Welcome to Kaoshiung

October 12, 2024

This town is a tropical and it’s going to be hot a fair amount of the time. But it cooled down nicely last night, and Alice and I slept well in the family’s third floor bedroom, overlooking a rooftop garden. The garden has been greatly expanded and improved since my last visit five years ago, now with a large trellis structure, and numerous flowering plants as well as edible crops. The solar panel array, which allows them to sell excess electricity back to the utility, has been moved to the roof.

Everyone was up, so we walked down to the neighborhood 7-11, everyone’s source for quick food and coffee.

Seven eleven does so much more here than in the states. The coffee is great.

With everyone well fed Alice and I and the three younger generation girls ( now young women) went out for the day. Hanna is here from the states now, and she is accompanied by nieces Killian ( eldest) and Hue-san, the younger. All opened their schedules to spend time with us.

we started out going for a walk at the Kaoshiung Tripical Botanical Garden, which suffered extensive damage with the recent typhoon that hit Kaoshiung like a bullseye, but fortunately was only a level one storm.

Downed trees atest to the force of the storm’s winds.

We drove to the subway terminal and from there headed into a fun are for biking, sightseeing and eating.

Kaoshiung is Taiwan’s second most populous city, complete with subway and high speed rail. Unlike Japan, you will see mostly motorcycles and not bicycles and things are more spread out.

Wei-shan, age 20, helps me to get a rental bike for our ride around a lake.

As we biked around the lake, we came upon a dragon boat team practicing.

As we completed our 1/2 way ride around the small lake, we found a place to return the rental bikes, and started to walk through crowded marked streets.

Killian ( 22) and Way-shan ( 20) walk under an umbrella to protect their skin. This is more common here than using sun block.

A bustling street anticipates the even busier street later in the day.

A grandfather and grandson enjoy the market.

We stop at a coconut stand and refresh ourselves with fresh coconut water.

We walked to the nearby Kaoshiung Arena where the Cosplay festival was in full force. We got tickets and walked into the dense crowd admiring all of the costumes and makeup. I took a few portraits.

Killian explained that she feels most Taiwanese young people are introverted and struggle to express themselves. By taking on such roleplaying, the can step out of their shyness , and with support of friends and community, make bold statements.

After tiring of the Cosplay we walked to near where Killian was going to need to go to work as an English teacher. We sat down and got some street food which cost $10 for all five of us, and then sent Killian off to her job. Later we’ll go back to the night market.

We took a rest in the afternoon so that we could go down to the newly redesigned port area which is now a hub for night market, food and entertainment. What was once a collection of warehouses on the river is now a magnet for people wanting to have some fun at night