October 26,

Up and about around 0630. We had our Javas and breakfast of oatmeal with Nutella and yogurt. Then we started our packing. We could not take a shower because the hotel had no hot water. This had happened yesterday, but the staff told us to run the water for 10 minutes then it would come on, which was the case. But we had the water running for 45 minutes! Still nothing – nope, nada, zip, zilch, zero – so we checked out at 1015. We walked to the bus station, caught the 1045 bus to get to HST for our 1150 train. Interestingly we passed by a Tropic of Cancer Marker. We had not even known or thought about this being a thing to do in Chiayi…🤔🤷🏻‍♀️  maybe something to see if we ever come back to Taiwan. 

We were early, so we got some steps in, and at 1135, we went onto the platform. I walked some more up here, and one HSR passed me at full speed. Wow! I felt the air pressure tug on me! Man they go so fast! That was incredible, but kind of eerie!! At 1146, I was turning back to Jeff, as he WhatsApped me to return. Our train arrived at 1148 and we left right on time at 1150. Taiwan’s High Speed Train record is 99% on time! I believe it. We passed by mostly city after city. There were some small plots of farmland here and there: rice paddies; and very small fields of sugar cane, double the height of the men in it. But even the fields had big houses all through them. Just shows how densely populated the Island nation of Taiwan is. At 1207, our only stop was Tainan Station. At 1209 we left the station, passing some larger than life deer statues whose antlers were meant to twirl in the wind. Now we passed by fish ponds – the train tracks were around six miles from the ocean, still on the west coast. By 1220,  we arrived at Zuoying Station. The whole route was about 115km (71 miles), and only took us all told, probably two hours with the majority of miles being on the HSR going close to 200mph. We walked to the subway and got on it. At 1245, we got off the subway at our destination. 

    Welcome to Kaohsiung, Taiwan!

By 1255, we found the place where we will be staying. We can’t check-in until 1600, but the place provides luggage storage. So we left our big bags, went out to explore, and got some food. We stopped at a close-by shopping mall to get some steps in. The mall had a storage locker so we stashed our backpack. The building was a 17 story shopping mall! Three floors were a cinema! The actual building has a small footprint, and each floor had maybe ten shops on it. So we rode many escalators, not getting as many steps as we would have liked, but it was fun. We actually looked in a few shops for ideas of things to buy for our South America adventure. Jeff did find a new sun hat, on sale (we think everything is on sale all the time in this mall… just saying).

We left and went to get food at Jinqingtai Vietnamese Beef Noodle Shop. We had a bowl of Pho and a bowl of Braised Beef with pulled noodles. Both of the dishes were super great and hit the spot. Now we went back to the mall, collected our backpack, and found a half calzone-type bread with bacon and cheese for supper. Then we left the mall and wandered a bit seeing the ocean from afar. We went back to our place to check-in. We were processed, given a key, and taken to the elevators. We are on the 22nd floor! Our room is better than we remembered – I’m calling it a condo. There’s a balcony and we can see the ocean – albeit, vaguely, and a harbor cutting through the city from our balcony… even though a big chunk of the view is obscured by a 68 story building near us (our building has 37 floors). The room inside has a couch, a little kitchenette area- microwave and kettle, but no stove and only two mugs (no cutlery or other dishes either). Anyway, we unloaded and then walked to a Carrefour Center, bought a few items we needed, including microwave popcorn.👍🏻

Back at our place we had supper of the stuffed bread, popcorn and wine. Then we did a Whatsapp video call with my mother and her husband; and Zoomed with our church back home. Crashed at 2330.