Hello everyone! I know, I know; it's been a while since I last wrote. What can I say? The end of last semester got pretty busy, and then I had Winter Break and afterwards, jumped right into the spring semester. But, as a reward for your patience, this blog is returning for a 3-part series on my New Year's adventures, both over Western New Year (January 1) and Lunar New Year (which this year fell on February 1).
Unlike the United States, Taiwan and many East Asian countries hold their big holiday break around Lunar New Year and not Christmas/Western New Year. Still, my school had December 31 off, so I took advantage of the three-day weekend to travel to Kaohsiung with some Fulbright friends.
Our first stop was a basketball showdown between the Kaohsiung Aquas and the Taipei Herobears at Kaohsiung Arena. While the game was definitely not as involved as our previous baseball matches (no cheerleaders or president in attendance this time), the players fell and fouled in equally dramatic fashion. The away team (Herobears) shot better but the Aquas seized a stronger head start which they clung onto until the bitter end.
The basketball players kept it theatrical.
After the game, we grabbed dinner at a nearby market and then set off towards our main purpose in Kaohsiung: attending a New Year's Eve beach party on Cijin Island. Cijin is a long, thin, Baja California-shaped island that's just a 5 minute ferry ride off the Kaohsiung coast. When we arrived, I had an intense déjà vu feeling because I had last visited Cijin exactly 2 years ago with my brother. This time, however, was at night, and there were a lot more people, particularly other foreigners like us.
Cijin Island and the nighttime ferry ride
Unfortunately, when we got to the party, the vibes were definitely off. For starters, the party was in an enclosed tent on the beach so one couldn’t even see the ocean, which, to me, was the whole point. Luckily, one of my friends was also not feeling the vibes so the two of us ran out of there immediately and went to sit on the beach. We lay in the sand and talked while watching a few groups in the distance light off amateur fireworks. It was really nice and chill and exactly how I wanted to spend the New Year's anyway. We walked around the beach for a while and caught the midnight fireworks.
After exploring the island and checking out a few food stands, we figured it was a decent time to return to the mainland. (The ferries only run until 2:00am after all). Taking a ferry back was the easy part; the hard part was figuring out how to get from the ferry station to our accommodations. Since it was past midnight, the subway was closed. We tried calling a taxi or Uber at multiple convenience stores, but there were none to be found. Still, I'm no novice to the stranded-at-1am-in-urban-Asia situation so I started going through all our transportation options.
First, I suggested YouBike (a popular bikeshare company) and we started walking towards some docking stations. But they were all empty and besides, neither of us had ever used YouBike before. That’s when I checked the scootershare apps, GoShare and WeMo. The GoShare bikes were all too far away but there were some WeMos close by. They were all super low on battery, though, with a scant 20% at best. I was disheartened at first, but then I looked up the distance to our hotel and realized it was only 4-5 km away. So I picked a scooter that had 10km battery life left and hopped on.
I started driving through the Kaohsiung streets with my friend navigating since the scooter had no phone stand. But as it turns out, WeMo scooters have a nighttime automatic speed limit of 30 km/hr, which for my friends back home, is 18 mph!
My friend yelled, “Why are you driving so slow?”
And I yelled back, “I’m literally flooring it!”
I pushed the gas handle all the way down the entire time, but we still barely crawled along the streets like snails while the other scooters zoomed around us. Even so, we were laughing about it the whole time. I did manage to override the speed limit a few times because I was pushing on the gas handle so hard. Regardless, we made it back to our hotel in decent time.
On New Year's Day, I hung out in Kaohsiung for a bit before hopping a train north to see my Taipei relatives. This time, we gathered at a Michelin Star Cantonese restaurant which totally lived up to the hype. Our courses were wild: a giant curry bread bowl, a plate of shrimp and rice noodles that looked like scallops, a whole Peking Duck, a plate of cold duck and pork meat, whole fish, spring rolls, cabbage and stuffed shiitake mushrooms, pork belly soup, chicken soup, and mahjong mochi (!!!). Then, Second Auntie brought out a king cake to celebrate my great-aunt’s 90th birthday. It was just like an Epiphany Sunday cake except we were supposed to look for a little plastic shoe in our cake slices, not Baby Jesus. In any case, the shoe fell out of the cake while Auntie was cutting it, so nobody ended up with it, haha.
Prepare yourself for more feasting photos!
Of course, one New Year's feast wasn't enough, so the next morning, the family drove to Miaoli, a beautiful county on Taiwan's northwest coast. We first wandered around the mountains near a $300 NTD (~$12 USD) all-you-can-eat BBQ restaurant (note to self: come back to this restaurant). Then, we drove to the coast to a “very famous” seafood restaurant where we feasted again on fish eggs, shrimp, sashimi, whole fish, oysters, etc.
Miaoli's delicious seafood
After lunch, we walked around the sunny coastline which was beautiful and a nice break from Taipei’s perpetually cloudy winter. We also drove around to a bunch of different stops, including a wind turbine park (Miaoli is super windy), a temple to the goddess Matsu, and a local snacks store. I found out that my uncles and aunt actually grew up in Miaoli, so it was cool to explore their old stomping grounds.
But, after a few hours of exploration, it was time for me to hop a train back to Yunlin. What a way to begin 2022: with lots of feasting, friends, family, and 1am scooter adventures! If the first weekend was any indication, I figured this year would be equally as wacky as the past few :) but maybe that's okay. Here's to 2022!
Miaoli's abundant natural beauty. Can't wait to return!