Tainan & Kaohsiung

14.12: Way to Tainan

The morning dawned bright and sunny on the 14th of December in the merry town of Lukang. Us two adventurers set out to the next stop on our way: Tainan. Accompanied as usual by Meeko and Pascal our trusted backpacks and two jaes from the top potion stand in Lukang. The ride on the local ridable speed-worm went surprisingly smooth. Well maybe Germans are just a train-traumatized nation. But letˋs not dwell on that. Too sad a topic for such a delightful day. Tainan is one of the oldest dwellings on the mystical island of Taipei. It surprises the wandering adventurers with hidden, colorful temples and magnificent stone dragons, who will most definitely come alife when their respectful temple is attacted by evil sorcerers. Luckily that didnˋt happen while we where in town, but we would have loved to meet some of the stone dragons. They seemed too ready to be petted. Other delightful things we encountered: colorful lanterns, the knowledge about "drawing a chinese fortune stick to find your one true love or solve relationship problems" and most impressive a 2 L pizza sauce container. As nothing can top that (feel free to choose) we decided that we explored enough for the day and headed to a night market, where we had tofu and surprisingly bland japanese noodles for dinner.

15.12

Or second day in Tainan was filled with wonders of the world and inside our head. Having rested only poorly (OWL grade: dreadful) our initial energy level was low. But that is no reason to despair for we are experienced in the powerful art of magic potions and their ever changing effects. So we, the smart humans everyone knows we are, grabbed half a liter of the strong, undiluted, dark leafy potion. Resulting in a sudden increase in energy. But as powerful as this leafy liquid is it canˋt erase the lack of intelligence stemming from a missing night of good rem-sleep. The result is a state of mind we named donkey, after the donkey from shrek. Very bubbly, energetic but sadly not very smart. In that state of mind we listened to the sailor-moon and phineas and ferb introsongs and ventured through a deparment store. We had a lot of fun, though the employees probably wanted to expell us from the premise. Improtant to know about the donkey state of mind is, that it is reliant on a surge of energy while really being tired, therefore it dosen´t last very long. The rest of the day our energy level rose and fell in waves and we just rolled with it. Visiting a coulpe of temples, eating truly great rice cake for lunch and heading to a quarter of the city close to the beach. There we embarked on our next quest: finding sunglasses. The ones we set out with didnˋt make it out of Europe. It proved quite a challenge to find some. Apparently huge sunglasses, that make you look like an insect are the shit here. But we managed to find some for a reasonable price. With our new treasures in hand we strolled to the beach. On the way another stroke of good fortune found us. Wanting a juice we stoped at a street vendor, who sold those, feeling in the mood we got the big ones. What we didnˋt expect was to get one liter of lemon juice for one Euro! Normally the big ones are 0.5 L. The place where the land meets the sea was beautiful. Due to the abnormally large amount of signs talking about risking your live, we just danced in the breaking waves not fully emerged in the water and watched the sunset in the safety of the land.

16.12

The next morning we decided to enjoy the calm of our hostel and the luxury of the wireless internet before setting out to the next destination after lunch. The ride on the speed-worm was smooth and we arrived in Kaohsiung after 1 hour, a place that we couldnˋt reach by floopowder (to understand this wait for our podcast episode on February 1st). Even after three days there we are still not really sure how to pronounce that strange cluster of letters. On the walk to our Airbnb we searced for a new dose of magic potion, as we are quite addicted to the power of ascorbic acid. We decided to blame that on genetics something beyond our ability to change, as our mom sufferes from the same addiction. Our home for the next days was nearly in the sky, being on floor 37. For dinner we ate noodles in the night market around the corner before ending the day with a high end movie: Tangled.

17.12

Another day of ancient splendour and mysteries dawned and we were ready to rumble. Breaking our fast in the flat we took the underground, not-so-speedy speed-worm to the lotus pond. A nearly natural lake surrounded by magnificent temples. Marveling at the intricate decorations we strolled around the lake, walking through a dragon and examining statues of grand warriors (some of our favourites are the one riding a rooster, one riding a very happy dragon bringing food to the others and one riding an elephant, who looked like he just saw ghost army coming to rescue minas tirith). For lunch we had great noodles and a huge pile of tofu. Once we fully circled the pond we took the same underground, not-so-speedy speed-worm to the city center. There we met one of Julias fellow apprentices from her time studing the art of war in the grand halls of kings in distant lands. Accompanied by her we ate apple cakes, drank tea and strolled along the harbour doks. We also ate a truly huge bowl of ice cream with fruits. In the late afternoon us two adventurers took a floating vessel over the sea to a close to shore island, where we wandered through black sand next to the sea watching the sun disappear, before heading back to our lodging. On the way we ate great sesame-peanut noodles with tofu and cucumber.