Kending Trip

About a week ago, we took a two day trip to Kending, at the end of the peninsula at the southern tip of Taiwan. Getting there was half the fun - we took the Gaotie, the new high speed rail of Taiwan. It's a version of the latest Shinkansen from Japan and gets up to 300 kilometers per hour. It makes the trip from Hsinchu to Kaohsiung in one and a half hours. One there we rented a car at a very friendly rental car company (southern hospitality?). Taking Gaotie was a good plan, as it allowed us to do other things on travel days. Otherwise, we would have just had one day to explore.

Let's run through some categories:

Who: Ashing, Ben, Noah, Sylvia, and Paul.

Food: excellent seafood, coconuts, and lianwu (wax apples, java apples). All the lianwu of Taiwan come from a few towns south of Kaohsiung, and we carried back three big boxes. The seafood was much better than Hsinchu, and we already thought that the fresh seafood in the Hsinchu area was really good. Prices were good too: we could have a lunch with lobster knock-off (a member of the lobster family which we don't know how to name), snails, fish soup, seaweed for less than NT$1000. The restaurant was a real hole in the wall, part of a not exactly thriving restaurant/shop complex within the strange rock coastal area described below.

People: Both friendlier and more easy going than the "northerners" of Hsinchu and Taipei. (Not that the latter are not friendly. Taiwan is extremely friendly overall - when people can look you in the eye, that is; in settings like behind the wheel of a car, they won't give you an inch.) Unfortunately, there is heavy smoking and betel nut chewing among the people there. Are they having trouble staying awake?

Landscape: A mix of rocky and sandy beaches. Low mountains in the center of the peninsula. Outside of tourist areas, it's very agricultural and the first uncrowded area outside of the high mountains we've seen. The tourist areas are crowded around the few sandy beaches, and though the beaches were not too crowded, some of the public places were not well cared for. One beach we spent a few hours at was disfigured by the tractors, jetskis, plastic chairs, and so forth of the (poor) people who make money providing services to tourists. See the photo of Ben sleeping on the beach. We did find one very nice beach, though, on the last day, and some places farther away from Kending proper might have been in good shape too. Another visit to a coastal area of strange rock formations (Jialeshui) was also disheartening. The rocks were indeed strange, but in a different sense so was the truck ride along the coastal road, closed to private cars, where we stopped for ten seconds at each famous strange rock which supposedly looks like something, a frog or whatever. It was a typically Taiwanese tourism experience, the task seemingly only being to get a picture of each sight. We should have spent more time and just walked along ourselves. This was my fault, as I stopped us at a mediocre (bad: trash; good: crabs, no people except cocoanut selling lady) beach along the way.

The weather. Beautiful the first and third days; intermittent rain the second. Fortunately we'd rented an umbrella (only NT$100) from one of the ladies on the disgraceful beach and could huddle under it for protections. Ashing however was trying to surf, and the rest of us enjoyed the sight of her trying to get her board out past the breaking waves. She made no progress at all in the face of the wind and waves and under the driving rain. Sisyphus came to mind. Once the weather calmed down, she did eventually get out and enjoyed some surfing.

Other activities: We visited a great acquarium - see photo of belugas (belugas! Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea!) Drove to rocky coastal area mentioned above. Visited old town with four well preserved gates. Several beaches, one with beautiful shells and coral. Took nice walk in forest park atop the small mountain a mile or so from the beach.

Where we stayed: The Kending Youth Activity Center, and old KMT era complex laid out like a Ming village. It's pretty cool! The buildings are detailed replicas of various Fujian architectural styles, and the courtyards contained tables for enjoying tea or snacks and various traditional toys. Food is served family style in a large two-story dining room, and is quite decent. We stayed in a six person room, a row of futons on tatami, and that was rather fun too.

Psychological impact: Sylvia had remembered Kending as a tropical paradise, but it turned out not quite to be that. Though the beaches are quite nice, the landscape, especially under the impact of the fairly poor residents of the area exploiting it for tourism, is not up to the level of Hawaii, say. Now that she's been to nicer beaches in Hawaii, Florida, and other places, Kending no longer seems extraordinary. We have to go there in a different frame mind, that of having the combination of fun beach - kids always love spending time at the beach, after all - Taiwanese southern hospitality, and abundent choices of great food. We have to look past the negatives, which are just the negatives of Taiwan overall, made more noticable by being set in a landscape which makes you expect a tropical resort.