August 10, 2012
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The Best laid plans
never go without a hitch...
Our planned time in Ken-Ting turned out super rainy. There's a typhoon just under Japan some 600 Kilometers away (Don't ask me... I'm horrible with Kilometers to Miles conversion) so the waters were seriously choppy and dark. Not the kind of weather for snorkling, I'm sad to say. Maybe next year.
Not to be deterred, we changed our plans and visited local sites and places.... discovering an absolutely rockin' restaraunt in a town north of Ken-Ting. It seemed to be a seriously hip spot for foreigners... when we walked through the door there was girls from Alabama, Connecticut and Oregon and a couple on vacation from California.... who were full time teachers of English in Korea. The 5 of us had an interesting time discussing Taiwan. The girls from Alabama and Connecticut were both Marine Biologists in Taiwan for 3 months to study at the Marina near Ken-Ting and.... the girl from Oregon.... wow.... she is a scientist studying Earthquakes who only just arrived at the end of June. Her and I started chatting about seismic activity and I pulled up my blog to show what information I had already logged from here in Taiwan.
Talk about a totally fun evening.
The food at this particular restaraunt was Mexican / American / Italian and not all that bad. Kai had a simple Quesadia and Vanilla Milk Shake and I had a grilled chicken & mushroom sandwich with a Vanilla Coke. For $15 it was a great meal
But I'm saving the best for last....
Earlier that day we went to visit MaoBiTuo. Humorously, we saw signs for it as "MauBiTo", "MaoBiTwo" & "MoBiTo" along the way.... guess they weren't paying attention much when the English was translated. Mao = Cat Bi = Nose and Tuo = Head. Or Cat's Nose Head rock. It only cost us $1.30 to enter the park and when we pulled the cats out of the car to come ride along with us.... all the visitors suddenly forgot they were coming to see a rock.
Kai and I were stuck in the same spot.... I am not kidding or making this up... for nearly 45 minutes as HORDES of Taiwanese and Chinese (there's a huge difference folks... Taiwan is NOT a part of China) tourists flocked around us to see Xiao Hu (who is totally scared of people I must add), Stumpy (Taiwanese Name Ah-Yong, but I can't pronounce it so we call him Stumpy in English) and the star of the day --- Kiki, the adorable.
I kid you not, 45 minutes stuck in the same spot because hordes of folks were pressing in to see our cats.
I have the pictures, I will post them when I am able. I'm on Kai's Father's computer.... it's running Windows 95, seriously. Uploading pictures from an HDSD card is out of the question. We do have a 3 year old Net-book my sister sent me last year... but sadly it's being fussy about connecting at the moment. Grrrr.
Soooo, in any case.... We visited Ken-Ting, took in the Night Market there. Got our favorite ice cream (place called "The Pelican" serves a mean sorbet!!!), shopped for new sandels (didn't find any) and generally had a blast despite all the rain.
Oh.... speaking of that... it started at 3 AM the first night we were there.... and did not stop until 2 PM the next day. Broke long enough for MaoBiTuo, but then came back just as we were leaving. Continued for the next 3 hours, broke long enough for dinner... and then picked right back up again throughout the rest of the second night. Even rained heavily on our trip home. The rainfall was ... immense. You would have thought the Typhoon hit Taiwan instead of heading off to China. Hmmmm.
At least our hotel room, though super sparse in luxuries, was dirt cheap. We paid $35 a night for the room where everywhere else nearby wanted $65-90.
Amen for God's grace in keeping us within our budget.