holus-bolus: Kaohsiung

When we got to our hotel in Kaohsiung, we found a Lamborghini parked outside. We think it was a promotion by the hotel, not a guest's car, since the car never moved while we were there. We noticed that the hotel management parked nicer cars (i.e. Porsches) next to the Lamborghini and lesser cars (i.e. Toyotas) on the other side of the hotel.

We went to dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant. Abe ordered hot pot for one. His pot of broth was kept warm over over a flame. Besides a plate of thinly sliced beef and a bowl of vegetables, Abe had a few fresh clams and a raw egg to cook.

Kaohsiung is located on the southern edge of Taiwan. It's a popular tourist destination for people from Taiwan and from all over Asia, especially Hong Kong. We saw a lot of seafood at the night market, including these squid on a stick. We assume they are delicious, but we weren't brave enough to try any.

Kaohsiung felt like a vacation from our vacation. Taiwan is largely a relaxed, friendly country and Kaohsiung is especially relaxed and friendly. The Love River was next to our hotel. Its name is Aihe in Mandarin, which means love, but everyone calls it the Love River.

Becky and Brandan enjoyed walking along the river in the morning before the kids woke up. We also took a walk one evening and enjoyed the lights and live music along the beautifully landscaped walkways.

There were temples every few hundred yards along the river, possibly a higher temple to population ratio than chapels to people in Utah. This one was unusually narrow.

This one was more typical. The pagoda in front of the temple is a large oven where the monks burn the offerings made at the temple.

Instead of an elaborately carved roof, this temple had a photo of an elaborate roof pasted on the front of the building.

Kaoshiung used to be a center for heavy industry. The local government has focused on reducing pollution from smokestack factories and attracting clean high tech manufacturing. The result is a beautiful modern city that also preserves its cultural past.

Our first expedition Wednesday morning was hiking Shoushan, which means "skinny mountain" in Chinese. Shoushan is better known by its nickname "Monkey Mountain" and we hoped we see monkeys on our hike. We started our hike at this temple.

There was a great view of Kaohsiung from the temple's parking lot.

We liked the clever opening in the gate across the trail that let people enter, but not vehicles.

This sign made us laugh. If we somehow managed to get an excavator around the temple and through the gate, it looks like digging along the trail is not allowed.

Most of the hike was through dense forest. We were swarmed by mosquitos.

We were delighted to see a monkey above us in the trees. When we stopped to look at it, we realized there was a whole family of monkeys above us in the trees. The monkeys are Taiwanese Macaques. They are cute and fluffy with sweet faces, until they open their mouths and you realize their canine teeth look like they belong to saber tooth tigers! We felt a mixture of wonder, appreciation and nervousness as we stood under the monkeys and admired them while trying not to make eye contact (we didn't want the monkeys to think we were challenging them.)

We hiked up to a great viewpoint overlooking the city. Kaohsiung is the second largest city in Taiwan, after Taipei. There was free cold water and hot barley tea at the viewpoint. We appreciated the water. Sofi was the only one of us who found the barley tea refreshing.

We saw lots more monkeys on the way down, 30-40 in all. Our favorites were the baby monkeys, super cute and playful. This is a mid-sized monkey.

When we told Sofi's friends we were going to Monkey Mountain, they all warned us not to take any food with us. The monkeys are wild animals, they have learned hikers mean easy snacks and they will take your food. We took their advice and only brought water with us. Our precaution didn't stop this curious monkey from sidling up to us when we stopped to rest at a pavilion. We could tell he was interested in our backpacks.

We felt like we earned some mango bing after our hot hike. We also tried another one of Sofi's favorite dishes called dou hua. Also known as tofu pudding, we had resisted trying it until this point. Several years ago we made tofu pudding for family night treat by blending a carton of tofu with some cocoa powder. The dish won the prize for worst family night treat ever. The missionaries in Taiwan all said they loved dou hua so we relented. You can see from Gibson that we gave dou hua a thumbs down. It wasn't as bad as our homemade tofu pudding, but why eat dou hua when you can have another bowl of mango bing?

Refreshed with our bing, we walked down to the dock to catch a ferry to Qijin island. This building next to the ferry was covered in brilliant crocheted disks.

Qijin island is 7 miles long and only 600 feet across. It's a popular tourist destination with many attractions. We were there for the beach.

There were many large sand sculptures along the beach. This one looks like a bowl of bing.

We played in the warm ocean and relaxed on the beach for several hours.

Then we took the ferry back to the mainland.

We had a good view of 85 Sky Tower from the ferry. It gets its name because it has 85 floors. Kaohsiung is one of the largest container ports in the world.