6/29: Morisaka (Lin Tien San) forest area, Guangfu sugar factory, Liyutan Carp Lake, Ci Sing Tan Scenic Spot

Today we visited some absolutely beautiful areas. First up was a cypress forest area that was logged heavily by the Japanese in their occupation era and then by the Chinese. It's mostly old-growth cypress which has the most amazing smell I think I've ever smelled. I bought so much stuff here, I think I blacked out in the stores and just went crazy. I ended up spending about $2,000 New Taiwanese Dollars, which is about $65 US. To put that in context, that's what I spent on everything I bought for an entire week in Taipei, and I probably spent $5,000 NTD in the entire two weeks I was there. I'm not showing a lot of it because there's a lot of gifts in there! I got so many fun ideas for Adroit as well, there were so many cute projects that I think we can recreate with the kids. ​

This is the entry to the forest area, like many things it was under repair so we didn't get to go in here. 

This adorable puppy came to say hi to us all in the bathroom area and didn't want to leave us alone. He was wet because his caretaker was giving him baths to keep him cool, but he was just so fluffy! He almost came on our walk with us because I couldn't find his caretaker to give him back, but she finally got him back so we could keep going. I swear, I almost stuffed him in my suitcase to bring home with me. 

This is the coolest industrial art I've seen in a long time. It's large equipment turned into a dragonfly!

Some cypress rounds on the wall of the little museum. You can see all the rings, the trees are old and huge!

The official gift shop had these amazing sculptures. I wish I'd been able to afford one, they were just stunning. 

When the Japanese started logging here, they built lots of homes and shops for the Japanese workers coming to stay. It's interesting seeing the contrast between Japanese style buildings (mostly here in this eastern region of Taiwan) and the Chinese styles that are most other places. 

This is the Guangfu sugar factory, further along our journey. I got ice cream that is made on site with sugar produced here and ran into some friends from the hotel. At breakfast, I was making faces with this family of little kids who were sitting in the space, and I ran into them here! They were so excited to see me and their mom helped me translate some conversations about where I am from and why I was there. They were super cute and it was fun to interact with them. 

Disney and Frozen is universal, we did a little singing and they loved it! Blurred the kids because, well, kids.

There was a pond with tons of fish that you can buy food for and feed. This photo in no way shows how many fish were there, it was just masses of them attacking the food. 

This is the Liyutan Carp Lake area, it's the little lake tucked right in amongst the mountain range that has become a little recreation area. We went out on the paddle boats (and I remembered how much I hate paddle boats), saw some giant fish (carp, I assume), and saw a practice dragon boat race. We got rained on a little but had a cover on our boat, so it was all good. 

These guys FLEW past on in our paddle boat, it was impressive. 

It's really hard to see, but there are two dark spots in the middle of this photo that were the giant fish. They had to be 4 feet each at least. 

I took this out the bus window so I'm not sure where it is, but it reminded me so much of some of the scenery in the Narnia movies. All the rivers have this type of riverbed here, it's a very rocky region. I love it with the low clouds and then brilliant greens. 

Our last spot was the Ci Sing Tan scenic spot, it's right by the local airport so that was interesting. While we were there a military plane of some sort landed, I have a video of it if anyone is interested but I can't get it to load on this blog. 

The upper part of the beach was rocky, then sandy, then rocky again right at the shoreline. The rocks by the shore were like little river rocks that weren't super comfortable, but I still sat there for as long as possible just watching the water. 

One of the guys from our group was walking along behind me and snapped this photo of me chilling on the log I found to sit on. It's one of my favorite photos I've ever had taken of me!

6/26: Kaohsiung Arts Districts

 This was a day spent exploring the arts districts of Kaohsiung. The area used to be one of the most busy ports in the world, moving goods out of Taiwan to Asia and the world, but over time it has become much less busy. It went from something like 4th busiest in the world to not in the top 20 list, so there were lots of empty warehouses and docks. The city has made it into an area full of some cool street art, so we went through two separate art districts and did a couple of boat cruises to see it all. 

One of the first exhibits we saw was this swing. Up above it was a live tree on a walkway between the two warehouses and the swing hung below it. The swing was in the shape of a leaf. It was a lot of fun to swing on!

This little guy cracked me up, his face is just so happy. At night when the whole space is full of people and lit up, the spout sprays water out periodically. 

There was a tiny train made for kids, so of course we had to ride it! We went around in a figure 8 between the buildings and it was really cute. 

There was a lot of wire work, and this whale was enormous and just chilling in the air between two buildings. 

This exhibit was on the wall as you walked through, and from a distance things looked kind of normal. Then as I walked up I saw that the dogs had extra legs and weird non-face faces. I couldn't figure it out until I read the description which says it represents a panoramic photo gone wrong...I'm sure we all have a few of those on our phones. The artist statement says that panoramic photos often fail because the phone was moving too fast, and the objects are "stuck". She says we can get "stuck" in life too when we move too fast, which was a really interesting message (especially on a whirlwind trip like I was on!).

The city is fairly industrial, but also has a few beautiful spots that we saw. This bridge was cool but under repair (that was the running theme of the trip, half of what we wanted to see was under repair for some reason) so we couldn't cross it. 

The big building in the middle is a new building, the top is residential and the middle floors are a hotel. It looks like the bottom half of a stick figure, there are two towers that come up from the ground and then join together to have one coming out of them. It's a pretty cool building. 

This was some paper work that was layered to create a 3D image and it was amazing. In Adroit this past year we worked with the kids on making layered pieces like this, so hopefully this can be inspiration for them this year. 

These barrels were drums, and when you played the drums they lit up the whole structure. Different drums had different lighting. Part of the group went back at night and it was much cooler then. 

Giant flowers with a path between them, they were fun to walk through. 

This guy was freaky. I will leave it up to you if you want to zoom in, if you do you may notice that there is a head on his --um-- head. That would be Chairman Mao. It's an interesting political statement. 

This image was 3D if you lined up correctly (which I didn't really do). It was cool to see the trains that had moved goods through the area for decades represented. 

There were so many of these huge figures around. They're the same on both sides instead of having a front and back, and they're kind of freaky. 

This is the name of the art park. 

These were some cool sculptures of everyday objects. There's a huge ball of yarn and a massive suitcase mixed in with other items. 

One of the main products shipped through this harbor was bananas, so this whole warehouse is dedicated to the banana trade. We had a tasty lunch here and then bought some banana snacks. I had some banana cheeto like things that were just amazing.

We went on an informative cruise around the harbor on the "Butterfly Princess Yacht", looking at all the ships in the harbor. According to the guide it's a "beautiful harbor" but it was more of an industrial zone with some pretty spots around the edges. You could see where they have adjusted since their trade has fallen off which was interesting. 

This was a huge dry dock, I'm sure it's not actually that big compared to others but it's one of the biggest I've seen. The boat getting repaired was massive but didn't even fill the space. 

There's a lot of salvage now, so this was really interesting. The boat in front is being salvaged and is tethered to the salvage boat behind, and the workers shuttle back and forth. It's a good way to save space while stripping it down to the hull. 

If you took my APHG class at any point, you know why I took this photo. 🤣🤣

The harbor is also full of Taiwanese Navy and Coast Guard ships. While we were in Taiwan, the tensions with China were slightly heighted so I personally tended to be on high alert so this was a little nerve-wracking to see but this ship in particular was interesting. I haven't seen this hull design much, but I'm assuming it's built for speed. We learned that different ship numbers on military ships mean different things from cargo/delivery ships to attack/defense ships, so I had a little scavenger hunt in my head looking for different kinds. The big cruise ship behind makes the journey from Taiwan to Hong Kong a few times per week, it's massive but kind of run down compared to a Caribbean cruise ship for example.  

We did a second cruise on the internal river and I just got a few photos, here's a night heron I got a pretty good shot of. There were so many cool birds on the trip, I have a bunch of pictures of them. 

I'm pretty sure this one is an egret. I think I also saw some cranes but this isn't one. 

This is a cool looking building, it's a performing arts center with several different auditoriums inside. It feels a little like Taiwan's version of the Kennedy Center in DC. 

We also hit a second art district, this is a residential zone that's been fully painted and decorated. There was some really beautiful work. 

Most of the buildings were fully painted like this, my favorites were the wildlife buildings for sure. 

This giant bookshelf was great, I spent a lot of time looking at all the titles trying to figure out what was there. The cat curled up in the books cracked me up. 

After a long day, a group of us went for an early dinner. We went over to the subway station which is quite famous and explored, taking the train one station just to see a couple of them and then having dinner in the station. 

The center of the station had this amazing light structure, when we came back at the end of the night there was a great light show happening all about the creation of the planet and humanity but the video is almost 8 minutes long and won't upload. It was a fun moment though!

The station has these four light up towers on the street that make praying hands somehow. I don't see it but the tour guide was pretty adamant that each tower represents fingers, and two towers together make one hand then the two hands come together to pray. Maybe someone else sees it and can explain.