Kaosching

Kaosching

A trip spanning 3 digital cameras, cars, buses, scooters, 3 days and 2nights....

I left Monday afternoon by bus and got there about 4.5 hours later. Kaosching is located near the southern tip of Taiwan, it is Taiwans' largest international seaport, and the only city on the island besides Taipei with an international airport. It has the world's third-largest container port after hong Kong and Singapore and an extremely large dry-dock for ship repairs and maintenance. Kaosching has heavy smog and pollution problems due to factories located on the southern end, but they have been trying to fix these issues in the past decade.

On the bus I saw the movie the Skulls and some other ones I had already seen. What I liked about the bus was the tv speakers were built into your chair, near the headrest, so you could watch the movie without disturbing others. Although I think some earphone jacks would have been even better :)

When I got to Kaosching I immediately went in search of some hotels, walking around with my 20lb suitcase :( I luckily was able to find a few quite quickly and found an excellent one right by Kaosching's biggest nightmarket for $50/night. After checking into my hotel I met up with some friends in Kaosching and went to Central Park, which can be seen in the middle of the map near Liuho Yehshih night market. I took some pictures there, they have really developed the park, into perhaps the equivalent of say Queens Park back home. It has a lot of construction there though, due to a subway station being built there.

I spent the night walking along a river, I took several pics of that river, but I don't know where it is unfortunately. It seemed like a very popular place with many stores situated by the river banks. I also went shopping at the local Carrefour to get some drinks and than went to the night market grabbed some dinner and went back to my hotel.

The next morning I woke up at about 11 and met up with my friend who had a scooter. A scooter is really useful in Taiwan since parking can be easily found and can be taken through narrow alleyways and side streets a car can't. Unfortunately riding a scooter is extremely dangerous. Refer to my online movile and picture clips for pics of being on a scooter. Using the scooter I and Alisa went to various places indicated on the map. Specifically locations C, I, G, F and E. That night I went to the night markets again, and it was also Chinese New YEar;s (CNY) eve. About 7 p.m. I had dinner with my friend's family, since it was Chinese New YEar's eve, it was a really big deal, their whole family was there, grandparents, cousins, etc. etc., and they had a lot of great food since it was CNY's. It was kind of akward there since not many ppl spoke English :P That night there was a lot of ppl outside due to CNY's celebrations. Getting to some places during the day required taking a ferry, but it was fun taking the boat, and it was only 40 cents each way per person and we got to take our scooter onto the ferry for no extra charge :). That night I met Alisa's cousin and he offered to take us to the places too far to go by scooter since he had a car. I was like, sure :)

The next day we went to locations K, M,N and O on the map. I will add further information on all these places later. Most likely in my photo album so you will have to check there for more info on the places I visited.

After visiting all these places I grabbed a 11 p.m. bus back to Taipei , i got there at about 3:30 a.m. I took a taxi home and slept till about 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon. This bus was kewl too, each seat had an LCD monitor to watch t.v. and movies on. The buses to and from Kaosching were cheap, only $20 each way.

Thats about it, the weather was fantastic and the traffic pretty good.
Check out my pics for the full story :)

http://photos.yahoo.com/where_is_tracey_li