layming the jetsetter.: i love taiwan'08 part 2

i'm terribly sorry if my entries run very long, i guess i just want to make sure i write down as much as possible of what i saw and heard and felt so when i look back on these 5 mths, i know i have really experienced a lot, learnt much and grown up. =)

Day 3
day 3 started with a nightmare. why? check out the MASSIVE crowd at the taipei intercity bus terminal. my goodness. it was sooo overwhelming.

we set off at about 1130pm from school, joined the queue at about 1230am. the queues you see above - those people facing us were queuing to buy tickets, those with their backs to us were queuing to get on the different buses. we got our tickets beforehand, but we dint buy one with a fixed timing, so that meant we had to queue until there were empty seats on the buses. and my goodness, the wait was long and painful. there were sooo many people because it was spring break for students and also, it was ching ming festival, so people were all going home. plus, many were like us heading to kaoshiung before taking another bus to kenting for the music fest. and we thought setting out late at night would let us beat the crowds. WRONG. we were "betting" on what time we would be on the bus, the latest one of us guessed was 3am, but er....none of us was near in our guess. =X

anyway for those who dunno, kaoshiung is in south taiwan, and it's usually the second city people hear about after taipei. and then kenting is even further south - the southern-most point of taiwan is here...haha =P

halfway through the wait, we sat down and had doughnuts (yah, shu hui ate a lot of doughnuts during my visit). haha =P and you see that little pink piece of doughnut?? well, shuhui fed that to a little girl. er to be accurate, she FORCED, SQUEEZED it into that little girl's mouth. tsk tsk, not motherly at all -_- anyway that's not the point.

the point is that little girl got acquainted with us and became high after that. she turned into a "little monster". she was running all over the place, screaming in excitement, leaning on us, playing with us. after a while, the rest of them concluded that she's hyperactive and their reactions towards her became patronising. LOL =P but for some odd reason, i wasn't irritated! haha. so i asked the little girl to come over to me, i'd play with her so she could give the rest some peace. but i had a problem trying to figure out what she was saying half the time cos she has short tongue. and from the little bits and pieces of info we managed to catch, our senior said she's from a broken family, her parents are divorced. oh by the way, the little girl is 5.

there was this short period of time when i carried her and our senior asked her to lie on my shoulder. wah, that was a very-difficult-to-describe kind of feeling. a little girl you don't know, but sort of figure that she's from a broken family, trusting you enough to let you carry her and lie on your shoulder...it just makes you feel like giving her that little bit of love that's just a teeny weeny portion of the love you have in your heart. oh well, perhaps it's the innate maternal instincts at work too. haha =P

那小女孩栖在我身上的感觉很难形容。她好像只有那几分钟是真正地安静的。她是不是想在我身上找寻些已经失去的什么？抱着她，我一点也不觉得累。不知道凌晨３、４点钟的我，力气、精力和耐性从何而来，只知道当她们都觉得她有些烦的时候，我对小女孩一点厌恶感都没有。小女孩与大侄女同年龄，或许我是习惯和“过动”的小朋友玩了吧，所以才有办法可以“entertain”那小女孩。其实要哄小朋友也不是很难。哈哈。后来大概凌晨４点钟，小女孩的爸爸决定不回高雄了，我和那小女孩的缘分也就到此为止。我想这一生中，我们的命运也只会交叉这么一次吧。虽然我带给她的只是很简单的快乐，她长大后也应该对这一段一点印象都没有，但还是希望她以后都会记得怎么笑得像那晚一样开心。=)

i still think it's very fascinating how you will only meet some people that once in your lifetime and how you will nv know why your paths were arranged to cross. haha. very philosophical hor? and i will nv find the answers to these questions. haha =P

so anyway, we waited and waited and waited....yup don't doubt - it was 4.41AM when i took the above shot. i'm not that bo liao to go adjust my watch and take the photo la pls. hahaa =P we finally got onto the bus at 5AM!! and the journey would take 6 and a half hours....sit until butt pain. haha =P you know what, i woke up at 530am only to look out of the window and see that the sun was up already. and i mean, so bright it dint feel like 530am. haha =P i couldnt really sleep except for the couple of hours on and off to about 1０am? then i was awake taking in the sights we passed by. haha. i was wondering how come the rest could sleep so comfortably no matter which bus we were on and how long the journey was. they always managed to get some sleep while i would be awake most of the time -_-

oh by the way, all along before i left for taiwan, i thought we would be taking a train to kaoshiung. i only found out the night i got there. i almost fainted. haha =P i dint plan for this trip cos shuhui said the senior would bring us ard, neither did i know what the itinerary was like. i only knew the rough outline. it's exciting, yet a little unsettling, to not know what you are in for. haha =P

and this is what kaoshiung looks like. the first picture is of the old train station. =)

and after another 3 hours of bumpy ride to kenting, we were finally there. it was swamped with people! and the sun was so big and round and scorching! our camping site (YES, we camped) was quite far away from everything else, it's super ulu...and we had to cab everywhere. but okay lah, it costs less than 2SGD per person for the cab fare so it wasnt too bad.

we dint have much time to spare before the outdoor concert so basically, we had lunch at the main street, walked a bit and cabbed to the concert venue, which was 猫鼻头, literally translated as cat's nose. and i believe this is the rock that looks like cat's nose, hence the name of the place. hahaha. no proof of this though. =P

my hair is forever all over the place when we take photos like this. hmph. =X

this music fest thing is held in kenting every year in april and there are concerts of different natures. the one we went to was more of mainstream music, while there are those for indie / underground bands, those that are more of rock and those for techno (or sth like that). haha =P put simply, it's a big music event in taiwan held every year in kenting lah. so it's considered a rare experience also to be part of it all =) the one we went for had 2 concerts on 2 consecutive nights, and here's the first....

the concert started at 4pm, but those were artistes who arent very famous. we watched newcomer joanna wang - she has a feel-good voice that makes you feel very at ease and relaxed. then there was sodagreen (was quite far away from stage, so that explains the not-very-well-taken photos. paiseh =P)...

they arranged for a fan of theirs to come up on stage to perform as well. and he was sooooo freaking hilarious! haha =P

can you feel the atmosphere?! haha. i love this photo. =) oh btw, though i dunno any of their songs, it was still very enjoyable to listen to them, and the lead singer qing feng is so funny, very good in engaging the audience! hahaha =P

then there was chang chen yue (white) and mc hotdog (black). i would nv expected them to be so popular amongst the taiwanese. seriously, the reception they got topped that of soda green. WOW.

watch the video if you want to have a sense of how "hot" the concert was! =)

and our very own tanya! i tell you, i was secretly thinking to myself if she was capable enough to be the closing act for the night after the previous groups of artistes got the audience all so high. well, she proved me wrong, and she's popular and better on stage than i expected her to be! haha. comes with experience i suppose. and because i had a good view of the stage - like very centralised, i felt like she was singing to me can?! HAHAHA =P oh, she was late cos she was caught in a jam, then she was recounting how a student sent her there on a scooter, and said that was her first time on a scooter, and how she felt like a 小女人, then she laughed. like er....it was very funny lah, and she was pretty 自-high that night for some odd reason. kept saying some stuff then laughing at them herself. haha =P

when the concert ended, we had a problem - how do we get back?! cos you see, maobitou is about 20-30mins from kenting main street and from there it's another 5-10mins to our camping site. and mind you, these timings are by car and assuming that traffic is good. well, there was supposed to be a shuttle bus, but some policemen told us that the buses were stuck in the main street cos of heavy traffic, they wouldnt be able to come back for us, so we had to fend for ourselves. “反正你们自己想办法回去” was what we were told. oh no.

then a lorry stopped in front of us while waiting for the jam in front to clear. you know those "open-air" kind that you have to sit at the back? those that you very often see in singapore?? haaha. the very decisive 美心学姐 immediately approached the 2 guys at the back to ask if we could hitch a ride. we were told to go ask the driver, who very very very nicely agreed to bring us to the main street. so up we went on the back. later i realised people like gwen have nv taken such lorries before. i told her i used to take such a lorry to go visiting during cny and when i go 扫墓, and she was like, "no wonder you like so pro, know how to get up and down the lorry". HAHAHA =.=

anyway, when the 5 of us got up, suddenly there were other people scrambling up the lorry as well =.= there were 12 hitch-hikers in total. haha.

i happened to be sitting beside one of the 2 guys, and we started chatting about random stuff. they are from tainan and they were selling tako pachi and beer outside the concert venue. then we talked about singapore, about how it was his first time talking to a singaporean, about ns (cos taiwan boys also have to serve ns), about whether i understand 闽南语／台语, about I Not Stupid. yup.

you know what? we have come to realise that i not stupid is the most well-known local film abroad. as much as some of us may think jack neo is not that accomplished as a film-maker, or that he's not "class" enough, whether you like it or not, he's the one who has made an impact overseas. not only in taiwan, my hk frens also told me that they watched the movie. i guess we should also feel proud of him, no? haha =P

and and and and and, there were soooo many stars that lit up the skies of kenting! SERIOUSLY, it's really twinkle twinkle little stars can?! like A LOT of them, PLENTY. haha =P too bad they cant be seen on the photos we tried to take. TSK.

anyway, we were dropped off at the main street and as we were walking to the beach to meet our senior's relatives, guess who we met?! SODAGREEN! hahaha. so we jumped at the chance to take a photo with them. though it's just half of them, but who cares?! and who's the happiest of the lot? SHUHUI lah! she's a big fan of them! i mean, we were really lucky to bump into them! haha =P

there were people lighting fireworks at the beach...ehh my photos dont do the fireworks justice, but i tell you, their fireworks are not the small little mini-ones k?? some are comparable to those we see on special occasions in singapore. then you wonder, why are we paying millions and millions for what taiwan people can enjoy at a mere fraction of that cost??? haha =P oh wells. it was pretty exciting to see the fireworks ignite. =)