It’s the second day of this part of the holiday and the first of a few days where we’re in Kaohsiung proper. Before getting into the day, there is something that needs to be said about the city as a whole: it was not designed for pedestrians. At every point where we needed to walk between places, there was so much needless frustration.
For many smaller roads there is just not a pavement, instead you are walking as close to the edge of the road as possible. For a lot of them that do have some kind of walkway, you are actually ducking through shopfronts. There was a stretch of this where we went through multiple food preparation areas for smaller food places. Even when you do get to a major road with pavement, the number of mopeds and motorbikes makes crossings difficult as they are turning in. Just something worth keeping in mind when making plans for this city.
With that out of the way, let’s look at what we did today.
When looking up big things to do in Kaohsiung, there are two activities that repeatedly come up – so today was designed to check off both of the big hitters. This meant an early wake up time so that we could make an early shuttle bus for Fo Guang Shan. These buses are fairly infrequent and, thanks to us being half an hour early, we were not one of the poor souls left behind to wait for the next bus an hour later.
Fo Guang Shan is a massive complex affiliated with the monastic order of the same name. We started out at the end with the monasteries and worked our way north. Starting off, we made the climb to ‘Great Buddha Land’ to see one of the two massive Buddhas in the complex. Setting the tone for the rest of this visit, it was like we had the entire area to ourselves. It was so quiet across the complex that it actually got a bit eerie.
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From here we explored the monastery area: visiting the Avalokitesvara pond, passing through the Gate of Duality and crossing the bridge to see the Great Compassion Shrine. Again it was so quiet in so many areas that it sometimes did take a while before we saw another person be they a monk, nun or tourist.
Then game the main shrine. Sadly, this is one of those situations where photography is not allowed because the three bronze Buddhas and the light jewel towers standing either side of them were truly beautiful. It was here where we got the first of some very friendly people working at the complex being incredibly helpful. By the end of our visit, we had someone thrusting religious literature at us and trying to get us to light incense… so I think there was a definite charm offensive going on.
We had a nice brunch at the place on the complex. Between us we split an order of sesame noodles and a thick butter biscuit toast. As we ate we were surrounded by some very nice Buddhist nuns who were seemingly here on a pilgrimage and were having a lot of steamed dumplings between them.
After visiting the Sutra Repository, with it’s beautiful calligraphy wall carvings and embalmed body of the order’s founder on display, we arrived at the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum area. As we didn’t come in from the main entrance, we didn’t the full effect of seeing one of the world’s largest Buddha statues looming in the distance as you walk through the pagodas – although we did see him peeking on the walk through the gardens.
The museum itself is very much aimed at being accessible to all and teaching the story of Buddha’s life and the many festivals of Buddhism. For me the interesting parts were the sections containing treasures and talking about a recently discovered underground palace in China. There was also a beautiful (and sadly unphotographable) reclining Jade Buddha statue flanked by two massive art pieces also made out of various colours of jade. This was definitely one of the highlights.
Finally, we made our way to the top floor and see the Big Buddha up close. There is no denying how impressively large he is, sat high above us as we stood on the sun baked roof having to smile and just take a bunch of religious literature after venturing into one of the four stupa.
Time was marching on and, given the infrequency of the buses, we took our leave and went back to Kaohsiung proper.
It took us two days, but we got our first bubble tea of the holiday – a brown sugar panda tea with two types of pearls. I think we needed this extra fuel for the amount of extra walking we were about to do.
The second of the two big destinations was Lotus Lake. When we first became aware of Kaohsiung as a potential destination back in 2018, it was the dragon and lion pagodas on Lotus Lake that made the biggest impression – this whole holiday (including the side mission to Okinawa) all spun off from seeing these pavilions.
So it took me a good 15-20 minutes to get over the fact that this was the state of them when we visited. Completely scaffolded over, pretty much closed entirely. I’m probably never going to make it back to this city given how many other places are on the wish list. So it was a bitter pill to swallow that this was it.
Thankfully they are far from the only things to see on Lotus Lake and it was far from a wasted journey. For one thing, there are the Spring and Autumn Pavilions next door. Here you are able to make believe what it is like to be eaten up and pooped out by a very long dragon. Honestly, it was this dragon sculpture that really helped to get me back in a good mood after the other disappointment.
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Opposite is the Chi Ming Tang temple. Here you can see statues of Guan Yu, many carved dragons and the best view of the Spring and Autumn Pavilions that you can get. This was followed by visits to the Yuandi Temple and it’s huge sculpture of Xuantian, then the Confucian Temple.
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Before leaving the Lotus Lake area, we stopped by the Chingshui Temple right across the pond. This small temple was utterly deserted, despite having a huge statue on the roof that, thanks to an elevator up to the fifth floor, you were able to get up close and personal with. There were also beautiful carved dragon columns and some impressive art pieces of a dragon and peacock made of cups, plates and other kitchenware on display.
Being in Taiwan, dinner had to be a night market. The one near Lotus Lake is closed on Wednesdays (we had to shuffle our itinerary for reasons I’ll mention at the end of the post) so we went over to the Liouhe Tourist Night Market. Tourist or not, we had some incredible food and filled our bellies on about £5-6 each.
The big highlight was a pork belly roll with kimchi, but we also had some Taiwanese fried chicken, a Taiwanese hot dog with rice bun, scallion pancake, papaya milk and some sugar-coated strawberries on a stick. This will hopefully not be the last night market we do whilst we’re here, I want to try more of the things
One of the bonuses of going to the Liouhe Tourist Night Market is that you need to stop over at Formosa Boulevard station – the home of the Dome of Light stained glass sculpture. When we first arrived, before going to eat, it had been switched off in preparation for a ‘show’ – but post-food it was on and looking absolutely gorgeous. I can see why this is one of those things people recommend to see whilst in Kaohsiung.
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We finished the day with a boat ride on the Love River. They call it the Love Boat. It’s a whole thing and was hoping they would at least make a nod to the US show of the same name. For about £3.50 you get a 25 minute boat ride and the chance to see some really lovely buildings lit up at night. It was worth a bit of an extra walk to have this cap off the day.
Tomorrow is a bit of a bummer because it’s thunderstorms all day with properly heavy rain forecast until just before sunset. That’s why we ended up visiting these sites today and swapped night markets around. Still working out a final itinerary as nearly everything we want to do is outside – so seat of our pants time it is!
Before I Kick 