Taiwan Trip 2015 (台灣30天環島記) - Day 14: Kaohsiung 高雄 (Cijin Island 旗津島, Sizihwan 西子灣, The British Consulate 英國領事館, FE 21' Mega 大遠百)
Today I explored the other side of Kaohsiung city, which was the Sizihwan (西子灣) area. My first stop for today was Cijin Island which was only a 5 minute ferry ride across the harbour. As I embarked from the Sizihwan MRT station, I was approached by bike operators to rent their bicycles for the day. For only NTD 100 for the whole day I didn't consider much (although on the back of my head I would rather go for an electric bike, getting too lazy at this point lol).
After grabbing my bike from their shop, I then made my way to the harbour (Qijinlundu station) to board the ferry. At this hour there is already quite a lot of people waiting for the ferry to head over to the island. The numbers will be even more during the afternoon so it's best to go in the morning. The fare is NTD 15 one way and you can pay by coins or using the Easycard. An alternative route to get to the island is via car as there is also a dedicated tunnel linking the mainland to this island. From the map above, the island is pretty large for bicycle travel so I only covered one half of a circle and then turned back haha. The other half of the island is mostly ports and residential areas.
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| Queue to board the ferry |
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| On the ferry! |
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| Crowd in the afternoon |
As I reached Cijin island, I first headed for the Cihou Lighthouse located at the far left corner of the island. My whole journey is actually an anti-clockwise direction of the island. The sight up here is rather nice as you could get a bird's eye view of Sizihwan as well as Cijin island itself. The climb up the hill is rather steep though. Some people actually brought their bicycles up but I just parked mine at the foot of the hill. This lighthouse here is also one of the prominent lighthouses around Taiwan in the olden days.
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| Fort |
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| View of Sizihwan |
I then descended down the hill to check out the Star Tunnel (星空隧道) which leads out the sea. From the picture below you can see the waves are pretty strong as they hit the pavement. Some children had apparently been swallowed by the waves so it's best to just just admire the view from far.
From there I cycled towards Cijin Beach, which is a huge span of what seemed like a black sandy beach. Didn't see anyone swimming though, despite the weather being quite warm.
I was already quite hungry when I arrived at the Cihou Market. To my dismay they did not sell proper food, mostly dried seafood products. The good thing is that the market place is so competitive that they allow you to try their stuff generously even without buying. There was also some stalls nearby selling night market type of food but I wanted a proper meal so I skipped those as well.
After cycling for quite a distance I still haven't found any food but I stumbled upon this Wind Turbine Park where there are a couple of windmills, presumably generating electric for the island use. It's quite a nice weather to chill here for awhile and there were some people flying kites. On the way I bought another towel to replace the ones that I left in Hualien. The price here was so much cheaper compared to the one I got at the 7-11 shop in Dulan lol.
I decided that I've ventured enough and my body wouldn't last much longer without food so I made my way back to the harbour that I disembarked earlier. Finally, I stumbled upon a shop which sold one of the best pork chop noodles I've ever tasted in Taiwan. The meat was just marinated to perfection. Or maybe I was just dead hungry lol.
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| Best food always come when you least expected them to. |
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| Super delicious pork chop noodles. NTD 60 i think. |
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| Sizihwan bay area |
At around 3pm I then boarded the ferry back to Sizihwan. As mentioned above, the queue to the island was rather crazy at this hour. Most of the people would want to head to the lighthouse to catch the sunset over the Taiwan straits. I am doing the same too, just that I would be watching it at the British Consulate instead.
After parking my bicycle at the designated area in front of the ticket booth, I grabbed my tickets (NTD 66) and started to explore. Generally the whole area is a museum depicting the olden days when the British was ruling this region with wax figures to further illustrate the story.
At the top of the hill, there is a fancy restaurant where people can have English styled Afternoon tea. Way out of my budget definitely. But the view is fantastic as you could sip your tea as the sun slowly set amongst the horizon. Having said that, high tea back at KL is also roughly the same price, without the view. There is also a Taoist temple next to this building which is free of charge to visit if you had bought the proper tickets.
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| Outdoor area of the restaurant. There's an indoor area as well. |
So I waited, and waited, without a chair for me to sit, for almost an hour before the sun finally set haha. There were many viewing decks to see the sunset but I think my view was the best *cough*. Just like me, there were also throngs of visitors around as well trying to catch the magnificent view and take photos with their annoying selfie-sticks so you probably have to book your spot early.
After a long day I then headed back to the Sanduo Shopping District to grab my dinner and then checked out the local shopping mall, FE 21 Mega. Taiwanese shopping malls are usually not very big, but they are very, very tall as they adopt the design from Japan. This one had 18 floors if I'm not mistaken. It was quite a toll climbing all the escalators and waiting for the elevator can be quite a task.
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| Cinema |
Oh a fun fact though. This shopping mall actually has a counter to limit the amount of shoppers in the mall. It would be interesting to see if one day some mall back in Malaysia has this sort of counter too.
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