Tim's Blog: Kaohsiung (高雄)

I spent the past weekend in Kaohsiung: Taiwan's second largest city and Sandra's home town. I stayed with her parents after arriving late on Friday night. On Saturday morning we woke up early and they dropped me off at chung hsing lake and let me take a look around while riding along on one of their bicycles. It was great, I ended up taking loads and loads of photos. That doesn't mean I took a lot of good ones, but it was really a nice park. It was actually a rainy day and I was attacked by mosquitoes craving "white meat," despite this it was a great morning to walk around.

Here is the side entrance to the park where I went in.

The first path I went down, before wondering off and being eaten by mosquitoes.

The 7-story pagoda I had to fight my way to the top of. Bruce Lee had it easy, only 5 stories for him.

The view from the top.

My version of Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, he may not look it, but he was no push-over. He was actually very talkative. He told me he had been practicing qi gong here and had just finished. Then he presumed to show me videos of qi gong and tai chi on his i-touch and then talk to me about why it's important to practice Tai Chi slowly and how most people don't know how to use it... then he continued to tell me how people who are around teaching martial arts are usually bad and not needed. In order to learn properly you should watch videos on the Internet, those experts are much better than anyone in Taiwan... so Asia has these types as well: the type who learns martial arts from the Internet and then swears by it . He sure was nice though.

After spending more time at the lake I went out to eat lunch with Sandra's parents, in an apartment owned by her uncle (father's older brother). Currently no one is renting the place but it is amazing, overlooking the entire lake from I don't know how many stories up, but the place was incredible! I will upload all of my photos to a different website later, this blog isn't suited for these kinds of photos.

Afterwards we went back home and relaxed before eating a family dinner with the grandparents. Sandra's grandmother insisted on telling me time and time again that my Chinese was great. No matter what I just said or how well I said it, instead of answering my questions or continuing on the conversation I would get a big thumbs up, a large smile, and a serious compliment on my spoken Chinese. She was so funny.

After dinner it was time to go home and go for a nice walk on "Love River," just outside of Sandra's home. I went with her mom and got some great photos.

The view on Love River at night - this is near the top of Love River so it's only natural that the river is tiny here, but it is much larger downstream.

The view of Kaohsiung from Love River, I'm still learning how to use the camera at night but some of these shots come out great!

Bear pretending to be a Panda, in Eric's room (Sandra's brother). This is where I slept :).

The next day we went to Lotus Lake, here are Sandra's parents leading the charge. Chinese walk so fast...

The Dragon Tiger Pagoda!

View of the tiger side, from the dragon side.

Just showing him who the boss is...

Inside of the mouth's of both creatures was some portraits telling a traditional Chinese story. I will upload them to a picture sharing site later on.