Day 15: traveling to Jhiben

I awoke I think b/c Tank was taking a shower. Suspiciously missing my camera. tank soon explained when I asked that whichever camera we were taking pics w/ he left on seth’s bedside table, so I was like sweet, I didn’t lose my camera.
Everyone was feeling a little dim, but we all drank a bit of water, some people started drinking beer again. After moving all our shit to 106 on the top floor which the hotel kindly gave us as a place to store our stuff until everyone had to leave, we started our journey to the Kaohsiung Arena to watch some gymnastics/dance stuff. When we got there, Dylan gave me his medal to wear so I could walk in w/ them. We were escorted to the VIP entrance, where one of the door guys gave me a look of wonder about the heavy medal around my neck. We came in in the middle of womens double mini trampoline – they run down carpeted path, jump twice on the one small trampoline doing tricks, then dismount onto a foam pad. Kinda interesting. Then mens acro/balance – which was amazing! There were 4 guys, one medium sized dude, a somewhat smaller dude, an even smaller dude, and a tiny dude. They did a bunch of balancing on each other – stacking one on top of another, w/ the tiny guy doing a bunch of balancing w/ one hand on the smaller guy’s head while the bottom people did squats or backbends to support the people standing up above them. There was also music involved, so it was sort of like dance sort of like acrobatics. Then mens mini trampoline, which was alright. Then we left, back to the hotel, stopping on the walk back from the subway stop to buy some bubble tea (zhen1 zhu1 nai3 cha2). Yum. Those guys had a rigorous schedule (I feel like they were rushed everywhere which would’ve been really annoying to me) of needing to leave the hotel by 4:30 so they wouldn’t be late for their HSR train… so of course, they were kinda late leaving.

Amanda and I said bye to everybody at the train station b/c we were heading our own way. Lots of hugs all around. Tank from the top of the escalator yelled down, “Bye roomie!” I said we’d get in touch in Taipei, and Amanda and I headed off. Except we really needed to go up also, we just didn’t realize it. So we ended up upstairs as some of them were still walking through the front gates, including Dylan.

We’re heading to Jhiben (Chihpen – the city names here haven’t switched over to pinyin like the PRC’s eg Peking -> Beijing) – place of lots of hot springs. I called yesterday during the break between games to check on hotels in Jhiben and Hualien, so I had some ideas about where we were going. Got to the Zhuoying train station with the team, bought tix (a little over 500NT I think for the 2 of us), and the train was to leave Kaohsiung main station at a little after 7pm, so we had a bit over an hour to make it over there. No problem. I picked up a rice ball triangle with rou4 song1 (pork) from the 7-Eleven, and ate and walked towards the connected MRT station.

Got to the Main station, waited around, got a little food and water, got on the very on time train. I was feeling tired, but not really sleepy. It was weird b/c I had started falling asleep in the Arena watching the acrobatics stuff.

We talked a bit on the train about fris and other stuff. It started getting dark, so no view of the mtns going across to Jhiben. But I read a bit and didn’t sleep. We got there at almost 10p. Taxis lined up outside the station, and we got in one. I was planning to go to Dong1 Tai2 Da4 Fan4 Dian4, but the driver talked us into going to a place he knew that was less expensive (1500NT vs 2800, incl breakfast, and hot springs (wen1quan2) in the back open until 12, in a more active area). So we went for that. Checked in, dropped off stuff, went walking around to take a look at food options. There was a guy singing karaoke in bar window, and looked out and told us we should come in. His singing partner came out and hit him b/c he’d missed his cue to sing, so he went back in towards the karaoke screens and belted out his part. We saw a chicken on a leash perched on a store sign, and ended up at that place for dinner. a pub like place – they had a tap for beer – that served basically everything. So we got some noodles and sat around – the waitress sang a couple karaoke songs for all of us. On our way out we met Mimi, the giant pig, who was eating some cabbage out of a big metal dish. Then headed back and were surprised to hear some kids speaking English – looked like Taiwanese kids but maybe were just visiting like me. We also stopped in a gift store that reminded me of the stores in Cancun but a little smaller w/ the same kinds of weird gifts including wooden phalluses, shell bracelets, and cheesy postcards.

We soaked our feet in the hot pool for about 10 mins, then heading up for sleep. Except I wasn’t so sleepy, so I wrote for awhile and had Air Force One playing in the background. I was looking for that funny Taiwanese game show that looked like deal or no deal but couldn’t find anything like that. Boo.