Kaohsiung, Taiwan

We arrived in Kaohsiung this morning and had decided we’d freestyle it here. The research we’d done assured us we’d be able to walk to a number of places from the port and subway or Uber to others. We set off to visit Pier2 Art Centre, Formosa Boulevard Station/Dome of Light, Dragon and Tiger Pagodas, Lotus Pond, Spring and Autumn Pavilion, Fongsham Old City and Shinkuchan Shopping District. An ambitious list but we managed to do it all, with time to spare, even with the temperature reaching 31.

It’s the second largest city in Taiwan with about 2.7 million people and its maritime capital. From the sail in to the port, we could see the interesting architecture and knew we’d have a great day. And we did.

We started by walking to Pier2 Art Centre, just a fifteen minute walk from the ship. It’s a warehouse area that’s grown over the last 20 years to a bustling centre for the creative community and the home to countless pieces of public art. I’ll do a separate post to do justice to the artwork.

Next, we walked to a nearby subway station to travel to Formosa Subway station. It’s considered one of the most beautiful subway stations in the world because it includes an artwork called the Dome of Light, the largest glass artwork in the world. You can read more about it here. https://theculturetrip.com/asia/taiwan/articles… Spectacular.

From there, we took a subway and a taxi to the Lotus Pond area that includes Dragon and Tiger Pagodas, Spring and Autumn Pavilion and Fongsham Old City. It’s a large area so our Fitbits were getting a workout. (It was. 16,000+ step day) We ended our day in the Sinkuchan shopping area and got back on board well before the 6:30 pm all aboard for a 7 pm sail away.

But we didn’t get going at 7 pm as scheduled. Sure enough, a family of four who are segment passengers came running to the gangplank at about 7:10. Flashbacks to our panic in Bangkok.Read more