A Weekend Down South

This weekend, Alaina and I decided to take a trip to Kenting in southern Taiwan and spend the weekend at the beach. We left Saturday morning and traveled via the high speed train. After our two hour train ride, we planned to take a taxi the extra two hours to the beach. The train ride was no problem, but when we arrived at the station, a strange man came running up to us and said, "Kenting? Kenting?" and motioned for us to follow him. The whole thing seemed sketchy, and he didn't speak any English. He was getting really angry that we wouldn't go with him so went and found another man to translate. Still, he was unable to tell us the name of our hotel, where he was taking us, the phone number, or name of the lady who had contacted him for us! After about twenty minutes of debate, we finally called the lady at our accomodation and she confirmed that this was the guy. He was angry, but the whole situation was weird so I am still glad we were hesitant.

Once at the beach, we immediately realized the different pacing in southern Taiwan. It was MUCH slower, and people lingered and talked and just seemed to hang out a lot more. The place where we stayed was supposed to be "exotic" and that it was....just not in all the ways we had pictured! It was down an alley off of the main road, so a pretty good location. Our room was very simple but looked clean enough. It was painted crazy colors, kind of bohemian style. We couldn't find the bathroom at first then opened the door leading outside and there it was! Yes, the toilet and shower were definitely outside in the middle of a little garden out back!

After dropping off our stuff we headed to the beach. We finally found the "beach" that our hotel owner suggested and it was a VERY tiny cove. Within the first ten minutes, it started to POUR and rained the entire night. It turns out it's off season, so there weren't many people there. We couldn't really stay at the beach for long, so after dinner we wandered the night market. With nothing else to do, we decided to be a little adventurous and tried several night market foods, including squid on a stick! It turned out to be pretty good.

After many let-downs and thinking about all we went through to get down there, we went to bed pretty discouraged.

But then we awoke to SUNSHINE! So, we decided to give the beach another try. It turned out to be a beautiful day and we really enjoyed it. SO relaxing and much needed since the sun rarely shines here.

So in the end, it was a good weekend, it just didn't go exactly as planned, but at least we can say it was quite the experience and we had a good adventure!