Trip to Kaohsiung and Yilan

Three weeks ago, we travelled south to Kaohsiung city by high speed train that goes 249 km an hour! We left Hsinchu at 12:00pm and arrived in Kaohsiung at 1:30pm. (It would normally take us about 4 hours or more to get there if we choose to drive.) The reserved-seat ticket is about US$40(weekend price) one way and a little bit less during the week. Well, the tickets are a bit expensive, but considering the fact that we didn't have to wake up really early in the morning and drive down there-just the time and the energy we saved, it's worth it!

Photo by mymachi
(This is a picture of the 85 Skytower I found on the internet. It has this unusual design of two separate towers merging into one, leaving a big space between the lower two towers. When we saw this building, Adam was joking that a small airplane or helicopter can probably just fly right through it...hahaha)

The coolest thing about our trip to Kaohsiung was staying at the Kaohsiung Splendor Hotel located inside the 85 Skytower building. The 85 Skytower or Tuntex Sky Tower has a total of 85 floors and is 1,140 ft high! It was once the tallest building in Taiwan until the completion of Taipei 101, but still is the tallest building in Kaohsiung though.

From the 40th to the 70th floors are hotel rooms, and we were so LUCKY that we got an ocean view room on the 70th floor!!! Neither Adam nor I has ever stayed in a hotel room that high above the ground. We were so fascinated by the view of the ocean and the Kauhsiung Harbor that we couldn't stop saying wow for seconds, and then we both heard this tiny little whispering "wow" voice coming from Rainny and she was looking straight ahead at the window...so funny!
We went on a boat tour on the famous Love River (or Ai River) in the city. The boat ride was rather short (only took 15 minutes), but it was still a lot of fun, especially when this white bird showed up unexpectedly behind us and was literally only 5 steps away from us! I'm glad we got a close shot of it. We also went to Urban Spotlight, a very cool place to visit in Kaohsiung at night. There's some outdoor cafes and live band performing, and there's also a lot of shopping places nearby as well. It's really fun!

Adam and Rainny enjoying some father-daughter fun time on the river bank.

One week ago, we drove to Yilan, a city in the northeastern of Taiwan. Thanks to the Hsuehshan Tunnel finished two years ago that connects Taipei and Yilan and shortens the journey time, we were able to get there within two hours. We visited the National Center for Traditional Arts, a place and kind of a museum where you can see a lot of the Taiwanese arts in an old-fashioned way. They even make a street of all these Taiwanese houses just like they were in the early 20th century. They also have a lot of cool shops that sell old-fashioned Taiwanese toys that perhaps my grand and great grand parents used to play when they were little. And if you stay there long enough, you may get to see some outdoor performances. We were pretty lucky to see one- a guy was demonstrating and showing the audience how the Taiwanese puppets used to be a very popular entertainment back in the old days when there was no television, and how the appearances and sizes of the puppets have changed over time. Adam couldn't really understand a lot of what this guy was saying because he was speaking Taiwanese mostly, but it was still very interesting to him and he really liked it a lot! : )

I love walking on this street! It makes me feel like we just took a time machine and went back in time to the early 20th century of Taiwan. I wish we could take more pictures of other cool stuff and places. Too bad that our camera batteries died soon after we took these ones...sigh...