Tag Kenting
Many companies in Taiwan have a (for me) strange practice where, if there is a work day squeezed in between a national holiday and a weekend, they will give their employees that day off. As compensation, you have to come in to work on a Saturday, usually the week before or the week after. This Tuesday it was the 228 Peace Memorial Day which commemorates the February 28 Incident. Due to the squeeze day policy this meant that we had a nice long four day weekend. It is still winter here in north Taiwan with bone chilling temperatures of around … Read the rest
The sky, clear now after a cloudy afternoon, is absolutely full of stars, the three in Orion’ s belt outshining everything else in the vicinity. The waves come rolling in to the beach just a few meters away, the black water crashing down on the dark sand with a loud booming sound that fills the air. I put my arm around my wife, feel the warmth of her body against mine as she leans on my shoulder, and just enjoy the moment. … Read the rest
The water is cold for a tropical island, just a few degrees above what’s acceptable for swimming. Big waves go rolling over the underwater cliffs, pushing me towards land with slow, deliberate force. The water is murky with sand stirred up by the waves, I can only see a few feet in front of me but that’s enough to explore the underwater cliff formations. The cliff below me is covered in a kelp forest, the long brownish green stems look like miniature firr trees that billow in the wind in an almost hypnotic fashion as the waves move them back … Read the rest
Since it was raining heavily the night before we had started to plan some indoor activities for the day, but when we woke up the rain had subsided and there were some blue patches in the sky so we skipped those plans. Instead we decided to go to the beach, because that’s what you do in Kenting. Yini had ferreted out information on some kind of secret beach so of course we had to go there. It doesn’t really feature on the maps and there are no clear signs but after some searching we found it. It’s between Maobitou beach … Read the rest
The thing about driving across Taiwan is, you have to get back somehow, and taking the same road back wasn’t all that interesting, so we decided to go south, round the tip then back north along the west side.
We did a similar trip a couple of months ago but that time we were in more of a hurry, this time we made a couple of stops along the way. First up was an interesting, seemingly abandoned house just on the side of the road. It turned out that all the doors had been padlocked so I couldn’t go inside … Read the rest
It has been what I like to call November weather, that is around ten degrees and rain, for the last week or so here in north Taiwan. So this weekend, Yini and I did like the migrating birds and moved south for the winter. On Friday evening, we said screw you to the cold weather and took the high speed rail to kaohsiung. As we left rather late, we stayed the night in Kaohsiung then left for Taiwan’s premier beach town, Kenting in the morning.
I’ve been to Kenting several times before, and I’ve spent most of those times either … Read the rest