...in which he goes to the beach.
Moon Festival was last Tuesday. It's a national holiday here and everyone gets the day off. Because it was on a Tuesday, we got Monday off as well. But it was made up for by National Pretend It's Monday Day this past Saturday. But this story is about the trip we took with our four-day long weekend. The "our" refers to the foreign teachers of Ming Jian, all four of us. We also had one more foreigner, Tami, from a small city 20 km down the road. The five of us went to the south end of the Island to a beach town called Kenting.
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A little about each of the players:
Myself - Tall, dark, and handsome - unsure of the difference between being ironic, sarcastic, and sardonic, but enjoys overusing all three attitudes just the same.
Laura - Tall, friendly, and positive - really loves animals. People too, but really loves animals.
Sarah - Average size, thoughtful, and likes surfing - She likes cats and Laura. She likes Laura just enough to put up with the crazy animal oriented lifestyle that they share.
Michael - Loves his mother, loves his black lab - The dog, Marvin, is fully trained to sic when ordered. Thankfully he is back in Canada, though Mike misses him very much.
Tami - Short, blond, Canadian - Fun-loving, but misses Canada very much and looks forward to returning there in December.
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Because everyone on the island was going the same place at the same time, we left our little town at 2:15 in the morning. We had a short shuttle ride to a nearby (20-30 min) train station. Our gear pretty much filled up the van. At that point I thought that the others had dramatically over-packed. That became debatable during our wet weekend when the others had more clean/nice/dry things to wear than I did. After a three hour train ride to Kaohsiung, a two hour bus ride, and a two minute cab ride to our campsite, we arrived. It was about 8:00 in the morning. We had both tents up within a half an hour. We thought ourselves quite the heroes when it started to rain ten minutes later. That pride disappeared when we saw our rain fly was stuck to the tent. For anyone who doesn't know about tents and camping, a rain fly only keeps the rainwater out of your tent so long as they are separated by a layer of air; half an inch is enough.
Michael and I spent a long time looking at it and we concluded that it was a crap tent with no way to successfully pull the rain fly tight, away from the tent. It took some real doing but Michael came up with this goofy jury-rig using the four post of our camping platform that worked great for the whole weekend. His lesson from this was "be prepared." Mine was "camp with your own gear." It really never stopped raining, but between the five of us, we really never stopped having a good time.
A lot of our time was spent relaxing having food, coffee, or beer. We went to a lovely Italian restaurant the first night where Laura and I were able to get pizzas without cheese. Of course, I don't eat cheese because I'm lactose intolerant (no matter how much my mother might insist otherwise). But Laura recently stopped eating cheese when I told her about a Get Fuzzy comic which discussed rennet. She is a committed vegetarian verging on vegan. The waiter's face scrunched and he checked the order with us a few times, but the pizzas came out without cheese and they were excellent. We all had a great meal there and we walked away with some extra pizza for a late night snack. That proved fortuitous after we found a nice bar just off the main street. 
We strung a few beers out over a few hours. But it was Saturday night and we'd all been awake since we got up for work Friday morning.
The late hour started to take it's toll.
Some were drowsy, some were happy, and some were a bit touched.
The next day we went for a scooter ride with no particular direction. We saw a crowd of people pulling off the road and we followed to see what the interest was. They were walking out to a beautiful green cliff top. Again we followed, but as we approached the edge we could see a storm coming in off the Pacific. The wind was strong and the opening rain stung our faces. Everyone else turned back for their vehicles. In our party, we figured it was one wet or another. It had rained since we arrived, so we weren't deterred. Our perseverance was well rewarded. The storm ran out of rain quickly, but the wind kept up. We stood on the edge of the cliff feeling the stiff wind doubled rushing up the cliff. It was an amazing experience, we were able to lean into the wind right on the edge. We were out there for a long while all on our own.
We took some pictures, but when everyone else realized the rain wasn't coming down they started back towards the cliff and we headed back to our scooters.
Later that day, Sarah and I went to the beach to give surfing a try. We both had a good go of it to begin with. The instructors were helpful and friendly. The conditions were decidedly less so. There were two areas we could try. One had smaller waves on top of a coral reef. The other had bigger waves on top of sand. It turns out that you really can't learn in big waves. After I got a rough gash on the bottom of my foot I wasn't to keen on continuing. I didn't make it all the way up that day, but I'd be willing to try surfing again under the right conditions.
Sarah loved it and rode several good ones that first day. 
She and Laura went back to next day for another good session. That night we went to a club. We had a great time and I really enjoyed the live band that came on half way through the night. After the club shut down late, our group fell apart. We found out the next morning that one person, who shall remain nameless, lost their pants and wallet in the ocean after we left the club. That means it was a good night, right?
Monday night was our last in Kenting. We were all tired of being wet and dirty from all the mud around our camp. It never did stop raining. We gave in and asked if there was a room available. They said we were in luck, there was one. We could get it for 4000 NT. That's about $133. Laura gave them 3000 NT and we went to see it. It was beautiful. We all took hot comfortable showers. and we left clothes out to dry. The beds were amazing and AC made things very comfortable. After cleaning up we went out for dinner at a Thai restaurant. I had a vegetable curry that was just great. Sleeping in a bed that night made for a happy ending to a happy trip.
--------------------------
A little about each of the players:
Myself - Tall, dark, and handsome - unsure of the difference between being ironic, sarcastic, and sardonic, but enjoys overusing all three attitudes just the same.
Laura - Tall, friendly, and positive - really loves animals. People too, but really loves animals.
Sarah - Average size, thoughtful, and likes surfing - She likes cats and Laura. She likes Laura just enough to put up with the crazy animal oriented lifestyle that they share.
Michael - Loves his mother, loves his black lab - The dog, Marvin, is fully trained to sic when ordered. Thankfully he is back in Canada, though Mike misses him very much.
Tami - Short, blond, Canadian - Fun-loving, but misses Canada very much and looks forward to returning there in December.
--------------------------
Because everyone on the island was going the same place at the same time, we left our little town at 2:15 in the morning. We had a short shuttle ride to a nearby (20-30 min) train station. Our gear pretty much filled up the van. At that point I thought that the others had dramatically over-packed. That became debatable during our wet weekend when the others had more clean/nice/dry things to wear than I did. After a three hour train ride to Kaohsiung, a two hour bus ride, and a two minute cab ride to our campsite, we arrived. It was about 8:00 in the morning. We had both tents up within a half an hour. We thought ourselves quite the heroes when it started to rain ten minutes later. That pride disappeared when we saw our rain fly was stuck to the tent. For anyone who doesn't know about tents and camping, a rain fly only keeps the rainwater out of your tent so long as they are separated by a layer of air; half an inch is enough.
Michael and I spent a long time looking at it and we concluded that it was a crap tent with no way to successfully pull the rain fly tight, away from the tent. It took some real doing but Michael came up with this goofy jury-rig using the four post of our camping platform that worked great for the whole weekend. His lesson from this was "be prepared." Mine was "camp with your own gear." It really never stopped raining, but between the five of us, we really never stopped having a good time.
A lot of our time was spent relaxing having food, coffee, or beer. We went to a lovely Italian restaurant the first night where Laura and I were able to get pizzas without cheese. Of course, I don't eat cheese because I'm lactose intolerant (no matter how much my mother might insist otherwise). But Laura recently stopped eating cheese when I told her about a Get Fuzzy comic which discussed rennet. She is a committed vegetarian verging on vegan. The waiter's face scrunched and he checked the order with us a few times, but the pizzas came out without cheese and they were excellent. We all had a great meal there and we walked away with some extra pizza for a late night snack. That proved fortuitous after we found a nice bar just off the main street. 
We strung a few beers out over a few hours. But it was Saturday night and we'd all been awake since we got up for work Friday morning.The late hour started to take it's toll.
Some were drowsy, some were happy, and some were a bit touched.
The next day we went for a scooter ride with no particular direction. We saw a crowd of people pulling off the road and we followed to see what the interest was. They were walking out to a beautiful green cliff top. Again we followed, but as we approached the edge we could see a storm coming in off the Pacific. The wind was strong and the opening rain stung our faces. Everyone else turned back for their vehicles. In our party, we figured it was one wet or another. It had rained since we arrived, so we weren't deterred. Our perseverance was well rewarded. The storm ran out of rain quickly, but the wind kept up. We stood on the edge of the cliff feeling the stiff wind doubled rushing up the cliff. It was an amazing experience, we were able to lean into the wind right on the edge. We were out there for a long while all on our own.
We took some pictures, but when everyone else realized the rain wasn't coming down they started back towards the cliff and we headed back to our scooters.Later that day, Sarah and I went to the beach to give surfing a try. We both had a good go of it to begin with. The instructors were helpful and friendly. The conditions were decidedly less so. There were two areas we could try. One had smaller waves on top of a coral reef. The other had bigger waves on top of sand. It turns out that you really can't learn in big waves. After I got a rough gash on the bottom of my foot I wasn't to keen on continuing. I didn't make it all the way up that day, but I'd be willing to try surfing again under the right conditions.
Sarah loved it and rode several good ones that first day. 
She and Laura went back to next day for another good session. That night we went to a club. We had a great time and I really enjoyed the live band that came on half way through the night. After the club shut down late, our group fell apart. We found out the next morning that one person, who shall remain nameless, lost their pants and wallet in the ocean after we left the club. That means it was a good night, right?
Monday night was our last in Kenting. We were all tired of being wet and dirty from all the mud around our camp. It never did stop raining. We gave in and asked if there was a room available. They said we were in luck, there was one. We could get it for 4000 NT. That's about $133. Laura gave them 3000 NT and we went to see it. It was beautiful. We all took hot comfortable showers. and we left clothes out to dry. The beds were amazing and AC made things very comfortable. After cleaning up we went out for dinner at a Thai restaurant. I had a vegetable curry that was just great. Sleeping in a bed that night made for a happy ending to a happy trip.
posted by Jacob Gerber at
10:47 PM
1 Comments:
You write very well.
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