Exploring Taiwan in five short months: Exploring the south in Kenting

At Kenting national park

So a few weeks back, the registrations to both uni and courses were over, lessons had kinda started and we were facing the beginning of routines and regular rhythm in Taiwan. Therefore, we decided to take a brake from the "stressful everyday life" in Hsinchu and head down south for a weekend. All the way to Kenting, the favourite holiday destination of locals and tourists alike. You can do a variety of activities there because it has a huge national park, as well as, beautiful beaches. Kenting national park covers the entire southern tip of Taiwan and it really is quite a fabulous place.

There was a free weekend ahead of us so what better way to escape the realities of the beginning of a new semester than exploring the South and just laying on a beach!? The trip was bound to take some time, since we're currently quite north, so we took an early train at 7.40 am on Friday to Kaoshiung and, this is quite incredible, a taxi to take us the rest 100 km to Kenting. The train crossed the 280 km in 4,5 hours and the taxi took another 1-1,5 h. After checking in to our hostel we headed straight to the beach. A short bus ride we arrived at Baisha beach to this view:

The ocean is scary :)

As you can see, the beach was (and is) awesome! The water was warm and the waves incredible. One thing that caught our eyes immediately after we arrived was that the sandy beach was rather empty! Don't get me wrong, there were crowds at the waterline, but the actual beach had only few groups here and there. So, we spotted a good place and started the sun worshipping ritual immediately. Of course straight after we had smeared ourselves in sun lotion (not the whitening kind!). A few moments passed and it was time to test out the water! And boy, was it nice! Warm and wavy ;) and salty. The waves were strong and they either pushed you back on shore or then wanted to take you away with them. Balancing between these two turned out to be a fairly good workout.

While exercising we noticed that we were basically almost the only ones in bikinis. Most of the Asian tourists that swarmed the waterline were wearing their normal clothes and even swimming in them!? And by swimming I mean either playing in the water by sitting and laying down while the waves came or posing for the camera while the waves crashed into you. Which brings us to the next observation we made: cameras, and more importantly, selfie sticks were everywhere. One could only wonder why the people felt the need to take sooo very many pictures. Especially of the ocean. Where were they going to put them all?? And more importantly, why would you want to have a picture of yourself with a complete stranger?!? Let me elaborate on that. We stayed until sunset, which happens around 6-6.30 pm, to take a couple of 'sunset beach' photos. While we were snapping a couple of photos of the beach and ourselves one brave fellow came to ask if he could take a picture with us and we foolishly agreed. Though it felt kinda strange, we figured what's the harm in one picture? Well, it turned out that it wasn't just one picture, because as soon as the rest of the crowd noticed what was happening an actual line started to form, where people were seriously queuing to take their picture with us!! Needles to say it started to feel rather awkward so we fled the scene.

Sunset at Baisha beach

Instead, hunger was churning up inside so we headed to the nearest restaurant area, which basically was a collection of tiny stalls offering a variety of street foods. We took some light dinner and sat there half across the world watching the wonderful scenery when I suddenly realise that the reggae music I heard on the background was in Finnish!?! You can only imagine my sense of bewilderment at the realisation that the soundtrack of our journey to the southernmost part of Taiwan included the Finnish reggae artist Raappana. I mean, sure, why not! :)

Taiwanese sausage and a rice sausage, very delicious but very garlicky as well.

For Saturday then we rented scooters in order to get around the national park more effortlessly. For a scooter we paid 500 NT$ (=13,5e) for 24h, and since there were four of us we took two. And off we went!

The day went by fast (kinda like us with the scooters) just driving through the whole area, stopping here and there to ogle at the gorgeous scenery. The changes in the surrounding areas were quite fantastic. You first drove up a mountainside through a jungle only to come down to a rocky coastline and plain fields. Kenting is also famous among birdwatchers and butterfly enthusiasts, because of the huge variety of species found in the park. We didn't really notice a massive flock of either, but the amount of dragonflies was rather daunting especially whilst driving as our helmets lacked visors. Fortunately our faces remained almost bug-free throughout our high-speed drive.

Vroom vroom!

<-- ^-- The southernmost tip of Taiwan

To me it looks like a head, what do you think?

Doing the peace sign -selfie like pros! ;)

Girls from left: Kimberly, Viktorija, Dorien & me

After the long day you had to go to the night market at the city centre. It was quite remarkable to see so many people out walking along the street from stall to stall while cars were still allowed to drive through, as well! It kinda reminded me of cattle being herded to slaughter house but in a happier, less fatal kinda way. I think we spent over 4 hours walking end-to-end through a street that definitely wasn't longer than 2 km, but that was filled with a range of tiny shops, boutiques and stalls that completely had our full attention. Hence, I too succumbed to the Chinese mentality and was practically forced to acquire none other than a selfie stick... As we already mastered the peace sign selfie, we figured that the next step in our Asian selfie school is the 'everyone jump at the same time' -picture. More info on that as we master the fine art of synchronized jumping while taking a selfie...