Kaohsiung City (高雄市)

In the early onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I travelled to Taiwan with a good friend for nine days. We arrived on Feb. 5 from Hong Kong and just one day later, the Taiwan government imposed a ban on visitors from China, Hong Kong, and Macau. We arrived in the southern port city Kaohsiung and I observed the locals are taking the pandemic very seriously. On my way to our hotel, I stopped by a local library adjacent to the Central Park subway station and I was stopped by a staff member at the door because I was not wearing a mask. Upon arrival at the hotel, my temperature was checked at the entrance before I was allowed entry.

The following are photos taken on my first day in Kaohsiung. It is one of the biggest container port cities in the world.

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Lotus Pond (蓮池潭)

Kaohsiung  is renowned for its abundance of temples.  On my second day there, I joined a free walking tour at the Lotus Pond, where about twenty temples and giant statues dotted around the lake.

At the end of the tour, I decided to walk to a train to return to my hotel.  It was late afternoon and the traffic was getting busy. Even with the aid of Google Maps, I was getting disoriented.  I decided to ask a young man who was coming toward me for directions. With my very rudimentary Mandarin and his limited English, we were resorting to lots of hand-waving. Then, he signalled for me to stay and literally ran away.  Within a couple of minutes, he returned on his motorbike, and before I knew it, I was riding on the back for a few blocks to the train station. In my travels, I often encounter kindness from strangers and this was another chance encounter that makes travel such a pure joy.