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Tuesday, Kenting (4/11/2000)
I awoke bruised black & blue. I'd actually bruised my
knees, ribs and elbows sleeping on this "bed". I was in complete agony, but I
had been exhausted enough to sleep the entire night.
I decided I needed to treat myself at breakfast, so we
walked down the street to a 24-hour steakhouse. It wasn't open. We had to
substitute McDonald's instead, which is no substitution for any steak,
no matter how bad.
The whole area that we were in was the Kenting recreation
area, but there's a more formalized area that we drove to after breakfast.
Inside this area there are further "parks" -- Kenting propre being one of them.
Instead, we went to Shetting Park,
 which, according to Chu-Wan, was prettier and free. We
hiked around for several hours. It's a very interesting place, but not much for
a written description. It consists of weird rock formations among jungle
vegetation with outlooks over the coast in various places. We saw some wild
oxen, which the signs warned against approaching.
We ate a late lunch back in town at one of Kenting's several
pizza restaurants -- The Dolce Vita Pizza.
I ordered a standard pepperoni pizza. I was somewhat
disappointed. The pizza was OK, but their idea of a pepperoni pizza included
pepperoni, green peppers, onions and the biggest mushrooms I've ever seen in my
life. None of these extra items is "proper" in my book of pizza. Did they go
sparingly on them? Nope. If you like that kind of stuff you'd have been very
pleased by the cook's efforts to provide plentiful toppings.
We then drove the Jeep out to a place called Maobitou
("Cat's Nose Head"), the other "southern tip" of Taiwan. (The bottom of Taiwan
is rather shaped like horns, with Oluanbi being the southernmost, Maobitou
being slightly less prominent.) Maoubitou consists largely of scenic coastline
and coral formations.
Returning to town, we stopped at Baisha (White Beach) - It
was completely deserted and we spent quite a while there just doing beach
things.
Our plan for the evening was to go to Kenting's other
strange non-beach tourist facility: Space Port 9. -- A sort of space-themed
amusement center. We were unsure of its exact nature . Unfortunately, when we
arrived, it was closed due to lack of business that day. Apparently, if nobody
shows up, they just close. In this case some 4 hours early, and, according to
the people working nearby, they had been closed for several hours that day
already.
As a backup plan, we drove to Chuhuo. Chuhuo is a geologic
formation where fire comes out of the Earth naturally. (I suspect that gas
comes out of the Earth naturally and somebody lit it.) According to reports of
people who had been there just a couple months earlier it was out in the open,
but now, it had been surrounded by a low wooden fence. I believe the official
story is that the fence is for your own protection; however, my suspicion is
that it is just to keep jerks from screwing around with it.
I was able to put this theory to the test. When we arrived,
no one was there, but after a few minutes a car full of people arrived - 3
guys, 2 girls. They walked up to the fire. Without hesitation, one guy walked
right over the fence and sat down to begin cooking a pan of jiffy-pop, while
his friends snapped pictures.
They'd better get a bigger fence.
Back in town I ate in Dolce Vita again. This time I had a
sandwich and a couple of margaritas. My hope was the margaritas would cushion
the effects of the "bed" by (a) putting me to sleep and (b) acting as a muscle
relaxant.
Wednesday, Kenting -> Taitung,
(4/12/2000) 
My muscle relaxant theory didn't work. The only part of my
body to escape the brutality of the bed were the last three inches of my legs
(including my feet) as they were hanging off the end of the bed all night.
As I lay there trying to unlock my spine I asked myself,
"Why? If Taiwan uses the metric systems, why are so many things 6 foot? (Like
beds and doorways)"
During the night I had dreamed that Chu-Wan and I had gone
to Australia and met "The Crocodile Hunter". We happened across his home as we
were trekking through the outback and he invited us to stay the night. He lived
in a cave and slept on the rock floor. I can't imagine where that dream came
from.
Once I was able to move, we tried to walk off my pain by
going to Frog Rock and Lover's Beach. Frog Rock bore no discernible resemblance
to a frog and Lover's Beach is devoid of sand. (I did hear a frog at the beach,
though.)
We tried the 24 hour steakhouse again - it was still closed.
I suspect "24 hours" refered to the number of hours they were open each
week.
Before leaving town, we tried Space Port 9 one more time.
Amazingly, they were open, but no one was there. We got to go on all the rides
with a minimum of waiting. It consisted mostly of motion simulators and large
scale video games. It was fun, but we didn't have enough time, as we had a
deadline on returning the rental car, and another one to catch a bus back to
Kaoshiung and subsequently a train to Taitung. It took us about 6 hours to get
to Taitung. (Actually only a distance of 89 Km (53 miles) as the crow flies)
but due to the geography, the actual route is quite long.
We didn't stay in Taitung but instead in a small town called
Jiben. Jiben is a popular Japanese destination due to the wen chuen
("hot springs") in the area.
A representative of the rental car company met us at the
train station in Jiben. Instead of taking us to their offices, he took us to
some local aboriginal sites. The first was the local tribe's lodge. There was
nothing happening there, but they did have a rather cool bamboo look-out
structure that would have made the Professor on Gilligan's Island
proud.
Then he took us to the home of a local aboriginal artist,
who wasn't home, but he took us around his backyard studio anyway.
Finally we got to the rental place. Here we got screwed.
Our plan was to rent the car in Taitung, then drive to
Hualien along the scenic East Coast Highway, leaving the car in Hualien. In two
phone conversations with the rental company we had expressed this. They had
agreed, but when we got there they had failed to mention one extra days rental
for the pick up in Hualien. We told them we'd drop the car off a day early and
left. Since cash is king in Taiwan and we couldn't get the car until we paid
the bill in cash, there was nothing we could do. We figured we could function
in Hualien for a day without a car.
We drove through the streets of Jiben and were literally
assaulted by people trying to get us to eat in their restaurants. At first it
was just people standing along the side of the street shouting "Have you eaten
yet?" Next it was people jumping in front of the moving car, finally spotters
along the side of he road would identify us and send scooter squads after the
car. They'd drive up alongside us shouting to ask if we'd eaten yet.
Rather than reward the vultures we drove back to Taitung and
ate at a nice steakhouse, then found an Internet cafe to check my mail before
returning to the hotel.
Chu-Wan had chosen the hotel on the Internet and it didn't
really live up to its pictures. I had no real problem with the place, but
Chu-Wan was disappointed because it really looked cool on the net, with round
beds and such. It was all there as advertised, but somewhat more
pedestrian.
I liked the idea of the round bed because it would probably
be bigger than 6 foot and more likely would have a mattress on it, since it
might be difficult to cut plywood in a circle.
It wasn't. It was round, 6 foot at its maximum diameter and
hard as a board. Luckily, this room had Chinese blankets, which are thick as
futons and I slept on one of those. It helped.
The hotels in the area all have hot spring water pumped in
and the room had a huge, Japanese style bath. That certainly helped compensate
for the bed wounds I was suffering. |
