Adventurasia Community

After this we headed towards the Wedding location which was held at the Evergreen Hotel. It took us about half an hour to find the place as we didn’t know where it was and our cousin Michael was giving us bad directions. When we finally got to the hotel parking lot to take out the clothes to change into my cousin realized that he took the wrong bag - he brought his school bag. So we had to go and look for a store that sold clothes for him to wear. Because we were so early anyways, we got back to the reception with plenty of time to spare. BTW, our cousin Michael was the best man - I actually didn’t know the people who were getting married - i just went for the fun of it. The people at our table were interesting - some of them flew in from Seattle / Hong Kong / Taiwan / China and I suppose Japan if you include myself. There was plenty of food (lots of things I’ve never seen before) and drink (red wine - although we went over our quota and somebody ordered more). We left for Kaohsiung around 10:00 PM and I zonked out during the trip (Hey, I didn’t have to worry about driving).

The next day, my cousin took me around Kaohsiung a bit. I got more practice with the scooter, and except for a couple of times where I didn’t know how to cross the road (because I’m not familiar with the rules, I ended up driving towards traffic a bit until I saw an opening), at least I didn’t have any near misses with taxis or cars. The first place we went to was Lotus Lake. There are a number of pagodas, and animals, plus zillions of fish in the water. Lotus Lake is on the way to the Science Park and that was our next destination. Our friend works at ASE Test and we got to go inside and have some delicious cafeteria type food. Afterwards, I went with my cousin to the American English School where he teaches English to children. To be honest, I was so tired by that time that having the kids run around all over the place was very draining. I did have fun spinning them around and taking their pictures though… But I can’t see myself doing this for a long time - although my cousin handled himself very well (he’s been doing this for a couple years now) so I guess he’s used to it. Some of the kids were really cute though, and some were really naughty.

We headed back to the apartment and my cousin took a nap while I played on the internet. He had to leave for his evening classes, and Lanie came to take me to the night market. We had congee with pork and thousand year egg - i think mainly because I said that I like that stuff, and ate it everyday when I was in Hong Kong. It was interesting because this guy next to us was trying to order a glass of beer in Cantonese. The waitress didn’t understand what he was saying, so I was trying to tell the guy that my friend could ask for him. Anyways, we started chatting a bit (good chance to practice my cantonese) and I found out that he was part of a tour group of 20 but they were all scattered around. This was his second visit to Taiwan, the first time was about 30 years ago.

We walked around the night market a bit, trying different little snacks - dried fish stomach which were quite tasty and a little spicy (although none of us were 100% sure what it was). I got a couple of CDs and the funny thing is that you just drop the money into a bucket and leave - you don’t pass the money to a storekeeper. I found out later that the CDs were illegal! haha Afterwards we went to a coffee shop along this interesting street - it was nicely ornamented with trees, lights, and this large sign that said SMILE. We joined my cousin and his friend at Amy’s Chinese Restaurant - although I was stuffed from eating that congee earlier. We tried to find some dried salty plums but the shops were all closed (hey I have strange tastes). The final place we went to was something called ‘Lover’s Bridge’.