More from Kenting

Yes, I am in a huge rush to get caught up with posts as I am off on a new adventure in a few days (more photos if the camera holds up) and am very behind on showing some of the scenes from "old" adventures .... am still two adventures away from the Lantern festival which was March 4th in Taibo.

On to Kenting, Taiwan February 8th and 9th

Next it was on to Kenting and the beaches of the southern tip of Taiwan. The photo of Jennifer in the last blog entry was from Kenting. Kenting didn't quite live up to the reputation it has for being the "best place on the island for a holiday." Someone must surely be mistaken. We did visit several of the beaches there and walked through the night markets as well as the shops along the main street of the little resort town. It was an interesting place for certain. After an early morning of aimlessly walking the streets searching for an Internet cafe', I accidentally ran across a restaurant which had two computers available for customer use. I don't remember which addiction was more pleased.... the strong coffee or the broadband. But I do remember a feeling of panic when I realized the computers were set to type only Chinese characters. Luckily, the waiter came to my rescue. I have since learned how to change the keyboard to English myself. It is always difficult to decide which photos to use in this blog. Many of the photos I take here are taken from a train or bus and show a larger area of what I see here. This blog doesn't really do justice to landscape type photos. Someday maybe I will do a show, Railroad Diaries, and print out larger photos of the scenes I have captured as I travel from one area of Taiwan to another. These can show much more about Taiwan as a country than the ones I generally post here.... more about the people and the culture.... (and a few of Jennifer and RJ) Kenting is a tourist area and so has some unusual sites. As with all of Taiwan, the tourist areas are basically for Taiwanese tourists, and not so much for foreign tourists. Maybe you will enjoy some of the signs for names of places. Perhaps there is a danger in knowing a "little" English, but not a lot. Ha! There definitely is humor.

And what to the wandering eye should appear.....

Er, hmmm. I should give an excuse as to why I haven't posted anything in so long. I really do have some excellent excuses. But, I think I'll dispense with that and just give some details of what I have been doing since the last post back in February. Chinese New Year was in mid February. The winter break here is quite long, nearly a month. Chinese refer to it as "Spring" break, but this rigid technicality (February is winter) keeps me from being able to consider it a Spring break. In China the break is roughly the same..... which means.... you guessed it! Jennifer came to visit me in Taiwan. She and her friend RJ arrived in Kaohsiung airport on the 7th of February. Due to a train accident, my train to Kaohsiung was over an hour and a half late. Luckily, her plane was also late, so I did end up at the airport on time. We all spent the night in Kaohsiung since it was evening by the time we met up, and we went to a night market near the hotel. These photos are from the night market. I ended up buying something. As I reflect back on the night, I can't imagine what came over me to buy not one, but TWO Egyptian paintings (not real paintings) on papyrus. Jennifer just shook her head and made one of those, "Okay Mom, I won't say a word, but this isn't much different from an Elvis painting on black velvet," looks, raised her eyebrows and grinned. It would have been a waste of breath to mumble something about a fascination with Egpytian art and papyrus!! Oh, I have always wanted to touch real papyrus. Ah, well, she bought sunglasses and RJ bought filp-flops, so I guess I can forgive myself for wasting money on Egyptian junk in Taiwan.