Kaohsiung

Kaohsiung is a large city on the southern tip of Taiwan. We looked around for something to do in the city and decided we’d go to the National Science and Technology Museum. We did not dock until 10:00, so we scurried off as soon as we were able and grabbed a taxi. It was about a 10-minute drive over to the museum, which is huge!

We negotiated the ticket machine to get admission for all of us. This was really inexpensive, about $1.50 US per person. I expect the museum must be government subsidized. As I said, the place was really large. With no particular targets in mind, we decided to start at the bottom and work our way up. The first area we encountered was a “hot snow” play area that had kinetic sand used as a faux snow slide. The boys wanted to check it out and happily slid down the slope for a while.

We wound up spending a little over three hours in the museum. There was plenty more to see, but we were getting hungry and the café inside didn’t seem to offer much. We found an Italian restaurant with good reviews on Google maps and headed that way. We had a fun walk over, passing a very large elementary school and winding through some narrow streets. Unfortunately, when we got to the restaurant it was about 1:30 and they were closing for the afternoon. We’d seen this pattern in Keelung as well, where restaurants close after lunch. We looked for something else and found a Domino’s on the map (please don’t judge us). That was about a 15-minute walk away, which we did enjoy, but we were hot and hungry when we arrived. Turned out this was a delivery/takeout operation with no seats inside, meaning we had to hunt for a place to eat. We decided we’d just head back to the museum grounds as these had ample shade and places to sit. All in all it was a pretty good walk around town by the end of it.

We taxied back to the ship and then had to wait around for immigration to get sorted. Everyone on board needed to get off and go through immigration as we were leaving Taiwan. Rather than getting on and immediately getting back off, we just waited in the terminal (which was very nice). Dinner was outside at the Terrace once again as temperatures were back to being quite pleasant after a few days of blustery cool weather.Read more