Kending is my favorite place in Taiwan aside from Taipei. In fact, it's the only other place in Taiwan I would want to live if given the choice.

Getting to Kending is stupidly hard, I think. There are buses from Kaohsiung, but I hopped off at Fengliao to avoid all the backtracking. Fengliao is a small hamlet with nothing at all, so all I did was catch the Kending bus. Kending is far south, in fact, the furthest south you can get in Taiwan. I stopped off at the hostel and went out to catch the bus to Eluanbi, the park at the tip of the island.

Eluanbi is home to the worlds only fortified lighthouse, to protect against the baddies of Asia... or something. It's a short walk to the top of the hill it's on, and from there you can see down to the coast. They built this really cool boardwalk around the area, but I was a bit surprised at how high up it was with no railing. Seriously, if you fell you would probably break a limb and get cut pretty bad - those rocks are sharp. But I made it to a pavilion marking the "This is for serious as far south as you can go" point. The sun was just about to set, so I parked it for about 15 minutes to get this photo.

Heading back into the city, Kending exploded while I was away. The main street through town was just filled with people to create the coolest night market I've ever been to. Move over, Shilin. There was so much food, and all of it sounded amazing. Deep fried Oreo? Got that. But the real star was the rice filled chicken leg. I don't know how they did it. It was a regular chicken leg, with bone - but when you bite into it, there's rice mixed in with the meat. Do they have like a rice injector gun or something? It was totally awesome and delicious. With tons of shops, clubs, and bars lining this street, I stayed out for hours looking around.

Next morning, I wanted to hit up a few more sights. The first was to, and yes this is it's name, Nixon Rock. It's a bit of a trek because no buses were running that early, but I made it out there and got my silly photo. Try and judge for yourself if it looks like Nixon. I think it's "resembles a face in general" rock.

Heading back to the city center, there was one more stop, the Kending Aquarium. The Kending Aquarium is the largest in Asia, which makes it a pretty serious contender for largest in the world. It was quite impressive, with underwater walkways, sharks, stingrays, jellyfish, ya know, all the good things. They made a mock-up pirate ship there too, with all the rooms converted into various tanks. Kending is supposedly home to 70% of the coral reefs in the world, so they had a pretty impressive collection. Their penguin exhibit in particular was huge, and pretty adorable overall.

I guess despite for my love of Kending, this entry was pretty short. Most of my time was spent sitting on a beach drinking, or wandering around the night market. They had a little bit of everything, minus any foreigners at all. I wish it was easier to get to - they should really build a train down there. There's not too too much to do in the area, but if you're looking for a cheap, tropical getaway for 4 days or so - I don't think you can get much better than this.