25. Taiwan @ Kaohsiung

Next stop was Kaohsiung.



We got to Kaohsiung City by high speed train. The trains maximum speed was 300 km/hour. It did not feel fast, but later when we took the normal trains and saw a high speed train we could easily see the difference. The whole journey only took about 2 hours (6-8 hours with normal train), but was also twice the price of the normal train.

Kaohsiung city has close to 3 million inhabitants and has high concentration of heavy industry which contributes to a relatively big problem with air pollution.

We did not do much in Kaohsiung. But we visited the beautiful Lotus lake.

The pond is man-made and opened in year 1951. It is famous for the many lotus plants in the lake and the many temples surrounding the lake.

Some of the temples have been built out onto the lake like this beautiful Chinese pagoda and

this taoist god statue of emperor Bei-Ji Shien-tien.

Dragon and Tiger Pagoda. They are 7 stores tall. We could not go up in the towers, but out to the towers entering the dragons mouth and ending the tigers mouth. Which means good luck. To get out to the pagodas you need to walk a bridge with 9 bends.

We went to see the pagodas when it was dark.

We also saw the Spring and Autumn Pavilions. They are part of a taoist temple complex built in 1953. Each of these pagodas are 4 stores and octagonal. They communicate with each other by a 9 bend bridge.

Confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician and philosopher. Confucius's thoughts received official sanction and were further developed into a system known as Confucianism.

Now we know that there is a Confucius temple in every bigger city.

The Confucius Temple is situated around the Lotus lake.

The original Kaohsiung Confucius Temple was built in year 1684. The main palace of the Confucius Temple complex, Ta Cheng  Palace, is today a building that mimics the emperor palace - the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Beijing Imperial Palaces.

Again we went to a night market. And we both agree that it was the best night market in Taiwan.

Here we saw grilled Squids on sticks.

They were selling small fried eggs.

and cake dildos.

This is a picture of Kaohsiung and the 85 tower.

We went to the top of the 347,5 meter high or 85 levels tower.

It was a very disappointing experience.

The town is so polluted that we could not see a thing from the top.

But we had a great breakfast afterwards.
Most of the time we ate in 7/11. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. We simply could not communicate with the Taiwanese people and they often do not use pictures in the small street restaurants. We actually enjoyed most food we had for the 7/11s in Taiwan do has the best food we ever tasted from a 7/11.