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Sunday, Kaoshiung (4/09/2000)
We caught the 7:00AM train out of Taipei headed towards the
second largest city in Taiwan: Kaoshiung. Kaoshiung is situated in the
south-western part of Taiwan and serves as Taiwan's main shipping port. It is
the third largest container port in the world (after Singapore and Hong Kong, I
believe).
The "express" train takes 5 hours; however, construction was
already underway on a high speed express train which will, wen completed, take
only 90 minutes. That did us no good on this trip, but I like the idea and am
anxious to see it completed. Although not decided at the time it looked like
the trains would be built by the same company that makes Japanese Shinkansen
"bullet" trains.
Although I didn't like having to kill 5 hours on the train,
I did finally sit down and crack the spine on Michael Palin's Hemingway
Adventure. While not really enthralled by the "exotic" places in
Hemingway's life (such as Chicago, Michigan and Key West) it's an enjoyable
read nonetheless and I made good progress through the book before we arrived in
Kaoshiung at noon.
The Lonely Planet travel guide hasn't got much to
recommend seeing in Kaoshiung and I could easily see why. It's a crowded
industrial town with little time for tourism. Traffic was awful, perhaps worse
than Taipei. I never thought I'd say this but: Taipei drivers seem to have a
greater respect for traffic control devices.
My suspicion, confirmed by Chu-Wan, is that Kaoshiung is
much like Taipei 15 years ago. Prosperity hasn't yet brought that desire for
urban upclassing that all cities seem to go through.
There comes that day in any city's history when someone
says, "We all live here, now it's time to make it a home we can be proud off."
The question remains, as always, is whose vision of what
makes a city to be proud of will prevail?
The process had begun, though. I read in the paper that
Kaoshiung would be accepting bids in a month's time for the development of
their own high-speed subway similar to Taipei's. Not a moment too soon based on
their traffic!
Our hotel was oddly situated out the backside of the train
station. As the railroad racks runs through the town, there are only a limited
number of places to cross them. In our case, we had to use the train station,
which means we had to pay to get to the populated side of town. Apparently it's
quite common as they have a special vending machine ticket for just that
purpose. It cost us each NT$ 6 (Approximately $0.18) each time we crossed
through.
Walking through Kaoshiung seemed to confirm that there are a
lot fewer foreigners living there. I noticed a distinct increase in the number
of people who wanted to say "hello" to me. There also seemed to be a lot more
English-language schools in Kaoshiung.
There was a lot of garbage in Kaoshiung. Although there were
some public garbage cans around, they were piled over with garbage. It looked
snow drifts of garbage around them. I finally resorted to precariously stacking
my paper cup on top of a 5 foot tall pile of garbage, which, upon closer
inspection, had completely buried a trashcan underneath. I tried my best to
place my cup artistically on the top as perhaps a site of interest for some
future traveler.
A word on garbage collection in Taiwan: Garbage is collected
daily in the cities, but instead of having city dumpsters or cans, garbage is
collected at strategic points throughout each block. There is a one-hour window
each evening where you can bring your garbage out and leave it on that spot, or
hand it directly to your friendly-neighborhood garbage man. The truck moves
from location to location playing melodious classical music. Taipei uses a
little ditty by Beethoven. I couldn't name the tune used in Kaoshiung, but it
was equally famous.
It was quite a shock, the first few times I heard it echoing
through the city canyon. I thought perhaps that it was an ice cream truck. I
was in for a rude shock when I finally saw where the music was coming from.
Kaoshiung also looks to be a city with less concern about
copyright infringement products. Taipei is filled with such knock-off products
but they're usually on the back-streets. Kaoshiung has them in the open all
over the place. Since my arrival in Taiwan I'd been bombarded with this
season's apparent name-brand rage: "Naturally JO JO".
All over Kaoshiung I encountered girls wearing "Natuapally
JC JC" shirts. The first one I saw made me burst out laughing on the
street.
Later, at lunch, I terrified a 6-year old child when I stood
up at a restaurant. He almost dropped his plate of food as he looked up at me
towering over him. In Taipei, they're a lot more laid back about my height.
I finished Palin's book. While I have no particular interest
in Hemingway, I found myself thinking phrases to myself like, "This drink isn't
big enough to slake a real man's thirst." Of course, when you're given only a
Dixie cup for your soft drink you'd be more than justified in using a phrase
like that.
Monday, Kenting
(4/10/2000)
I once had the "pleasure" of sleeping on a bed that was only
6' long. I got up in the middle of the night and slept on the sofa rather than
let my feet dangle in the wind.
I had no such escape Sunday night. Not only was the bed 3
inches too short, but also it was quite literally as hard as a board. Studying
it, it appeared to be nothing more than a box spring without a mattress, but it
was an industrial strength box spring. I awoke with my neck and back
locked.
My vertebrae were broken free by the rough 2.5 hour bus trip
to Kenting, which is located at the southern tip of Taiwan.
The bus had "in-flight" movies and we watched Tomorrow
Never Dies. It's the second Pierce Brosnan 007 film and the second one I've
seen on this trip. I can only hope the flight back to the states doesn't show
Goldeneye -- Brosnan's other 007 film and the worst one ever made.
2 hours and 15 minutes into the trip and only 15 minutes
away from our destination, the guy behind me decided he could not go any
farther without a cigarette.
"No Smoking" signs are universally ignored in Taiwan.
However, this guy decided he was going to be crafty. He kept the cigarette down
beneath his seat, ducked his head behind them to suck on it, then would grab
the curtains, and hold them over his mouth and blow out into them - thinking
perhaps that the driver wouldn't notice.
The driver, however, did notice. His response was to light
up too.
When sneaky boy got off the bus I got a good look at him;
his shirt said, in very big print, in English, "No Smoking". I wondered if that
was part of his cover or if he was totally ignorant of its meaning? (Or perhaps
he was being a smart-ass?)
What Sneaky Boy didn’t notice was that, during his
struggles to hide his smoking, he dropped his keys. I had a long struggle with
my conscience as to whether I should tell him or not.
I didn't. He'd pissed me off just enough that I decided to
be petty, knowing full well that the bus had a long drive before it would get
back to the depot.
When we arrived in Kenting, we rented a Jeep. Kenting is a
very small town, but built around the beach crowd. Kenting is the place
in Taiwan to go to the beach and this is the town that aims to meet the needs
of that crowd. It has many restaurants (no surprise there) and several boast to
be 24 hours (big suprise there), discos, bars, scuba rental places, etc.
On the weekends, it's a zoo, but during the week, it's
dead.
We took the Jeep to Xiaosha (Small Beach) near our hotel and
went swimming. It's the first time I've ever had more than my foot up to my
ankle in the ocean and I discovered something important: Ocean water tastes
awful. It tastes like someone oversalted the water to boil spaghetti in. Yuck.
Will try not to swallow any more of that stuff .
For all the hype about Kenting's beaches, they're very
small. As best I could tell there's no word in Chinese to differentiate a sandy
beach, a rocky shore and the coastline, so some of the "beaches" aren't
suitable for man nor beast. Xiaosha was quite nice and sandy, if only about 100
meters long.
We then drove to Oluanpi, the southernmost point on Taiwan.
We walked around the jungle and the rocky shore for a while.
At dinner we went to a national Beef Noodle restaurant
chain.
I spied another American with his Taiwanese wife in the
restaurant. He was apparently visiting her family there. Thank God I wasn't
wearing a green polo shirt or we'd have been dressed identically. I didn't talk
with him, but I was mildly amused to listen to him complain about the fact that
his Coca-Cola was served in a Dixie cup. I'm glad it's not just me. He had one
thing going for him though; he was short, so he probably didn't understand my
pain when it comes to door jambs, short beds and terrifying small
children. 
Kenting is a town of about 2000 people, but, because of the
large crowds that arrive on weekends they have several attractions that seem
out of place for such a small town. One such is an indoor waterpark. Chu-Wan
and I went there after dinner.
Water Space was a lot of fun, and empty. There were only
about 20 people in the place, so we had no waiting on any of the 6 water slides
or the other rides.
One waterslide that Chu-Wan didn't go on was "The UFO" which
was an odd slide advising that you would be dropped into 3 meters of water at
the end and if you could not swim, don't try this slide.
I tried it. First you go down a high-speed slide, then it
shoots you into a funnel shape where you spiral out of control. It was just
like those donation collectors that you drop a coin in and watch is slowly
spiral down and finally disappear through the hole in the bottom. Around and
around I went, my first reaction was to turn myself so that I could be assured
of a feet-first entry into the water. The attempt resulted in me falling face
first into the water.
I tried again, this time attempting to turn myself the other
way. That resulted in a belly flop. So ended my attempts at the UFO.
I had tested the bed at the hotel earlier in the day and it
seemed even more uncompromising than last night's, so I determined to exhaust
myself if possible before bed time. Thi Engcomplished, I went to sleep.
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