We love Taiwan - 高雄 edition.

*this is a very belated post which i had it as draft since forever. And 2 more months it'll be a year since we were in Taipei. so here it goes. my very belated post on Kao Shiung*

So December we took off for our annual holiday getaway. Taiwan was the place. 

We embarked from Singapore to arrive in Taipei and transited on the HSR - High Speed Railway to bring us to our first destination - Kao Shiung 高雄. And so the adventure begins. 

高雄's weather is amazing. In comparison to the later destination - Taipei, we prefer 高雄's weather. It was cold but not freezing cold and there was the sun which provided the warmth. 高雄 is a city where the national atheletes train. As what R told me, due to the good weather thru the season, it is the best environment for sports and training. And I agree. The air feels fresher and crisp. Being a quiet city unlike Taipei, we basically walked around and took the trains which were super convenient to places to explore and mainly to look for good food. This also started our night market food in Taiwan.

*fat-die-us*

The only compensation to eating will be the lots of walking which we did.
Guess nothing can explain food better than pictures. 

Look at the amazed look on R's face. I miss those huge prawns with cheap beer!

One of our favourite night market from the trip - LiuHe Night Market

Rui Feng Night Market

The second night market we went in Kao Shiung. This night market - Rui Feng Night Market is huge! That was also probably why it was so packed that we had to stick body to body with strangers just to get pass the food stalls. It didn't make it fun cos we could only smell the food and not stop to see if we wanted to buy any. So we ended up buying what we could buy and had them all in the hotel. That's my favourite part actually. In the comfort of the room and enjoying the yummy food. *i miss the food*

 

Following my brother's itinerary, we found ourselves walking quite a bit of distance just to find this famous bakery in Kao Hsiung! It's called Wu Pao Chun Bakery. As I am doing a very belated posting, as  I am typing, the baker Wo Pao Chun is now in Singapore NUS doing his MBA!! Wonder if it will inspire him to open a bakery here :P Well in any case, this bakery is famous because, Wu Pao Chun won some competition amongst the bakeries for some best bread. Google and you will find his story.

 So anyways, we went and there was a long queue outside the shop! This was because at any point in time, they only allowed a certain number of people into the bakery, keeping it less congested and making sure everyone has a good experience. The thoughtful part about taiwanese service is that while you are queuing outside with a slightly chilly weather, the staff brought hot tea for people in the queue and samples of the bread for those in queue to taste. I was impressed. This could only work in Taiwan probably. Sadly in Singapore, I am not sure if this will work. We bought quite a lot of bread which cost quite a bit for bread. They all looked so yummy. The famous bread which we bought was the longan red date bread loaf as per the picture below. It has the taiwanese flag logo on it. This is really so yummy! and taste so healthy and fragrant. But too bad, it was really too huge. We could only finish half a loaf after 3 days and decided that we couldn't eat it anymore. 

The breads of Wu Pao Chun

Being in Kao Shiung, it also means we must make a trip to Ai He - Love River. To me it felt like Clarke Quay. It is also a river across the city which was redeveloped from a longkang and done up as a tourist attraction now. Sounds familiar eh? Even the place looks like clarke quay. So we did the obligatory trip to Love River and took a walk along the river to digest all the bread that we have eaten. 

So there it goes, the rest of Kao Shiung is pretty much relaxing. Shopping malls are not that fantastic. Still pretty laid back compared to Taipei. The next time if we ever do go back again. I want to try the bicycle tour. It would definitely be another experience. After 2 nights in Kao Shiung, we packed our bags and took the train to Taipei for the next part of our adventure.

So till then (until i blog about Taipei).