Whew!

Wow! What a whirlwind of a week! Lots of traveling, lots of sightseeing, a little bit of mood-roller-coastering, and tons of great times. Travel companions included the ever-popular Kaitlin, her brother Dean (see photo below), Ali, and Liz. A lovely time was had by many.

To wit:
On Saturday we grabbed a train at the crack of 11:30. High speed rail south at 300 kph got us to Tainan in about an hour and a half. In Tainan we found a somewhat overpriced hotel (or so we initially concluded). Checked in, sorted out rooms, then decided to go hit up the town in search of culture, enlightenment, and cream cheese. As we were leaving the hotel, we discovered that our "overpriced" hotel came with the following perks: free bicycle use (slightly ghetto bikes), free snacks, unlimited cola, unlimited ice tea, and unlimited beer. Hot damn.

So we sallied forth, we fortunate few, and we scoured the town for cream cheese to go on our bagels, eventually compromising on cheese spread from Carrefour. From there we boogied on over to a local park for a late lunch/snack. See photo below for a concise summary of the most awesome feature of the park.


After our digression, we went and saw some cultural shit, including a couple of temples and an old fort. I could bore you with more detail, but suffice to say it was all quite pretty and impressive and it led to the phrase, "the Jade Emperor has 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one."

Later in the evening we hit up Tainan's impressively large night market for snacks and small sundry purchases, and to give Dean an idea of how awesome such things are here.



After Tainan we trained our way down to Gaoxiong. We stayed in a hotel close to the train station, and spent the afternoon and evening out on Qijin Island, in the harbor, playing frisbee on the sand and chillin' on top of the old Dutch gun battery. Good times.

The next morning we took a bus down to Donggang, and then a ferry out to Liuqiu Island. We camped overnight at the same campground I visited last time, and it was fantastic. The five of us worked our way through a fifth of vodka and then some and had a grand old time playing drunken frisbee in the fields above the cliffs we were camped beside. This is not as stupid as it sounds, re-reading it: the cliffs were a good distance from the fields.

We spent the next morning at the beach, enjoying the warm, clear water, before taking the ferry back to Donggang, and then a bus down to Kenting. We spent three nights in Kenting, and it was fantastic. Unfortunately, Liz bailed on us after the first night so that she could go "work", but I guess that's "understandable". We saw many a cool sight, including but not limited to endlessly burning natural gas fires, giant sand dunes, paradisaical beaches, and signs warning us about snakes.





After that it was a harsh, harsh bus ride back to Gaoxiong, a brief but delicious dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, and then a much longer (but much more comfortable) bus ride back to Taipei.

And that, as they say, was that.