KAOHSIUNG, TAIWAN

2016-01-11, 18:45, JASON

STAY: MY PARENTS

‍

After Tainan, we returned to Kaohsiung (高雄) to fulfill my filial duties as son to be filial and spend time with my father and step-mother. We'd been to Kaohsiung before (see our previous post for that), but it was nice to reconvene with them about 8 months later (seems like forever) to just.. relax. We'd been to HK and Singapore with Thorin's family, and it was good to get some time off to do nothing before returning to work. As a result, this post is relatively limited, but we got a more local vibe to Kaohsiung living.

The city itself is very calm. There is a Love River (愛河) that spans across the city, and one of the days we took a leisure bike ride following the river down to the arts district that we frequented last time. The bike was calm, not heavily congested, and you could stop for espressos along the way! Along the way, we took a wrong turn and checked out the 85-floor tower in Kaohsiung (tallest building), as well as one of the oldest Catholic churches in the area. Great to explore the city on a bike if you can. Apparently, people do whole trips and tours of Taiwan via bike, which sounds just like a blast.

Another day, we decided to take the ferry to Cijin Island (旗津). It was a short ferry ride away from the Gushan Ferry Pier, just a 10 minute walk from the Arts district. This day was also relaxing, we walked down to the harbor and climb to the top of the lighthouse. We also had a really nice seafood lunch at one of the places right when you touch down, altogether with steamed fish, some clams, etc. The day was beautiful with a nice sun but still a cold breeze so you don't get to be that sticky mess you long to be. The views over Kaohsiung from the lighthouse area was legit. Also on Cijin was an old fortress built by.. I want to say the Dutch, but I don't remember. Anyway, it's a lot of walking around nature, and it kind of is reminiscent of the Marin Headlands, if you've been there. 

All the other moments during the trip was just filled with us eating. We had a bunch of teppanyaki, barbecue, hot pot (BEST) and local dishes based on my parents recommendations locally. Since Taiwan has a history with the Japanese as well, much of their culture and lifestyle is influenced by the Japanese, as seen through how fucking cute everything is, as well as the local food. But, it's far along enough from occupation to have its own Taiwanese inspired flavor. Kaohsiung, we'll be back for you! Please see our videos on the Tainan page for videos pertaining to Kaohsiung. We'll start putting videos by cities after this one.

This trip ends our holiday vacations, going from HK, to Macau, back to Singapore, then to Tainan and here. It was definitely the place to be to relax -- we realize we'd not done that in a while