a dive bar in Changhua that i absolutely do not remember at all today, i think it's because - while it might have been a unique experience at the time - it ended up compressed into the generalized nostalgia blob of visiting dive bars on the road, and most of those experiences have been pretty similar and ultimately unremarkable.
But every now and then when you're traveling there is an experience that sticks out, one that stays with you for years afterwards, for whatever odd reason. And for me, that was my day trip out to see the 草山月世界 Caoshan "Moon World" badlands of Tainan. It was thoroughly exciting for me back then, because i could barely read or speak Chinese, and i didn't know how to use the public bicycles (if there even were any in Tainan at the time) so i had to take a local bus out to an eastern suburb, then take a rural bus out to a village in the mountains, then walk along a mountain road to try get to the badlands, leaving enough time to walk back to the village to get the last bus of the day.
I never made it to the so-called 大峽谷 Grand Canyon. I didn't have enough time. I headed back to the village, night fell, the bus didn't come, a drunk guy tried to take me on his moped back to the city, then he thought better of it, so we kept waiting, and eventually the bus came. It was an adventure!
This time felt like less of an adventure. I biked out to the suburb of 新化 Xinhua and went straight to the place where last time i had had 杏仁豆腐 almond tofu. It was a dish i had never tried before and the lady at the counter had advised me to get it when i fumbled over my Chinese attempting to order 豆花 bean flower/tofu pudding. This time i just casually ordered a bowl. It was still delicious, but it was merely a pit-stop to cool off, not an adventure in itself. Then i headed out on my bike up into the hills.
Yeah, that was a bit more adventurous. I feel like i am pretty experienced with bike touring now, but it's different on a heavy share bike with only three gears that was never intended to be ridden up mountains. The hills out back of Tainan are hardly the kilometers-high Central Mountain Range, but they're not nothing. There was a couple hundred meters of climb between the city and the spot where i remember getting off the bus last time, with one especially steep hill leading up to a village with a leisure farm, a Michelin-rated restaurant and a handful of temples.
One of the best things about temples in Taiwan is that they are real places of shelter. Something that disappointed me in my travels across rural Canada and the US was that churches in that part of the world are not. Most of the time they are locked and bolted, like a nightclub that only opens Sunday mornings. In Taiwan, the temples are open all day, and some of them into the night too. And in rural areas, temples have free water. Some of them even have vending machines filled with cans of sweet tea, grass jelly and sarsparilla. When i made it to the top of the 大坑 Dakeng hill, there was a temple with a little 亭 tíng out the front with benches, electric fans, a sink and a hot/cold water machine! I gratefully sat down to cool off before continuing.
Funny thing about 岡林 Ganglin (the village at the badlands turn-off) - it has a large, stone Christian church with a steeple and everything. I think i went there last time seeing if i could get some help and - surprise, surprise - fucking locked. This time round it was Sunday, so i am going to guess it was open, but i didn't care because i was no longer dependent on the spotty bus schedule of rural Taiwan. The little eatery opposite where i had sheltered and met the drunk guy last time around was closed.
I actually think i met the drunk guy again. I headed toward the badlands and paused at the first lookout point, which was just as overgrown with bamboo as the last time. No view at all, but a good shade from the sun. And up rolled this old, toothless man on a moped. I am not sure if he recognized me or if he was just being nosy. I said i had been here before on foot and wanted to go see the parts of the moon world that i wasn't able to reach before, hoping he would remember. But if he did, he didn't show it. He explained me the route, while i was standing right next to the tourist map, practiced a bit of virtually unintelligible English on me, wished me well, then zoomed back off to the village from whence he came.
My original plan was to get to the Grand Canyon and then see how i felt about going on, because in theory i could go even further over the mountain back roads and pop out in Kaohsiung, although that would require several hundred more meters of steep climbs. The further i went up the road, the less inclined i felt to tackle those climbs. It was brutally humid, and even getting up the smallest hills took a lot out of me.
But what a place! It's full-ass jungle out there. Bamboo forests, which creak and groan and make the most hideously scary sounds in the wind. Palm trees and elephant grass and undergrowth so thick you wonder how any human beings made it up there in the first place. But somehow we did make it, slashing down the jungle and planting fruits instead. Everywhere there isn't wilderness, there's food. Pineapples. Bananas. Dragonfruit. Mangos. Longans. I find cycling through Taiwan incredibly comforting, because everywhere is food. On the plains you are surrounded by rice and corn and sweet potatoes and chives and cabbage and beans. On the hills, fruit and tea, far as the eye can see.
I did start to get a bit anxious, however. The sky was getting dark, and just like the time i got caught in the farmland out back of Taoyuan, my phone had been saying for a couple hours that it was going to rain, but then out there in the hills i didn't have any signal to download an update. I felt a few specks, and started taking note of huts and temples as i passed. Still, i pressed on. I had to make it to the Grand Canyon!
It's right here that i should have inserted an epic picture of Taiwan's (not so) Grand Canyon. But - although i did make it - none of my photos came out. The sky was so overcast it created an ominous twilight, and the air was so damp that my phone screen and camera lens kept steaming up. There was a car full of youngsters there who remarked 好厲害, "how tough/impressive"! They left. There was an older couple too who chatted with me and gave me a banana. I know i've said it before, but i'll say it again - there is nothing better that you can offer a bike tourer or hitchhiker than free water and/or fruit. Keep it on hand in your car and you could make someone very happy.
But this couple went the next step. She asked if i had 雨衣 rain clothes, and when i said no she pulled a disposable poncho out of her backpack and handed it to me. She said that they were down from Taichung...
YO! WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST.
Air raid sirens just went off and at first i thought it might be typhoon warning, but i didn't think it was that close yet. Then i thought oh crap, this is it, China has launched the missiles! I could hear some other hotel guests in the hallway outside my room chattering nervously. I was just getting up to see what was happening, then checked my phone and there was an emergency warning message on the lock screen. Ministry of National Defense alert, air raid warning system drill. They didn't have that last time i was here. Good thing i have clean underwear. Anyway, back to our regularly-scheduled programming.
...they were down from Taichung and that they were hikers. The best part about this conversation was that they said 爬山 so at least i know somebody in Taiwan will understand me if i use that terminology for going hiking. Before they left they offered me another gift - a dragonfruit.
Now, equipped with a dragonfruit and a poncho and a phone with no signal and no ability to take photos any more, i resolved to head to the T junction where i could choose to head to Kaohsiung, or book it back to Tainan. I didn't make it that far. The skies exploded. I quickly put the poncho on, but as has been my experience with these things in the past, they don't do much to actually keep you dry in a serious tropical downpour, they're just a ritual to give you a sense that at least you're doing something. I cycled to the crossing and checked the route to Kaohsiung. It was a single-lane road that started with a big hill. You know, fuck that. I decided to head back the way i came, which also featured hills, but less of them, and the first one was down.
I tried sheltering in a hut, then under a tree, but none of them were especially dry. So i powered through until i found a temple i remembered passing on the way in. This was my favorite kind of Taiwanese temple. The one that's just in someone's garage or front room. Some foreigners i've met dismissively call these things shrines, but they're wrong. Shrines exist in Taiwan too. They are just one orange and one joss stick and one statue in a nook under a tree. These mini temples, on the other hand, are actual temples. They are signposted and have their own names and there's usually an attendant nearby keeping an eye on things.
That's what this one was. There was an altar, a couple of statues, some fruit offerings, some joss sticks, banners hanging outside, but it still felt like some dude's garage. Desk piled up with various paperwork. Calendar and clock on the wall. A couch and some chairs. Tea set. Coffee machine. I pulled my bike up outside and the old guy pottering around said "come in, come in, it's a temple", so i did. He offered me a seat, and i refused several times because i didn't want to make his chairs wet. In the end we compromised and he gave me a plastic stool.
We chatted a bit as he brewed up some green tea. He said he had lived in Taitung for 17 years and then eventually came back to this little house in the middle of nowhere because it was his 老家, his ancestral home. He said his son was in Kaohsiung. It's interesting to talk to local people in the south because they really do stay in the south. In Taipei you meet people "from the south" who left it long ago because Taipei is where you go to make money and (for the especially ambitious) springboard out to Shanghai or Singapore or San Francisco. But then there's this other - much larger - group of southerners who just stick it out in the south, and i guess that's what helps to give it a bit of a different feeling to the north.
He offerered fruits, which i refused, then candies, which i accepted. They were these preserved fruit jelly type things that i've never bought for myself because i don't know if i'll like a whole bag, but actually was really good. I had a 橙皮 orange peel one and something that i asked if it was 山楂 hawthorn fruit and it wasn't, but it was a similar sweet and sour pit fruit that he earnestly told me was good for my health. It's part of that whole Chinese herbal remedy stuff where goji berries do one thing and jujubes do another thing and lychees do another and you have to drink all of it in balance because bla bla bla snake oil. But, you know, even though it's nonsense, i accept there is power in the belief. I mean, i've been slathering aloe all over myself for the past week, even though it's not scientifically proven to do anything for sunburn. So i'm grateful he balanced my yin and yang or whatever by giving me the right candy. It did cheer me up.
I asked if he knew when the rain would stop, since i had no signal in the hills. He said that it'd probably keep going to nightfall, and that it was the start of the fifth typhoon of the season. I thought it was interesting that in the English media they always refer to typhoons by name, but he just went by number. Perhaps if you live in the hills and you get rained on all the fucking time one typhoon just blends into the next one? At the time i had to rely on his weather report, but when i got back into signal radius i saw the typhoon was still east of the Philippines (although heading directly for Kaohsiung) so nothing to worry about just yet.
Together we plotted my route out of the hills. I said i had originally planned to go to Kaohsiung over the mountain, but the road didn't look safe to travel in the heavy rain, which is why i had turned back. He suggested that instead of going south back over the Dakeng hill, i instead go north to the main road, which would be a bit longer, but i could cycle right to a train station where i could leave the bike and then train it south. After committing the route to memory and finishing my umpteenth cup of green tea, i bid the kind man adieu. He wouldn't let me leave without taking two mangos ("please, just take them, we have so many fruits here"), and said that he hoped i stop by again next time i am in the neighborhood.
And then i went back out, into the pouring rain.
Eventually it stopped, so i checked my map, checked the weather report and snapped a selfie. My temple friend was right on the money with his advice. Going back to the main road was a great idea. The hills were manageable, and there were some shops and diners along the route, so if the rain started again at least i could get shelter and food. I got to the train station, went into the toilet and changed all my clothes, then bought a ticket to Zuoying - an outer suburb of Kaohsiung as recommended by temple guy. It's right next to the 蓮池潭 Lotus Pond and 龍虎塔 Dragon and Tiger Pagodas, a super duper Chinese-y corner of Kaohsiung that was still on my to visit list. I didn't go to his recommended "cheap" hotel, because i am even cheaper, but i did get a seedy motel with an in-room condom dispenser where i gratefully showered and crashed after a hearty meal.
The next morning i took a bike and lazily cycled round the lake, remembering exactly why i love Kaohsiung. It's bigger, wider and more laid-back than the cities further north. The roads are wide, the sidewalks are wide. The weather is hotter and more oppressive, but the architecture is less claustrophobic. There are way more restaurants and food stalls where you can eat outside. There are trees to shade under, and buildings with porches (even if those porches are usually crammed full of mopeds). Because of the outdoor vendors and more casual lifestyle, the smells of different foods hang in the air, instead of just the smell of vehicle fumes like up north. Which isn't to say there aren't a ton of mopeds, because there are. Very few roads have pedestrian crossing lights, if you're on foot you just have to go when the mopeds go and hope for the best. But it's a delight to travel by Youbike, whose stations are everywhere.
I decided to jump on the ferry and go over to Cijin, which is the barrier island that protects Kaohsiung harbor. The south side has one of the few commercial beaches in Taiwan. I sat down to eat and watched some locals tanning and surfing. Even in a country where the mainstream culture is to hide from the sun at all costs, and to never go out on the sea except to catch fish (or better yet just send Indonesian and Filipino migrants to do it), there's subcultures who buck the trend. That's something important to remember. All my generalizations about a place are just that. Any place with 23 million people is going to have groups of people into pretty much anything under the sun.
I tried to cycle to the end of Cijin island, which i am sure that i was able to do last time i was here, but perhaps it was one of those compressed memories. Maybe the memory i have of sitting opposite a control tower at the entrance to a harbor watching the ships come in wasn't from Kaohsiung harbor after all? Could i have done it in Shenzhen? Hong Kong? Where else have i visited with a harbor like that? Maybe there used to be a cycle route up there that was since closed off? I did cycle along a sea wall that Google Maps said was a greenway and then get blocked by a bunch of fences so i guess it's possible. But perhaps i just imagined the whole thing.
Never mind, i took the car ferry back to Kaohsiung mainland and then made my way downtown to find a hotel.
And it's at that hotel i remain. Yesterday, even though it was a very short ride that didn't leave the city, wiped me out. Perhaps my body just needs a break after 8 days of non-stop travel. Fortunately i still have a bit longer before i need to head back. Kaohsiung is such a comfortable, happy city for me i know i could chill here all week and then just take the bullet train home. But i do still want to see Taitung again, which was the other city in Taiwan that i really liked the first time round. Everyone says i should go to Kenting National Park down on the southern tip of the island, but i'm not sure if i want to take a bus out there since i'm worried i'll get stuck in a place that's very expensive and full of tourists. I expect that's what my week in the Peloponnese is going to end up like, so for this trip i think i'd prefer to stick to my more meandering version of tourism where i don't really go anywhere exciting in particular. I only have two weeks off work, so i want to make the most of not feeling bothered by anything, and the best way to not feel bothered is to not go anywhere in particular.
Well, except for the Caoshan Moon World, where apparently i am cursed to never go without drama, but at least the drama is memorable.