Kaohsiung

Christen and I have both been feeling a bit antsy lately, so we took a "field trip", as we are calling it.  We got on a train Saturday afternoon to Kaohsiung.  It is about an hour a half south of Chaiyi.  Kaohsiung is the second largest city in Taiwan and the 3rd biggest port in the world, behind Hong Kong and Singapore. We got a hotel room for the night and then set out for a little exploration of the city. It was time for the night market so we headed there first.  We were a little shocked that the night market wasn't nearly as large as either the Chaiyi or Puzih markets.  It was mainly food vendors, which are never appetizing because of the mixture of smells.  We had a good time anyway. 

The beautiful view from our hotel room!!  Three HUGE neon parrots!

Night Market

Talk about fresh food!  You choose which fish or crab you want and they cook it in right there on the street.

Dinner Time!!!  Uh.....No thank you!

Sunday we woke up and rented scooters so we could see as much of Kaohsiung as possible.

We accidently ran into a party at a temple.  We didn't get to close because we didn't want to intrude, but it was very cool!

Some little boys put on a show with dragon costumes.  Was pretty cool.

And they were VERY happy to take the costumes off!

After we saw the temple, we drove around for quite a while looking for lotus lake.  It was well worth the searching!!  There are four or five temple built around or into the lake.

This temple was amazing!!!  Just wait til you see the inside!!

This is an incinerator out in front of the temple.  Smoke comes out of his mouth.

Making friends on the way up the stairs!

Making funny faces!

Christen made some friends too!

These carvings are all over the walls leading into the temple!  So intricate!

Inside the temple.

The ceiling is all wood carvings.  It is AWESOME!!!

We went up the elevator to the fifth floor of the temple and found these dragons made all out of china dishes!  AMAZING!

This is the statue from much closer! 

Next stop on the lake was a god that was built out in lake with an intricate tile walkway out to it.

This little pagoda was off the walk way to the god.  It had little kiddie amusement rides.....something for everyone!

There was also a large Koi pond.

Out in front was a protective elephant!  We tamed the wild beast!

This was a huge dragon and a couple pagodas.  It looked like an amusement park. 

You can walk through the dragon.

There are pictures along the walls that seem to tell a story, but we couldn't read any of the words or the pamphlets they handed out.  It was pretty cool anyway though!

This is the pagoda behind the dragon.  It is out in middle of the lake.  There was a pretty cool view of a huge temple that is across the street from the dragon amusement.

This place had a pond with thousands of turtles sunning themselves.  It looked like a turtle circus the way they were all balanced on top of each other.  They were everywhere!

Sunshine on the water makes me happy!!!

We are headed to those two pagodas next!

The walkway to these pagodas are all in right turns.  The story is that ghosts can't make turns, so if you want to protect something in the water you make right angles out to them because the ghosts will fall off the pathway.  There is also a dragon guarding one side and a tiger protecting the other.  And yes......you can climb stairs to the top.

AHH....we had fun with the big mouths!

We ran into this little fast food restaurant by accident.  We didn't eat there, but I had to get a picture!  Missing California!!!!

Another temple.....at night!

This is the Love River.  It runs through Kaohsiung.  There is a little fairy boat that you can take a ride in.  It is beautiful to see every bridge that crosses the river because each one is lit up differently.  The colored lights on this bridge were actually a half circle fountain.  It was a beautiful view!

The day and a half was an amazing getaway!  Hopefully it will tide me over until Chinese New Year!!!