去高雄 Kaohsiung Taiwan Day 5 台湾 第五天

Our 5th Day in Taiwan, we were scheduled to travel down to the southern part of Taiwan, Tainan (台南). We got coach tickets at 600 NT each that is about SGD 25. It took  5 hours total from Taipei to Tainan and the ride was a no rest stop. But fear not, the coach has a toilet built-in, electric moving seats and entertainment devices all to make the long trip comfortable. The coach we took is from Aloha. I have provided the link do use chrome to translate the site if you have trouble understanding Chinese like me.

The more affordable alternative to travel down to Kaohsiung is via train. But we were a little late, as all the seated train tickets were sold out and the our options left were to purchase the standing tickets or pay more for the high speed railway a.k.a 高铁 (gao tie). Therefore, if you are planning to go down Kaohsiung, please do purchase your train tickets early. Well if have surplus, then by all means go for the high-speed railway. Train tickets can be bought at a Train station. For our case we had to get our tickets at 台北火车站 (Taipei Train Station).

We boarded the coach at Taipei Coach terminal, located somewhere nearby Taipei Train Station, and after 5 hours of 'when will it end' coach ride we alighted at Kaohsiung Train Station. From there we took the subway down to  liouhe night market (六合夜市). Not to eat but to check into our hostel.

Liohe Night Market Subway station.

Liohe street, before night fall

The nearest subway station to Liohe street is the Formosa Boulevard Station (美丽岛车站). Proceed down deep these flight of stairs and you will be greeted something nice once down there.

Possibly the deepest I have seen so far

Take a dive anyone?

Once at the entrance, you will be amazed by this beautiful ceiling art piece. To me, I think it is wonderful and to top it off there is someone playing the piano to suit the atmosphere.

Beautiful lighted art covered the circular ceiling.

A pianist playing, soothes the environment.

Beautiful ceiling art + Soothing piano melody = ultimate relax combo.

Fast forward to night fall and Liohe street suddenly becomes bustling with activities. My friends who planned out the itinerary really like night markets. Night markets are our usual spots for us to have dinner. As we are traveling on a tight budget, night markets makes it the perfect place for us to try many different types of food and basked ourselves in the local atmosphere.

Getting Toyed by this ice-cream seller.

We tried the BBQed prawns from this stall and it tasted
very much like our usual barbecued prawns sprinkled with salt.
Though I am unsure about the prawns being imported from Thailand??? 

Chew got himself some papaya milk to suck on.

We decided to try one of the stalls selling seafood congee.

We bought a bowl of seafood congee from the stall pictured above, and it is absolutely tasty!

Tried this dried food and I must say I certainly dislike it.

  And that's that. I guess my friends or rather most Singaporeans are food hunters. Willing to venture around the world in quest of getting a taste of what is sold in the night markets of Taiwan. Either that or Taiwan is really good at advertising itself. You see, there was a period of time where our local Chinese Television broadcast station (Channel U) starting airing Taiwan reality shows. In these shows, we Singaporean Chinese viewers are exposed to Taiwanese celebrities and of course their night market culture shown in these Taiwanese reality programmes.

Well I hope this explains why we kept on crashing into different night markets for dinner. Remember, different night markets have different hidden gems (e.g. well known food stalls, crowd, whatever). I do highly recommend to visit the night markets of Taiwan as it allows us foreigners to indulge ourselves in their local culture.