Every year, the apartment complex where we live takes the money that it has earned from selling the residents' waste to recyclers, and uses it to pay for a bus trip for all the people who live here. Last year, it was to Tamsui (Tanshui) 淡水 and the Taipei Zoo. For this year's journey, the buses traveled in the opposite direction, to Kaohsiung.
Everyone met downstairs around 6:30am (OK, we were about 10 minutes late), and the four chartered tour buses parked across from the neighborhood Family Mart departed at 7:07. At 7:23, it began - the karaoke カラオケ singing. And it continued, non-stop (with the exception of a couple of brief visits to freeway rest areas), until we reached Kaohsiung 高雄 just after 10. It's one thing to go to a karaoke box (or KTV's, as they're known in Taiwan) - after all, you do so on a voluntary basis. But on a packed tour bus, there is no escape from the retread enka 演歌 (songs that were originally in Japanese, but retrofitted with Taiwanese lyrics). The view from the bus window certainly didn't provide an escape, for while the on-board TV set was playing videos of European castle towns and snowy scenes of Japanese villages, the scenery outside was 100% west coast. West coast of Taiwan, that is. Flat agricultural plains, broken up here and there by industrial complexes, and small towns with their concrete box skylines.
Amber posing at a rest stop; a video image from one of the karaoke songs, which looks like it was filmed in Magome 馬籠, Nagano-ken 長野県.
Kaohsiung looked almost beautiful after the long, concentrated assault on my eardrums, aka the bus ride down. And, in fact, the city has done a great job in cleaning up its act in recent years. The bus passed by several of Kaohsiung's new subway stations, including the Formosa Boulevard stop, but I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of that station's exterior architecture. I was able, however, to snap a photo of the former city government building/now current Kaohsiung Museum of History.
Our first destination was the Former British Consulate at Takao, completed in 1879 and used for customs administration until 1895. There were good views toward the ocean from the front, and of the city and harbor from the back. It was also already packed with sightseers at that hour of the morning.
After about an hour at the former consulate, it was back on the bus for the short ride to the Gushan Ferry Pier, and the even shorter ferry ride across the harbor to Cijin 旗津 Island. The guidebooks suggest visiting the oldest temple in Kaohsiung, a historic gun emplacement that was the scene of a battle when the Japanese took over Taiwan in 1895, and a lighthouse with great views of both the sea and the harbor. We didn't do any of that, unfortunately. Instead, with the 90 minutes we were given on the island, we walked up the very crowded Seafood Street (dodging cars and scooters, as well as people. The concept of a pedestrian-only road, at least on busy Sundays, doesn't seem to have caught on in many places in Taiwan), had a long (overpriced) lunch with some others from our tour bus, then spent the rest of the time letting Amber have some fun in a small playground in front of the beach. Had we been on our own, no doubt we would have taken in the above sights in a leisurely manner, with a break for lunch at a less-crowded eatery, all the while enjoying the ocean scenery. Eat-and-run, however, is the nature of travel, tour bus style.
After lunch and back on the bus, we left Kaohsiung, and made the first of two (count 'em, two) stops at souvenir drive-ins (for want of a better description), this one in Madou (Matou) 麻豆 in Tainan County. Ostensibly, the bus pulled in for a restroom break, but in order to reach the bathrooms, we had to run a gauntlet of vendors peddling various snack foods. Many of the sellers were using microphones to ensure their sales pitches could rise above the din of the crowd. The hard-sell didn't stop there, either. After leaving the drive-in, the bus drove on to our next destination, a "leisure farm" in the town of Jhongpu (Chungp'u) 中埔, but soon after passing through the city center, it pulled to the side of the road to allow a woman to get on, who proceeded to extol the virtues of salty raisins and vitamin pills all the way to the leisure farm's parking lot. It must have been an effective presentation, because several people ended up buying from her. For me, however, it was all the more annoying than usual because up until the saleswoman had gotten on the bus, we had taken a break from the karaoke and were watching the hit movie "Cape No. 7", which was nearing a key moment in the story when the DVD was paused to allow the raisin lady to do her thing.
The farm itself was a total tourist trap, with its cute farm animals, arcade games, snack and souvenir stands. On the other hand, for my as-yet-not jaded daughter (and may she never become so), this was the highlight of her day. She got to feed leaves to goats, run around on a spacious lawn, and enjoy yet another playground with slides. And I've got to admit, the location deep in the betel palm-covered hills was an attractive one. Still...
By now it was dark when we returned to the bus. "Cape No. 7" had almost reached its conclusion when we arrived at the second roadside souvenir emporium, the "Small Elephant Original Coffee & Mountain Tea Theme And Leisure Park". At least there were free coffee samples, and somehow me managed to get out of there without buying anything. Back on board, I was expecting to see the end of the movie, but instead it was karaoke time again! This time, the accompanying videos were not of the Travel and Living Channel variety, as the following screenshot shows:
After the pachyderm pit stop, it was time for dinner. When you travel by tour bus, large, noisy institutional dining halls are the order of the day. These places appear to be expressly set up, along with the souvenir stand rest stops, to serve the needs of Taiwan's huge tour group industry. Hundreds of people sitting at dozens of round tables, all eating the same courses, which are brought out on a continuous stream of large trays, while tour leaders use bullhorns to guide their charges to the proper tables, and the kitchen uses a PA system to communicate with the servers. The following short video clip, while of poor quality, I hope gives some idea of our intimate, relaxing dining experience:
It still took more than an hour to get back to Fengyuan 豐原 after dinner, 60 minutes of not only karaoke, but games, the point behind which I couldn't really fathom, and which I didn't bother asking my wife to elaborate on. It was close to 8:30pm by the time we got back, and I was knackered.
Knackered, and amazed. Amazed at why people here seem to go on these kinds of trips time and time again, when the whole process just left me exhausted, and anxious to get back home. Taiwan is a small enough island that most sightseeing spots can be easily done as a day trip without being part of a large group, with the advantages of being able to see and do things at your own pace. But no doubt I'm missing the point. There is some kind of bonding experience going on here. It doesn't really matter where you go (because you have probably been there before) and what you do when you are there (except eat, preferably something connected to the place you are visiting), it's the fact you are doing it with the others in your group that is most important.
So was it a hellish experience? No. As I noted at the beginning, with the exception of lunch and a small insurance charge, this outing didn't cost us anything. Everyone was very friendly, especially towards Amber, and I got to see most of "Cape No. 7" (though only with Chinese subtitles). So I wouldn't call this "hell". On the other hand, Dante might have included a Taiwanese bus tour as part of his description of Purgatory, had he actually had the chance to go on one. Unless, of course, he loved karaoke.
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