From Hualien to Kaohsiung

Hey there,

as the title says we went to Kaohsiung today. We took the Tze-Chiang limited express that goes almost all around the south half of the country.
The ride took about 5 and a half hours and cost about 700 NTD (20 Euros) per person.
The seats were comfortable enough and there were some pretty sights outside the window. We saw many rice paddies and many what we assume to be fish farms (on the south-west side of Taiwan).

Since I was confident that there would be food sold on the train we didn't buy any food beforehand. However, once aboard the board service (first an elderly man, later a woman) only seemed to have snacks and drinks.
But I had the feeling that the woman next to us, who at some point was talking to the man of the board service, also was wondering if there wasn't any food to buy (at least I thought they might have been talking about that, I dind't really understand anything). About an hour later (around 13 pm) another passenger sitting behind us went over to the woman and said something to her and pointed at the rear end of the train. As I already had seen some people with what looked like boxed lunches I told JJ to follow the woman, who then proceeded to go to the rear end of the train with money in her hand. :) And success, they were selling boxed lunches in one specific place of the train, which was not marked or anything...
So if you happen to be on a train in Taiwan and want a boxed lunch, just be aware of your surroundings an follow people who look like they might be hungry. ;P
The lunch consisted of rice with pork, a fried fish, an egg and some vegetables and tofu bits.
I really liked the print on top of the box.

After arriving to Kaohsiung we grabbed a map of the city at the tourist information point right at Kaohsiung Station and then went for a taxi (we could have taken the metro to our hotel, but we just didn't want to with all of our bags...). The taxi ride was about 2 - 2.5 km and 10 min long and cost us 115 NTD.
We checked into our Hotel (which is kind of old, but the room is big and clean and very central) and went out for a little walk.

Central park

We walked to Formosa Boulevard, since it is one of the tourist spots always mentioned when you look online and it is very near to our Hotel.

Basically it's just a metro station, but the glass art (called dome of light) designed by Italian artist Narcissus Quagliata is very pretty. The dome tells the story of human life in four themes: water: the womb of life; earth: prosperity and growth; light: the creative spirit and fire: destruction and rebirth.

Right around the corner of Formosa Boulevard is Lihue Night Market, where we went to get some dinner. This time we tried the "Taiwanese Hot Dog" (a fatty sausage in a rice bun), fried chicken bits, some kind of bread bun with pork and guava and bubble tea for dessert.