Day 6: To Kaohsiung

My uncle said that we were leaving at 9, so I woke up at 8 to get ready. But like all Asian, he ran on Asian time, and came to pick us up at 10:30. We took the bullet train... well at least I think it was a bullet train--they called it "High Speed Rail." The fare was about 30 USD one way. @@ Whatever... my uncle's a millionaire (in USD). Mom said it's about the distance from San Jose to Los Angeles. LIES. I just checked it; she's off by 220km, or 137 miles, or 69%.

Anyway, when we got off, we were greeted by people, whom I first took for as relatives but later found out they were Kaohsiung government officials. Wow. That's a lot of fame, or wealth, or power to be recognized--not just rocognized, greeted-- by the government. Apparently, they want my uncle to invest in a film studio in Kaohsiung to increase tourism to their area. And their method of securing the contract? Sucking up. They pretty much took us all around Kaohsiung in their special government van. XD

First stop? Kaohsiung Film Archive. What is it? It's a place where all of Taiwanese film history is archived from the old old Taiwanese movies to the USA film Brokeback Mountain (because the director is Taiwanese. lol). Actually, the archive was supposed to be closed today, but we got a special tour led by the archive manager herself.

Other stops? Sightseeing. God I hate sightseeing in Taiwan. All you see are the same things: buildings, buildings that look like they are about to collapse, things you can't really call buildings and trees that are about to destroy buildings. We did get to see the Love River. My mom says it's very clean since the last time she went there 30 years ago. It's still really dirty now.

For dinner, we ate at a Japanese restruant--it's the closest we'll get to authentic Japanese food anyway. Sashimi, sashimi and sashimi. Yay! The restruant owner came up and met my uncle. She then sent up a dish herself free-of-charge. (Man, how famous/rich/powerful is my uncle?)

Finally, we went to our hotel called The Splendor at Kaohsiung at 85 Sky Tower. Or perhaps it's the other way around. Oh well. Free toiletries XD.