Here are a few pictures from my weekend trip down south last week. We had Friday off so I decided to head on down to Kaohshiung, Taiwan’s second biggest city (behind Taipei and ahead of Taichung). I stayed there for the day, saw a few nice things, generally enjoyed the day and evening, and then headed an hour south to Xiao Liuqui, a tiny island made entirely of coral.
I’ll admit, my first hour and a half on the island were really stressful and I was in a foul mood. After getting off the ferry, I was feeling great. My plan was to grab a scooter from one of the many rental guys at the docks, then scoot into town and find myself a hotel. Afterwards, I would explore the island on my scooter and have a relaxing afternoon and evening away from it all.
What ended up happening was no one would rent me a scooter without a license and an old man ended up driving me around to various houses, trying to find me a place to stay. All the rooms were expensive and my main goal was to get a scooter. After an hour of being dragged around to rooms, I ended up settling on a room in a family’s house that came with a bicycle. Frustrated, I just wanted to get out on my own and be done with people. I biked into town (which was really far considering that the island was super hilly and my house was about 2 km away). At this point, I was considering just saying forget it and going back to Kaohsiung. Then I stumbled across an Electric Scooter rental place, which was exactly what I was looking for from the very beginning. I got a scooter, brought the bike back to the hotel, showered and then finally got to do what I had planned! And to top it all off, the family I stayed with were super kind and absolutely wonderful. They fed me like a starving orphan and we communicated with smiles, laughs, and exaggerated movements. So I basically felt like a travelling circus performer for an evening. It was great.
The island itself was also quite beautiful once I got all my things figured out and really quite peaceful after the hustle bustle of city life and school. It’s always nice to get away and if you can make it to a warm-ish island then you are doing pretty well for yourself. The sunrise and subsequent couple hours afterwards were probably the nicest as it was extremely quiet and I basically had the island to myself (it felt like!).
stinky tofu 