Taiwan, Hong Kong (6)

Kenting Nation Park (墾丁國家公園）

Seven Miles Aroma Chick (七里香）

Heading toward the southern most point of Taiwan, we were not very hungry but decided to stop for dinner when we saw a crowd gathering around this rustic looking place.  

The chicken was placed on a TV info-mercial rack in a clay urn which was in turn heated by firewood on the outside.  On every picnic tables there was Apple Daily food critic's review giving it high marks. Long story short, it tasted like regular rotisserie chick and whatever the substance the girl sprayed on the bird would soon make us both thirsty like rat poison. 

Bed and Breakfast Sans Breakfast (民宿)

Stopping briefly for a couple places along the way, we arrived at the vicinity of the Kenting National Park in late evening. Taiwan's middle class with disposable income just could not be overestimated, we had to have driven through 10 kilometers of rush hour traffic of vacationers (on a weekday). W managed to find B&B like accommodations for the night. It was owned by a Hong Kong lady and was quite tastefully decorated.   

Beautiful Beach

I was slightly disappointed by the looks of Atlantic City in this remote area. On the other hand, all we had to do was cross the busy street and we had the Mainland and Taiwan Strait to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east, not to mention the beautiful view of the rugged coastline.

Mainland in this direction  (西望神州） 

Seafood Restaurant

A grouper was being cleaned outside this seafood restaurant. The restaurant owner assured us there would be plenty fish left in the evening.

It looked better than it tasted

After hitting the ATM and other errands, we returned o he restaurant and had some unknown part of the fish, the streamed grouper was chewy and certainly not the belly part we had hoped for. The patrons were mostly Mainland tourists, for some reason we saw many visitors from Canton in Kenting , maybe they were attracted by the seafood. 

Earlier, we met a bus load of Cantonese on the beach, one rail thin man was curious about my bicycle and we struck up a conversation in Cantonese, he looked like a starving communist from decades ago, but the real reason for his leanness was because he was a ridiculously picky eater, there was almost nothing he could put in his mouth in Taiwan.  

Old Town Hang Chun (恆春, Forever Spring)

The nearby old town Hang Chun. Actually, the only old part was the gate. The streets were full of restaurants, 7 Elevens. they looked sort of like Hong Kong in the 70s, but not a lot older than anywhere else other than the big cities. I bought some anti-inflammatory pills from Watson's, a drugstore chain owned by Hong Kong's Superman Li.

The mandatory picture (到此一遊）

Actually, we did manage to do some bicycling along the coast, totally enjoyable except for the gusty winds. Since we only had a couple of days left, we decided to returned W's Giant rental bike in Kenting. The Giant store was a in a stand-alone resort a little up the west coast, we soon saw many signs related to the movie Cape Number 7, a famous movie that I vaguely remembered. The resort itself was very fancy, with valets clad in Hawaiian shirts outside,  fancy restaurants and spas inside.  

My bike in the picture was a Bike Friday Crusoe, "Bike Friday" is a play on "Man Friday" from Robinson Crusoe. This versatile model is called Crusoe, sort of amusing. (Bike Friday makes many other models, all with whimsical names.)