Kenting in the summer time

Kenting is the furthest south you can go in Taiwan, a fair distance! So to make the most of the weekend; me and Pascal set out straight after work on Friday night… the journey should have been about 3 hours however the map I was using was in Chinese and although Taiwan now has English name signs with the Chinese; I only new what the characters for a place were when we got there… so when we reached a place called Kanding, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume this might be where we were headed: but no.

We thought we could simply go back onto the freeway; but no… there was only a slip road off – not back on the freeway. This is really not a great place to get lost. Luckily we found another road heading south and after a rice cake for supper we pulled up in Kenting at about 3am.

Now the plan was to pitch a tent on the beach and sleep for free: however in the darkness the sea sounded pretty rough; it had been raining moments before and the tide seemed rather high and the car park was rocky and full of ants; so I passed on the camping. Opted to sleep in the front of Pascal’s van: big mistake! The engine is under the seats and for 2 hours they did not cool down: I was semiconscious with the windows down for maybe half an hour when I realized there were 4 mosquitoes in the van; one of which had just bit my foot… Pascal had took the lock levers out for safety so I ended up pulling myself out of the window and going for a walk: if I can’t sleep I might as well get up! The thought of jogging hovered for a second but soon disappeared after walking a few paces.

I took my camera hoping to get some nice shots of the sunrise…


well I got halfway down the path to the beach when a mozzi bit my wrist; then another bit my hand… I tell you now I was feeling pretty low at this point… I walked into a 7Eleven (corner-shops of America they’re all over this country) holding my arm over the freezer and buying yet another rice cake.

Pascal was still sleeping in the back of the van so I went for a walk round Kenting. A collection of tourist-aimed gift shops, hotels, restaurants, eateries, bars and clothes shops (some of which were opening at 6am) Kenting seemed smaller than I’d imagined; there were a few visitors walking round buying breakfast, but for peak season on a weekend there wasn’t a lot going on.

Pascal was up by about 8; so after another rice cake and iced coffee; we got the bikes out the van and prepared for a morning cycle. We had two choices; drive out to the mountains or ride around the coast… it didn’t take too long to decide: how easy the coast road was! It was perfect: nice breeze, sunny skies and hardly a thing on the roads… we kept stopping to take pics of the coastline.

The first place to head had to be the southern most point; so using my bike compass, we headed south til we found signposts to it. There it was marked with an attractive obelisk.

From there we carried on round the coast until over the brow of a hill we could see the South China Sea back to the left of us and the Pacific Ocean on our right: it was awesome!

We pulled in at a group of catering vans at a toilet stop on the road: and were very grateful to be offered some shade and a stool by a drinks vender. He had his henchboy fetch us some mango smoothie and iced coffee and we chilled trying to ask him if he knew the route back to Kenting from here. He pointed us in a direction and off we headed. Before long the road split into 3 and each one seemed to go uphill (so much for our gentle coast-route) we stopped to ask a group eating dinner in their garden the best route: all five of them gave equally convincing and equally different answers; one said it was 45km back to Kenting; another said 6km; but after 5 minutes they managed to agree on one road; so off we went again. My logic was that we were on the west side; we went south then up the east coast; so if we headed west; we’d eventually hit the sea again… well we went west and west some more and we could still sea towns on hills beyond the towns on hills: but we were definitely heading west. After what seemed like forever we stopped at a busy junction to ask a family for directions: bemused at how we’d got so far from the place; they smiled and gave us their map in sympathy… we weren’t far from the coast but we had misjudged how far north we’d gone initial… so by lunchtime we’d done 30 miles, were knackered and drenched in sweat and all we wanted to do was fall into the sea… so we did.

The rest of the teacher crowd had arrived a little while before so we spent the rest of the day chilling and swimming.
The waves in the South China Sea are surprisingly powerful; first wave, I forgot to jump with, nearly drowned me and deprived me of my shorts.

After making ourselves look beautiful at the hotel, we headed to a Thai restaurant for some well-earned food. The difference in the place between now and that morning was phenomenal: there were people everywhere!
The streets were lined with little games stalls: Dave shot 10 balloons with 10 bullets and won a strange cat thing...
The food was good and plentiful; but for some reason the restaurant had a 1hr30 max eating time; so we were kicked out just before we ordered pudding: not very satisfactory at all! From there we walked to a little bar which had very attractive staff.

Lack of sleep caught up with me soon after; so when everyone headed off to a club i meandered back to the hotel.

The next morning i was annoyed to discover i'd missed breakfast... so i went and filled up on rice cake.
The day was spent shopping, eating and chilling by the beach again until at 5 the coach arrived for the others and after having a last walk round and watching the sun dip from view; we climbed back in the Pascal wagon and headed home. A far quicker trip. A good weekend all round!