Y halo thar Kaohsiung.

I had a few days off for tomb sweeping day (which is exactly what it sounds like), so I jetted down to the southern end of Taiwan to see the 2nd largest city, Kaohsiung.

I'm glad I'm typing Kaohsiung a thousand times, because it spells nothing like it sounds. Taiwan sometimes uses the old system for writing Chinese characters in Roman letters, and sometimes the new one. Just because fuck you, I guess. Like how Beijing used to be Peking. Anyway Kaohsiung is pronounced "Gow-shung". Didn't expect that, did you?

I am the lamest Jedi ever

I'd never heard of this place either until I got here. I figured I'd also try out the Taiwan High Speed Rail system. I was told by my coworkers its too expensive. It's about $50 US and 1.5 hours to get to the other end of the godamn country ya'll. That's pretty awesome in my book. Compare that to probably $35 and 5-6 hours for the slow train. I think I'll take option A, thank you. Also Kaohsiung is south of the Tropic of Cancer, which I think is the furthest south I've been. And god, the weather here sucks. Constant rain, hot, humid.

I'll save the sights for the next blog post the following day or so. Overall my impression of the city is that it's friendlier than Taipei, and they like their space. It's more sprawling, and they have benches and trash cans on every street corner. Oh my god Taipei! Benches and public trash cans! What a novel idea. I can't believe the city hasn't exploded yet.








In general things seem more utilitarian here. Whereas Taipei's subway has fancy LCDs, train progress indicators, all that fancy stuff, Kaohsiung has a paper map stuck on the wall. All the stations have a code number, R1-R# for the red line, and O1-O# for the orange line. Also they're named the orange and red lines, not the "Tamsui line" or "North Dakota line". Simple. It works. Even the stations are very spartan, with few adverts or lights for that matter. They're not in an open plan like Taipei. The two directions for one line may not even be across from each other. It's a maze of corridors with no glass, that randomly has some doors that open and a train's there. If there weren't signs, you'd probably never guess it. The whole place has a 70s secret base vibe to it.

Whew, I think that's enough about mass transit. In all honesty the people are more polite here and more interested in talking to foreigners than in Taipei. However, I still don't feel that Taiwan's rep for being friendly to foreigners is deserved. You guys need to smile more. All of you. I'm looking at you, baozi eating guy in the corner.

Anyway next time I'll talk about what I saw, and the friends I met from a rather unexpected place.