Kaoshiong

Hubby had a function to attend in Kaoshiong, so off we went for the weekend.

We took the high speed rail there - about 1&1/2 hour journey -

and stayed at Han Lai Hotel,

which is above Hanshin Dept Store ...

Hubby prob didn't realise that, otherwise he would've known it's

dangerous to leave a shopaholic alone in a hotel above a dept store ...

hmmm ...

Anyway, this is the view from our spacious hotel room:

Our hotel is also near this interesting area:

Hinkuchan or Xin Jue Jiang

and Yuan Su Yu Zhu area

which is similar to Tokyo's Harajuku.

There are some nice little shops/boutiques like these:

And some very nicely done up street stalls.

This particular accessories stall impressed me

with their attractive display

and very good salesmanship

- the young men running the stall

encouraged me to browse around

without being too pushy,

and they explained that they could plate the accessories

in whatever colour (gold, silver, rose gold etc)

I wanted at a minimal fee.

They even tried to find me a less crowded spot

to do my browsing as it was a really popular stall.

for such a small little street stall, they sure have excellent service!

And it's such a pretty stall too!

Our Hotel was having this special Hello Kitty suite/promotion.

In conjunction with this promotion, they had this cute

Hello Kitty car!

Another interesting sight we came across at the MRT station:

a "mobile" library!

How cool!

We took a short ferry ride to Qi Jin,

a little seaside beachtown with the centre

in an old street, where we love their prawn crackers :)

The ferries that take passengers (including bicycles and motorbikes)

across to Qi Jin.

We could see our hotel (the shorter brown building on the left of the screen)

from the ferry.

The old street at Qi Jin

Hermit Crabs for sale!

These have such pretty shells,

but I wonder ...

what does one feed hermit crabs?

A man with his Husky ...

who is very interested in his owner's stick

of candied strawberries.

The beach at Qi Jin

The sand was amazingly fine and so soft!

Check out our footprints ... or rather, shoeprints ... in the sand :)

Taiwan's very own Bondi Rescue!

Apparently, the water wasn't safe for swimming,

as this lifeguard came out in his buggy to get some ppl out of the water.

We sat here ppl watching for a while.

It was so relaxing as the sun was out

while the wind was nice and cool.

I was wishing I was wearing a different pair of shoes

so I could take them off more easily and just scrunch my toes in the sand.

Sigh ....

This was a really funny story ...

We were walking back towards the old street

and crossed this fountain as it was the shortest way there,

and more importantly, it was a DRY fountain when we crossed it!

Just seconds after we crossed it,

the water came on!

PHEW!!!!

We would have been soaked if we'd just crossed it seconds later!

Apparently, it comes on once every hour!

We could hear this busker singing all the way from the beach.

He had a really nice voice ...

apparently, he's a native aborigine - like Ah Mei -

and he was selling his CDs.

There wasn't a fixed price, and he was relying on donations.

We noticed that ppl were putting NT100 bills and picking 2 CDs,

so we did the same.

One CD was in Tai Yu (like our Hokkien), and the other was in Mandarin/Chinese.