Taiwan | Day 2 (Kaohsiung)

Looking back, I don't recommend travelling to a completely different place within a country when you have just arrived because you're in lack of orientation and you have yet to get adjusted to your surroundings. It also involves a lot of stress, but I did it nonetheless. I went to bed at 1am and had to get up at 4am to catch the High Speed Rail from Taipei Main Station to Kaohsiung's Zuyoing Station at 6am. Yay, trains!!

I had booked the tickets a month in advance, this way I was entitled to a 35% early bird discount. A roundtrip ticket costs between 50 and 60 bucks and you basically cross the whole nation in two hours and twenty minutes. Make sure to bring a cardigan for the ride because the train's A/Cs are on full blast. I even bought a long-sleeve shirt and long pants for my ride back to Taipei cuz it was freezing cold. I had hoped for a scenic ride, but Taiwan has a lot of tunnels, apparently. Navigation in Taiwan is easy because they always have English signs for everything. Arriving at Zuyoing, I transferred to the local MRT line, got a one-day pass for five bucks and headed downtown just to board a train back to Zuyoing, which is where my first sightseeing spot was: the Lotus Pond.

The Lotus Pond is a recreational area in the town of Zuyoing lined by an innumerable amount of pagodas and temples, which have all been constructed in the 20th century. They might be a tad too modern (or tacky) for some, but it's a beautiful area, very laid-back and yet so close to the city. The Dragon and Tiger Pagoda are most probably the most famous: you enter through the dragon's mouth and exit through the tiger's – that's supposed to bless you. The 'guards' will force you to leave through the tiger gate (I wanted to exit through the dragon, lol), so you have no other choice but to get a blessing while visiting these beautiful pagodas.

Next up was a not any less impressive building: the Spring and Autumn Pagodas being the gate to Qing Shui Temple. It looked like something out of a martial arts movie. I would've loved to stay longer and explore the other temples, but I had a sightseeing schedule to stick to. Off to Dream Mall I went.

Dream Mall, according to some outdated Google search results, is (or rather was) Asia's second biggest mall. I didn't go to Kaohsiung with the intention to shop my butt off, but I did pick up a few things, which I could've easily gotten in Taipei as well, but.. you never know. Dream Mall had everything I wanted and more, in fact I'd recommend Kaohsiung over Taipei as a shopping destination. Taipei didn't have much to offer me after going to Kaohsiung. The mall has a free shuttle bus service picking you up from the nearest MRT station and bringing you back.

Downtown Kaohsiung basically consists of a ton of shopping districts (Yuansu Yujhu, New Jyuejiang, Sanduo, etc.). Amongst the city's high-rise buildings, the Tuntex Sky Tower could be seen from anywhere, which was really impressive. I did go to the Love River, but ended up at the wrong end and didn't get a chance to see it by night, such a shame.

I killed the rest of the time at one of the two Starbucks shops at Dream Mall (yes, I went back there again), did some last-minute shopping at Uniqlo (because once you're in a climated room, you'll freeze to death), boarded the train back to Taipei and arrived at midnight.

It was a long exhausting day and having run on four hours of sleep only, I was super excited to get back to the apartment and sleep. And that's when things went downhill. I resided in Sanchung, which is part of New Taipei City, 'new' actually meaning 'old apartments'. They're all over the place, stacked on top of each other and pretty confusing. The building I was supposed to go to had a super narrow staircase and three doors only on the right-hand side. The general complex door was locked from the outside and I had a random Taiwanese woman help me open it. And somehow I managed to lock the door from the inside, so I couldn't get out. Whatever, I went on, tried not to fall down the tiny stairs and came back to a door I could not open for the life of me. I stood there rattling and pushing the door for thirty minutes until deciding to get help from yet another stranger – if only the complex door hadn't been locked from the inside. I was trapped in the narrow hallway with no air supply and rising heat and didn't know what to do. Since it was a locked „room“, the air ran out slowly and that was the point when I started panicking. I had wi-fi from the apartment, so I called my mom to have her find some emergency numbers for me of which none worked. The police hung up on me. Three times. I was slamming my fists against the door screaming for help, but nobody came. An hour later I pushed myself against the door, hurt my hand, but finally managed to open the door – and passed out for a very bad and very short sleep.

Related Tales of A Glorious Globetrotter
• Notes From Asia, #01: Tokyo I
• Notes From Asia, #02: Tokyo II
• Notes From Asia, #03: Tokyo III
• Notes From Asia, #04: Okinawa I
• Notes From Asia, #05: Okinawa II
• Notes From Asia, #06: Okinawa III
• Notes From Asia, #07: Taipei I
• Notes From Asia, #08: Taipei II