01. & 02.06.2023 – All the way south and spontaneous decisions

For breakfast today we were sent to a neighboring restaurant with vouchers, where we had the choice of 3 sandwiches and a drink. Freshly fortified, we set about the next project: renting a scooter. However, there were several problems with this. Andreas does not have a valid driver’s license for mopeds/scooters and Mel had never operated such a device before … we’ll cut a long story short here … the rental period was a whole 3 minutes for “safety reasons” and we got our money back.

So we set off, once again on foot, on the 5km walk uphill to the Kenting Forest Recreation Area and once again the sun was extremely hot today. There was hardly any shade as the sun was almost directly overhead and Andreas weakened again here and there. Once we reached our destination, we were rewarded with wonderful nature. There were lots of animals, rocks, corals, caves and various viewing platforms to discover. Our impression was only spoiled by the “attack” of a caterpillar on Andreas – the fine hairs caused Andreas an unpleasant itching and burning sensation that lasted for several days.

As the climb had already taken its toll on our strength, we spontaneously decided to hail a cab and take more cabs to our next destination, the southernmost point of Taiwan. Of course, we had to walk quite a few kilometers there too, but a lighthouse, the southernmost point – Eluanbi – and some cool drinks rewarded us for our efforts.

On the way back we were able to observe 2 older ladies who had caught a snake. Our 3.5-hour bus ride to Kaohsiung took us for hours through huge fish farms and an oil refinery – so at least we had some respite from our creepy seat neighbor, an obviously completely broken betel nut junkie.

In Kaohsiung we moved into our room and spent the rest of the evening at the Liuhe night market with ribs, Taiwan hot dog, beef, pork roll stuffed with spring onions, quail eggs with crayfish tails, melons and passion fruit juice and watching the locals who treated their dogs very “special”.

02.06.2023

As we had some problems finding the right bus to Lotus Lake in the morning, we spontaneously decided to go to the large Buddha temple at Fo Guang Shan first. There we visited the old and new temples, the museum and all the places that were accessible. As a result, we made a few kilometers again without realizing it, we only took the bus back to the city at 5pm (which was also stuck in a traffic jam for ages), so we would be very late at Lotus Lake and therefore also spontaneously decided to spend another night in Kaohsiung.

We spent the rest of the evening at Lotus Lake and then again at the night market with various delicacies. Unfortunately, a second night market had already closed – we were 5 minutes too late. We briefly took the opportunity to marvel at the “Dome of Light” subway station.