Adventurasia Community

We walked around a bit and it started to rain, so we decided to go towards the main street - when it stopped raining. We wandered down the street a bit, going to some stores to look at different souvenirs or t-shirts and what-not. We checked out a bar that my cousin ran when he first came to Taiwan. It is now a Snoopy Town We headed back to the hotel to play a few rounds of Big 2 before heading to our dinner spot.

For dinner we had Tom Yum Soup; Seafood Fried Rice; and Chicken Fat Noodles - it was very westernized Thai. We then walked around some more - by now the streets were much more lively - there were different games that you could play - i tried something similar to pachinko (but without the noise) as well as a marble game. I ended up winning a bottle of bubbles.

I suppose one of the interesting things that happened was that a crab had made it’s way down from the mountain and was hiding out underneath this barbecue truck. A woman was trying to catch the crab to bring back with her - for dinner no doubt. She tried for about 10-15 minutes to get the crab - and by then a whole crowd had gathered to cheer her on. In the end, the crab ended up crawling into the grassy area behind and the woman left.

Later, we went to a large arcade complete with pool, a bowling alley, and bumper cars! Finally on the way back to the hotel we grabbed some barbecue for a late night snack - it was quite tasty, and only costs about 100 Yen a skewer. You can choose from things like: rice with duck’s blood; duck beak; duck feet; duck tongue; duck eggs; chicken; beef; pork; corn; squid; veggies; intestines; etc…

We went to sleep and the next day we explored around Kenting some more. We went to the beach, in search of crabs and other wild life. Saw the Sailor’s Rock as well as several sightseeing spots where you can see the water - woo hoo. One interesting thing were these soft shelled crabs that inhabit other shells - it’s really strange to see shells that are crawling around. We tried go-karting which was quite fun. Later, we grabbed some lunch at McDonald’s and headed back to Kaohsiung.

In the evening, we met up with my cousin’s friend Lanie to go shrimping. The place we went to was a like an open warehouse with a huge concrete pool in the middle and seats all around. When you first enter, you pick up a fishing pole (albeit lighter than a normal one) and a slab of liver and shrimp for bait (talk about canibalism). Then you grab a chair, bait the hook and drop the line into the pool - when you sense that the shrimp are nibbling, you jerk the pole up and try to catch the shrimp somewhere.

Lanie was the first person to catch a shrimp amongst us. The shrimp are huge! They have claws! There were four of us, and I think 8 shrimp were caught in total - 2 by Lanie and 6 by my cousin Jerry. The only thing that I got were mosquito bites, unfortunately. Well, almost. A lady was selling lottery tickets, and for the fun of it, I used my very last 100 NT bill to buy a lottery ticket. (Lanie picked out the ticket) It was a winner! 3000 NT to be exact which is about 11,000 Yen or $150 CDN. I need to cash it in to replenish my supply of NT - unfortunately, none of the banks are open during the weekend, and there aren’t that many money changes around, so I’m down to a couple of coins right now. (Note: the next day we cashed the ticket at the bank and were taxed 20%!)