In the morning, one of the first things I did was walk across the street to take a picture of the beach. There's something I like about beaches. There's something I like about water. Heck, I'm supposed to. After all, I'm a fish.
After I said good-bye to the beach, Joe and I headed over to a restaurant down the street from our hostel to grab our free breakfast. The restaurant was closed the day before, so we doubled-up our coupons, courtesy of the hostel, and had two of these semi-weird-yet-pretty-good-tasting egg sandwiches each. That wasn't going to be enough food to sustain us for very long, however. So after breakfast we walked over to 7-11 and grabbed a bunch more fuel, before heading out on our last ride of our tour, one that would take us to Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second-biggest city, located in the southwest part of the country.
Leaving Kenting was a bit of a letdown. Gone were the surfboards and sunny skies, only to be replaced by clouds and congestion. Basically, I guess you could say we were back to civilization. (By the way, no, even though I am an expert at it, I'm not pedaling backwards in that picture above.)
Just after Joe took that picture of me, he noticed someone pedaling up ahead of us. So, Joe being Joe, he sneaked up on the guy and started to draft behind him. Joe easily could have zipped past, but since the guy was actually going at a decent clip, Joe just figured he'd have some fun and see how long he could stay in the guy's shadow, unnoticed. The guy basically pulled Joe for a good kilometer or two and never had a clue that he was back there. The ride up to that point hadn't been all that exciting, so it was pretty cool to have something simple like that to distract us for a few minutes. Believe me, when you ride for hours and hours, sometimes you have to do goofy things to liven up the ride. This was just one of those goofy things.
About an hour later, we had made it to the outskirts of the city. It was New Year's Eve, which is why we saw a lot of people burning some kind of paper (another instance of something that I should have taken a picture of but didn't), along with lots of stands that were set up as some kind of offering to the gods, I imagine.
The most important thing we had to do in Kaohsiung was to find a Giant store (no, not a huge store, but rather the bike shop) so that we could bike bike bags. Despite some of the (mis)information we had received during the week, we were 99.9% sure the only way we'd be allowed to take our bikes on the Taiwanese bullet trains (the plan was to take the train to Taipei, since we had no time to bike back to the airport) was if we had them broken down and packed in bike bags. We originally planned to buy the bags at the French supermarket called Carrefour (or "ja la foo" in Taiwanese), but the bags for sale there weren't good enough for our needs. Lucky for us, with a little help from some locals, we managed to find a Carrefour rather easily and were able to pick up two bags that were just right.
The second-most important thing we had to do in Kaohsiung was find our hostel. That turned out to be quite an adventure, primarily since I had the directions to the place on two separate pieces of paper, only one of which I could find. The piece of paper I did have had the map and phone number on it, but the piece of paper I didn't have had the address on it. I did manage us to the right neighborhood, and then to the right street, but we just couldn't find the place. After riding up and down every street and lane in the immediate area three or four times and still not able to find the place (about all I could offer was: "It has to be here somewhere, Joe, I'm sure of it. We just have to look for a black door."), we decided to call the owner to ask for help. Unfortunately, she didn't answer her phone. But I did leave a message.
Next, we tried to ask for help at the local police station, which was one of the places we had already ridden past three or four times. The cops were only semi-friendly (unlike the police officers we had asked for directions on earlier occasions) and, even though I was sure the place we were looking for, The International Friendship House, was within shouting distance, they ended up pointing us in the wrong direction, trying to send us back to the main road and then who the Hell knows where. Morons!
How could the cops not know where the place was? And how could they be so dumb as to not look the place up in the Internet to find out the address? Anyway, we rode around some more, asked some locals for help, but still came up empty. You can imagine how stupid I felt, being responsible for putting us in this mess. But just then, our phone rang. It was Melissa, the owner. Problem solved.
It turns out that we must have ridden past the IFH several times but simply failed to notice it. And it turns out that it was merely 50 meters away from the police station, just as I thought! Kaohsiung's Finest? More like Keystone Kops.
The IFH was cheap (we only paid NT 300 each, rather than what we had averaged up to that point, which was more like double), clean, centrally-located, a pretty relaxed place, and, this time of year being (extremely?) low season, completely empty. Oh, and Melissa wants her guests to flush toilet paper down the toilet, like a true Westerner. What a relief!
After we got settled in, we took our bikes apart, made sure they fit in our new bike bags (hooray, they did!), and rode the subway a couple stops to the train station to get our tickets for the next day's ride. (We could have done that the next day rather than making the extra trip, but we didn't want any surprises just before it was time to leave. Sicher ist sicher, oder?)
And then it was off to dinner. We met a bunch of girls outside this steak/grill joint that was right near where we were staying, and, since they said the place was good, we decided to eat there. It was an unusual restaurant, at least for me, in that you ordered a main dish but also got to help yourself to the all-you-can-eat buffet. I couldn't believe that the buffet was included, but sure enough, it was! We got there so late (about 9:30 p.m.) that they almost didn't let us in, since they closed at 10:00 p.m. But Joe told them we'd eat fast, and so we did. Joe even treated me that night! Thanks, dude.
After dinner, Joe decided to call it a night. I wanted to see the New Year's fireworks and celebration, so I took the subway down to the Dream Mall to join tens of thousands of other revelers. (The picture above shows the slug-type subway token that Joe used for his ride, along with the stored-value card that I bought.)
I arrived at the Dream Mall at around 11:00 p.m. There were way more people than I expected and hundreds more were coming by the minute. Also, the place was way bigger than I expected, so it took me a while to walk (and sometimes gently push myself) up to a place where I was satisfied with the view. I got close enough to the main stage to see the performers, even though I could have stayed farther back and watched the concert from the many giant screens that were set up. I was really impressed with the event, and it was still an hour to go before midnight. If you have to choose between Seoul (where I was last year for New Year's Eve) and Kaohsiung for New Year's Eve someday, definitely choose Kaohsiung.
One thing that I noticed was that I was the only foreigner, or, at the very least, the only person there who obviously wasn't Asian. Since I've lived in Japan for a while, I've gotten used to being the only foreigner around. But still, when you're in a humongous crowd and you're the only one who's different, that feels a little weird.
Anyway, midnight finally arrived and the fireworks went off. The show lasted for more than three minutes and was fairly spectacular (unlike the show in Seoul last year). As you can imagine, a lot of people started heading home after the fireworks, but the show was just getting started. I hung around for about an hour and saw a terrible band from Japan (they call themselves "Hangry and Angry" for crying out loud!) as well as a really popular and entertaining Taiwanese dude named Crowd Lu. That was possibly the coolest New Year's celebration I had ever attended. Thanks, Kaohsiung!
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