Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Today we were in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Kaohsiung is the largest municipality of Taiwan with a population of 24 million people. It has one of the largest container ports in the world. Taiwan is located only 90 miles from China. Two thirds of the island is covered by mountains where many indigenous people live, making up 16 different tribes.  

 

island of Taiwan (mountainous region in red)

 

view from our balcony this morning

nice buses (but yes, they did have drapes)

  

Around noon, we rode the bus from the city to the Meinong Township to visit the Meinong Aboriginal Culture Village. Our guide, Rosa, spent a lot of time talking about Taiwan’s history and about the different people groups who make up its population. The mountainous terrain is extremely tropical and lush. As we rode along looking out the bus windows, we saw miles upon miles of crops growing – pineapples, rice, mangoes, guava, passion fruit, lotus, bananas, corn, red pepper, tomatoes, daikon (or “white” carrot), taro and more. 

 

pineapple fields

bus window photo - rice fields

 

Just as we were pulling into the village parking lot, everyone’s phones started sounding with an earthquake warning. Our guide didn’t seem particularly concerned, but just explained about how the different plates move in that area. Fortunately, we never felt anything but friends from the ship reported a 4.9 quake when they were eating lunch on a different excursion, perhaps an hour or so away. 

 

bus window view of bridge across mountains

 

Indigenous Peoples Cultural Park

At the Culture Village we watched a presentation with some local dancers performing their traditional dances. It was interesting but unfortunately not in a language we could understand. I don’t think we were too successful in figuring out the story behind the dancing.

 

cultural show

 

Because Meinong is located in the mountains, the temperature wasn’t nearly as unbearable as it has been. Additionally, it was raining really hard when we came out of the show which also helped cool things down a bit.

On the way back to the port, we were driven to Meinong Folk Village where we watched a crafts person making the paper umbrellas and had a chance to grab a few souvenirs.

 

Meinong Folk Village

 

artist glues paper on the wooden frames

umbrellas are painted to make them water proof

variety of beautiful handmade paper umbrellas

many different designs for sale

common snack - vendors Taiwanese tea eggs

Our last stop was the Municipal Historic Site: Meinong East Gate Tower and Land God, designated as historic site in the year 2000. The history of this area dates back to the Qing (Cuin) Dynasty when a group of people settled in the plain area of Meinong in 1736.

bus window photo

Meinong East Gate Tower

used for burning incense and prayers

outside Land God of the East Gate

Rosa, our guide singing to us in Taiwanese

We really didn’t mind all the bus riding since it kept us out of the heat! We could not take food with us from the ship and we were gone for 5 ½ hours, so everyone was starving by the time we returned, maybe 30 or so minutes before the sun began to set. I went out on the dock and took some photos and a short video as we were pulling out of port.

 

 

We have another excursion tomorrow so I will make this post short. However, it won’t be short on photos, as I took a ton of them today.