Kaohshiung, Taiwan

Breakfast at our hotel was a set tray with an interesting mix of western and local dishes. There was a small bowl of milk and cereal, eggs with grilled chicken and tomato, a mushroom soup and a separate potato broth. They were all very tasty but I couldn’t get past the soup for breakfast part. They did have excellent pastries though.

The things to see that we had mapped out last night were unfortunately spread out across the city. Kaohshiung, a bit like Toronto, is under-serviced by subways. It’s great if what you want is on the subway line but most things aren’t.

So we started by taking a taxi out to Lotus Pond, about a half hour north of the centre. It’s surrounded by numerous temples and is a big tourist draw. Unfortunately for us there was a cruise ship in town (we had noticed it docked last night from our hotel) and so the temples were busier than usual with large group excursions.

The most popular site at Lotus Pond are the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas. They’re under restorations and covered with scaffolding. So we checked out the other pagodas. These were covered with pigeon poop. So not very attractive or picturesque.

We tried to hail a taxi to the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts and at first jumped into someone else’s Uber. The Centre for the Arts is a Zaha Hadid Architecture (ZHA) designed building. It looked the part, with not many straight lines. It wasn’t quite as interesting as the ZHA building in Baku, where we first became interested in her work.

Close by was WeiWu Mi Mi Village, where murals cover the outside of most of the 3-5 storey buildings in the block. Some of them were cool but we found it a bit over the top.

We were able to take a subway to near our next stop, Hei Bonn Gōrudohausu. It’s a high-end Japanese grocery store on the 1st floor (wagyu beef, sushi etc) and on the 2nd floor is a cafeteria-like setting where you can cook and eat. The store had someone who spoke English help us buy the right ingredients for a hotpot (sliced wagyu beef and an assorted vegetable platter). Upstairs, they then provided a miso broth and we were cooking!

We’ve really enjoyed the street food scene on this trip, but we have found it to be a lot of deep fried stuff. I like deep fried food, but maybe in moderation :). Anyways our lunch hit the spot.

Next door was another ZHA building, the Kaohsiung Port Cruise Terminal. The cruise ship was still in port, and the security staff thought we were returning passengers. The cruise ship also got in the way of pics of the building :( but I guess it is the cruise terminal.

We debated checking out the Museum of Labour that we had stumbled across yesterday, but decided to return to the hotel to rest up.

We had dinner at the grill restaurant in the hotel. Their grilled steaks were excellent, the appetizers were so-so.

After dinner we took a taxi to Sanfong Temple. It’s better visited after sunset cause of the strings of red laterns. There were only a couple other visitors there too. There were worshippers near the back of the temple that were chanting and playing instruments. It was pretty cool to see the temple and hear the ceremonial music.

We were still full from dinner so decided to walk the 45 minutes home. It was a very pleasant walk back. There’s a nice vibe to Kaohshiung, with lots of people out and about enjoying the evening. (It was also perfect weather). We came across a busy Christmas event in a park with performers and a jolly Santa. It was a nice end to the day.