This had been designated as a bit of a rest day. We slept in for a bit and then had a bit of a think about what we were going to do. We planned to go to the gym, collect some food to cook up for breakfast and lunch and to meet up with the others for a cruise along Love River in the evening.
Breakfast of champions
We wandered down to a supermarket that was quite close to the accomodation. We bought some steak, salmon, eggs, broccoli, carrots, chilli, garlic, coconut water, breakfast cereal, fruit and snacks to get us through the next couple of days. We walked back to the accomodation and cooked up some breakfast.
Central Park
After breakfast we made our way to central park to have a look around. The park was a large relaxing green space, we wandered around for a while and then headed back to the accomodation to have a siesta. We slept from around 11 until 1, so we were certainly using the day to relax.
A gym session
I cooked some salmon for lunch and then we rode the hire bikes to the gym that we had seen when we were coming back from the Loco Mexican Restaurant last night. We found that we could lock up the bikes by dropping a pin that was sitting in the bask into a point near the front wheel. We locked up the bikes, paid our $500 NT and did a one hour resistance workout.
After our workout we rode back to the accomodation and cooked up some dinner. We ate an early dinner and then made our way down to the Love River cruise terminal for our cruise. On the way Cassian and Nicole filled us in on all of their adventures for the day.
Love River Cruise
The Love River cruise was interesting, the bloke narrating the cruise spoke in rapid fire Chinese, if I concentrated hard I could understand a fair bit, but as soon as I started drifting slightly I would miss large sections. The cruise didn’t take long, and before we knew it we were back on the jetty walking back to the train station.
The night market
We stopped briefly at a 7-11 to get some money out, this took longer than expected and by the time we were done the others had moved on. We got to the train station and then saw a sign for a night market. We walked to the night market and it was actually pretty good. We bought some egg tarts at one end of the market and some sweet potato balls at the other end. Once we had passed through the market we were basically at our front door.
Day 8 Kenting
We got up early, cooked some eggs and made up a couple of bowls of cereal. Christine had organised a car to take us to Kenting, the driver arrived just after breakfast and we were soon on our way to Kenting.
Once we got out of Kaohsiung we entered a large farming district where they were growing dates, dragon fruit, persimmons, bananas and a host of other fruits, vegetables and livestock. We also passed a town where there appeared to be a number of large fish farms. The van we were riding in was pimped out with every bit of electronics you could imagine, it was also heavily tinted which significantly impaired the vision of the surrounding countryside.
Jialeshui Beach
We arrived in Hengchun early and stowed or bags at the Bus Station. We then had the driver take us out to the beach at Jialeshui. When we arrived the driver asked us to pay 2800NT, now we were under the impression that we had already paid the 2800 and were only supposed to pay the driver another 500NT to take us out to the beach. We paid the money and then checked with the booking company.
We quickly located a surf shop nearby, the Jialeshui surf shop, and organised a couple of boards. The board shop charged us 300NT for each of the boards for a half day hire. They gave us a cart so that we could lug the boards down to the beach.
We paddled out and caught a stack of fun little waves, I also spoke to many of the surfers out there and was able to use my mandarin to communicate with them. I love it when I can combine some of my passions and here I was able to combine travel, languages and surfing into a perfect blend of all three. Being out in the middle of the day we all got a bit cooked even though we had lathered on the sunscreen, wore our hats and had rash shirts on.
While we were at the beach we chatted with a bunch of locals and a few people from the northern parts of Taiwan. We also met a Canadian bloke who had been caught in the area during COVID. He had decided to buy some land and build a house. Now his wife, son and himself do 6 months in Canada and 6 Months in Taiwan each year.
Once we were done with our surfing I returned the boards to the surf shop. By this stage Christine had worked out with the booking company and the driver that we had indeed paid twice . The driver said that he would return to refund the money that we had paid him, we then paid him another 400NT to take us back into Hengchun.
We decided to get some lunch, the driver pointed us to a little local place that served noodles. But Scotty decided to find the most luxurious expensive cafe that he could. We ordered a 220NT pizza and a 160NT smoothie.
Once we were done Christine and I went for a walk around the town of Hengchun while we waited for the accomodation to become available. The accomodation was always going to be interesting, you could just tell from the beginning when the bloke hiring the accomodation had given us a call when the credit card that we tried to pay with didn’t let the payment go through. I was interested to see what was going to happen when we finally arrived.
The Accomodation
The bloke made us wait until the last possible minute to let us into the accomodation. We had paid 12 000NT for a four bedroom house, when he finally let us in we found that we only had access to two of the rooms, one of the rooms had two double beds and the other room had one double bed, the other rooms were locked up. We asked what the deal was and he said that as we only had 5 people he was only going to give us two rooms. Just to put it into perspective, this accomodation is two times more expensive than any of the other accomodation we had stayed in, and in Taichung we had four bedrooms. We would later discover that contrary to the add there was no washing machine nor much in the way of kitchen equipment.
The place was an old hotel that had been converted into an Air BnB. This bloke also charged us a 3000NT deposit which was most unusual, the last place we had paid a deposit for accomodation was in the United States. As a side note the bloke paid back the deposit about a week after we arrived back from our holiday, he then took 3000NT out of my credit card about a month later, we had to get the fraud department at the bank to chase it up. In the end they were successful in recovering the funds. With the benefit of hind sight I should have cancelled the card as soon as he refunded us the money.
Scooter Hire
We freshened up and then went to track down a scooter. The scooter hire shop is across the road from the transit centre and is called 和欣租车. As with most of our transactions in Taiwan, this process was straight forward, we showed the lady our international drivers licence, paid the 400NT and drove our away.
Kenting Night Markets
We drove down to the night markets, found a carpark and then found a Filipino Malay fusion restaurant called Singa. The motor cycle parking is directly across from the restaurant, be sure to take some coins to pay the ticket machine. We ordered a couple of beef rendang with rice. The beer was buy two and get one free, I had heard buy one and get one free, so we ended up with three beers in a country with a 0.03 alcohol limit for drivers. The waiter just advised us not to have a crash and we shouldn’t have a problem, sound advice.
We had a great attempt at drinking our three beers and then wandered around the markets. Within a couple of minutes a tropical deluge kicked off and we were forced to find some shelter. We slowly moved along between rain showers and eventually ended up back in front of the Filipino restaurant. We bought a ice cream and peanut wrap, and a banana pancake for desert. We enjoyed our snacks and then rode the scooter back to the accomodation.
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