I had a lovely morning with our hosts. Shauna made eggs and we chatted about travel. We then headed out and rented bikes for the day. We rode them onto a ferry to go across the harbor to Cijin Island. The ride takes about 5 minutes and only costs 15 NTD for a pedestrian and 30 if you bring a bike. Once on the island we hiked up to the light house and fort. This fort fell to the Japanese in a matter of minutes. To say the least it was unimpressive. From the top of the hill we had unobstructed views of the city and hundreds of boats waiting to enter the harbor. We spotted a large ship that apparently beached a week ago and decided to go investigate. On the way we met a group of women who work on a Christian cruise ship. They volunteer and have lived on the boat for 4 months. When the ship is in a harbor people from the area can board and join in different Christian youth group activities and shop at the world’s largest ship book fair. They offered to give us a tour of the ship, but it didn’t fit into our plans. Once we reached the beach it was obvious the shipwrecked vessel had ran on diesel. The water was quite dirty. It made for some interesting photos, but is definitely a huge environmental concern.
The last half of the day was made up of some huge attempts and some disappointing misses. The one thing I really wanted to see in Kaohsiung was Monkey Mountain. I obviously wanted to see the mountain…. No the monkeys! We took the bus that goes the farthest up the mountain in hopes of glimpsing some monkeys before sunset. I only saw one and he was at a distance. I even summoned my best monkey mating calls and some excellent bird calls to no avail. Defeated we headed down the mountain to the old British Consulate. It is basically the only European building left behind and it is nicely perched on a hill overlooking the harbor which affords it beautiful sunset views. As I approached the red brick exterior of the consulate I felt glad that we were at least successfully going to see one of the sites we had set out to visit (I didn’t mention this but the light house and zoo are closed on Mondays). Well, the British Consulate is also closed on Mondays. The silver lining to our cloud was that we were just in time for a beautiful pink sunset and we were able to share it with a horde of mainland Chinese tourists. To top off the evening we discovered that two of my favorite restaurants from Taipei are just around the corner from my hosts’ house! So dinner was a pleasant 3 hour meal at Cha for Tea.
The last half of the day was made up of some huge attempts and some disappointing misses. The one thing I really wanted to see in Kaohsiung was Monkey Mountain. I obviously wanted to see the mountain…. No the monkeys! We took the bus that goes the farthest up the mountain in hopes of glimpsing some monkeys before sunset. I only saw one and he was at a distance. I even summoned my best monkey mating calls and some excellent bird calls to no avail. Defeated we headed down the mountain to the old British Consulate. It is basically the only European building left behind and it is nicely perched on a hill overlooking the harbor which affords it beautiful sunset views. As I approached the red brick exterior of the consulate I felt glad that we were at least successfully going to see one of the sites we had set out to visit (I didn’t mention this but the light house and zoo are closed on Mondays). Well, the British Consulate is also closed on Mondays. The silver lining to our cloud was that we were just in time for a beautiful pink sunset and we were able to share it with a horde of mainland Chinese tourists. To top off the evening we discovered that two of my favorite restaurants from Taipei are just around the corner from my hosts’ house! So dinner was a pleasant 3 hour meal at Cha for Tea.
