Day 2

This morning I started the day by taking train to Kaohsiung. Kaohsiung is the second largest city in Taiwan. It is located to the southwest coast of the island. Population is about 1.2 million. Most people speak Mandarin. However, Taiwanese is very popular. You can hear people speak Taiwanese in any corner of the city.

The city itself relies much on heavy industries that are sea related: ship manufacturing, ship repairing...etc. Therefore, I expected the place be quite polluted. In fact, it is. But the pollution does not only stem from the industries. Motorcycles contribute a lot to the formation of dirty air. Sometime, I found it was hard to take breath because vehicles emitted clouds o f dark smoke in front of me. However, this is not the most annoying thing about motorbikes. The worst was the drivers did not care the traffic rules at all. They could go to wherever as they wanted. They often drove on the pedestrian roads. It was ver y dangerous especially when we went to the same direction. I could not see from my back, and there were several cases in which they almost hit me from my back. Is it better to increase the sense of road safety? The situation was quite similar to Kuala L umpur except the KL's drivers did not go to the pedestrian all the time.

The train ride was dump. I did something really stupid. The ticket printed my cabin and seat number in Chinese. But, I did not realize it and just picked a seat. Of course, the true seat holder kicked me out! I did not know what happened and thought that lady was impolite. Until an hour later, I discovered the numbers and reached to the right cabin immediately. You know what, the train was more than 6 hours. It was impossibl e for me to stand that long. Later, I ate my lunch in the cabin. Although packed lunches were available, my experience from Malaysia told me I should prepare my food first. So, I ate Yamasaki's buns that I bought before boarding the train.

I arrived a t Kaohsiung Station around 2:30pm. I took a cab to the hotel. The cab driver thought I was an American because of my Mandarin accent and the way I dressed. He charged me NT 100, which I found it was quite expensive for a ride less than five minutes. A nyway, the hotel lobby was fine. The front desk allocated me in the sixth floor. There were two things made me uncomfortable immediately after I reached to the 6th floor. Firstly, all vacant rooms had their doors opened. But, the lights in those rooms were off. Such setting was really strange. I imagined there would be something (could be thieves, living things,"transparent" human beings, walking corpses...etc) going out from those dark rooms. Fortunately, there was not any weird stuff. Secondly, I did not understand why all room numbers in the floor started with "16" . Did they think 6-XX was not lucky? Or, did something happen before? I really felt I was trapped in a funeral house setting!

My laziness made me stay in the hotel area for that after noon and evening. The only places I went was President Department Store and Liu He (this different from the official Taiwanese way of spelling) night market. I did have great food from the market. I ate a famous Tainan Danzai noodle and duck tongues. Also, I ate North China steamed dumplings (xiao long bao).

Time passed fast today. Tomorrow, I will go to Xizi Wan Beach (with black sand) and Kaohsiung lighthouse. It is time to eat now! The TV is showing some old Hong Kong films. It is always good to eat and watch TV at the same time!

Day 3

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