We couldn't have arrived in Taiwan at a better time.
The Sunday we landed was spent settling into our digs and getting to know Claire and Cooper the two cats we were looking after. The Monday, our first full day in Kaohsiung was Dragon Boat Festival!
Dragon Boat festival is a huge celebration in Taiwan and China. Yeah Spring festival (Chinese New Year) is probably the biggest, but that's more a family affair. For celebrations and fun out on the streets Dragon Boat Festival is the one to be at.
We couldn't have been luckier with either the timing of this trip or the City we were in for the festival. Kaouhsiung being Taiwans biggest seaport and home to Love river was the perfect place to join in the festivities and get our bearings around town.
We were up nice and early and headed straight down to the river to see what was going on. The banks of Love river were packed and bustling with people, it seemed like everyone had come out to celebrate and watch the races. One side of the river was jam-packed with stalls selling food, clothes, trinkets and booze. It seemed like our kind of festival.
We spent an hour or so just slowly meandering up that side of the river towards the start line. Grabbing a bite to eat here and there and a nice cold beer now and then to wash it down with. All the while the rhythmic beating of the drums on the Dragon boats provided the soundtrack to the day.
The the races were already in full swing. Starting from a bridge at the top all the way down to the bottom end of the river. The boats were amazing. Elaborately carved Dragon heads at the front and all painted in different vibrant colours, works of art. Some teams took it more seriously than others and must have been practising for months, others were groups of friends or work mates who were just in it for the craic. It was really good to see the spectacle that surrounds these races and how many people come out to support and enjoy it.
As we neared the starting line the heat was getting to us a bit so we popped into the nearest 7-11 to cool off in the aircon and to grab a few cheaper beers to take out with us.
As I've mentioned before the 7-11's of Taiwan are a thing of beauty. A huge range of beers, wine and spirits are available. We managed to find a nice 6.5% IPA that was a good price so grabbed a few cold ones and sat in a park by the river supping away and enjoying the atmosphere. This was our first taste of what the drinking culture in Taiwan is like.
Drinking in public is fine. Nobody is rowdy or anti-social and people make sure that they dispose of their rubbish properly. There are no bins overflowing like a festival back home or cans strewn about the street. You just pop your empties back into a 7-11 or FamilyMart and get rid of them in their bins. It felt nice and relaxed.
As the afternoon and drinking progressed we headed over the bridge where the starting line was and down the opposite side of the river. There were a couple of riverside bars down there so we grabbed a few more pints and sat watching the races. It was good fun. The drummers are the pulse of the team, banging away at a constant beat to keep everyone in time. Families, friends and co-workers cheering on their teams and it all just felt very pleasant. A great way to spend an afternoon in the baking hot sun settling into a new country and city.
After a few at the Riverside bars we popped into a another nearby 7-11 to grab some more aircon and cool off. This was our first taste of just how cool these 7-11's can be. The one earlier didn't have any seats or places to hang out but this one was like some kind of social club convenience store. It had a bar. A full bar as well with 3 different beers on draught, wine on tap, a cocktail menu, the full shebang. There were two different seating areas, video games, snacks as far as the eye could see and even a toilet! What was this kind of 7-11 magic that they have here in Taiwan?
The place was packed due to the festival but we still managed to grab a seat and a table to enjoy some drinks at and a few snacks. The place was a nice mix of people too. Old guys sitting nursing their beers, families having some food, kids playing on the crazy Pokemon video game machine (I still don't know how they play that). It was just a very chilled place to sit and relax, no hassles from anyone and it made me think of home.
Imagine going into your local Spar at home and it's got a small bar and an incredible range of booze in the fridge. A toilet, some tables and chairs for you to chill at? It just wouldn't work would it. Chavs (young, annoying anti-social idiots for those not from the UK) would have the place turned upside down in no time if they could sit in and drink. The toilets would be destroyed. They would be hanging over the bar trying to pour themselves free drinks, it would be utter chaos.
Taiwan is a great example of what it can be like when people are respectful of each other and their surroundings. Spar would never be allowed to serve booze like this for the reasons I mentioned above. But when you can show that you can be responsible and considerate of others and the environment around you then the authorities trust you to be an adult and the laws are more relaxed around the drinking culture.
As we were to find out, these kind of 7-11's and FamilyMart's are everywhere, and I mean everywhere. You are never more than about 50 metres from one. In Kaohsiung most of them have at least a small seating area somewhere. Around half of them have a toilet, a good clean one at that and 99% of them sell a great range of booze at a decent price. Welcome to the modern civilized world my friends. This is how we should be living.
After our fantastic introduction to the drinking world of 7-11's it was getting on a bit. The final race was over, the champions had been crowned....which we missed and the sun had set. It was time to move on and check out a bar.
We had looked up a few different bars before we landed in Kaohsiung and one that we had pinned on our map was just a few hundred meters away, Oxford Bar. It all sounded typically English but it seemed like it had a good happy hour on each night and looked to be a popular place. We went along to see what the craic was.
It was pretty buzzing when we got there. It was a nice old wooden traditional type bar and we grabbed some £1.25 happy hour pints and plonked ourselves down. Over the next half hour it got busier and busier. There was lot's of cheering going on and after we got chatting with one of the bar staff we found out that the pub's Dragon Boat team were the ones who had won the Dragon Boat race this year for the first time in their 20+ years of entering.
It was a cracking result choosing this bar for our first taste of Kaohsiung night life. It was a great night and before long the beers throughout the day and at the bar had added up. Things got a bit fuzzy from this point on and I think I can just about remember catching the MRT home and then maybe stumbling into a last 7-11 near ours for a night cap.
It was a really great day all round. Good fun, good people, a nice city and a great first impression of what Kaohsiung and it's people and culture is like. This first day was enough for us to know that we were going to enjoy Kaohsiung and Taiwan very much.
