Despite living in Taiwan for more than one-and-a-half years, until yesterday I was yet to catch a bus. The schedules are numerous and confusing, and I have better transport options:
The light rail’s within a 10-minute walk of my apartment
I’m less than 15 minutes from the MRT
There’s a YouBike (bike rental) station 100 meters from my building
I have a scooter
Uber is cheap
A night market, two shopping malls, three cinemas, three supermarkets, four food courts, half-a-dozen dentists, a dozen tea shops, my Chinese school, IKEA, and a million convenience stores are within walking distance
So, I’ve never had cause to take a bus—until now.
I mentioned my bus-free lifestyle to a local with more transit experience, and he suggested a random adventure:
Catch the first bus that comes along
Get off when we feel like it
Repeat
So, yesterday, that’s what we did…
The rain dictated that we start at the nearest sheltered bus stop—an element of additional randomness I hadn’t considered pre-downpour.I was excited about the pending arrival of dry seats and air conditioning.First impressions of a Kaohsiung bus: kinda dark, kinda dirty. By comparison, Kaohsiung light rail and the MRT are bright and spotless. As if that’s where all the money went.On the other hand, each bus ride is just NT$12 (NZ$0.60), regardless of distance. Way cheaper than the MRT.A few things impressed me though: Every bus had two wheelchair spaces, lots of emergency exits……Seatbelts……And USB ports for every seat.After a few minutes of distraction, I looked out and had no idea where we were. Time to disembark!We were in the middle of a six-lane road, so after pushing the button I thought the bus might shift to the side lane before stopping somewhere in the next block. But it lurched to a halt almost immediately, causing me to scramble for my bag, umbrella, and EasyCard before jumping out to the door as the good passengers of Kaohsiung patiently waited. Up ahead, I saw the Kaohsiung City Government Building (高雄市政府 四維行政中心). I went there for the first time only a month ago.It’s boring on the outside, but……Once you successfully wrap your umbrellas in the plastic bags provided……You can enjoy the 11-story atrium, featuring stylized ‘Gao’ (高) characters—the first character in the name Kaohsiung (高雄)—in the glass ceiling. This area also houses a cafe, post shop, government services, and a blind masseuse(!).We stopped for coffee at the first floor cafe, Sefun. It’s part of a chain that provides intellectually-disabled people with vocational training. Its baked goods are exclusively made by intellectually-disabled employees—but as they were all loaded with eggs (the baked goods, not the employees), I was unable to try them.I was excited by this reference to the Mayor’s Office on the elevator directory. Perhaps the closest I’ve been to my local political crush. But, by exercising some grand level of self-control, I didn’t bust my way onto the third floor. Instead, we went up to 11, a floor that features a food court, hair salon, laundromat, and……This ‘secret’ convenience store, where I bought a take-out hot sweet potato……Which I ate while pretending-but-not-really-pretending to scan for the mayor down below. (No luck this time.)The rain was easing when we went back outside. The Kaohsiung City Government Building occupies a whole block, so we chose to catch the next bus on a different side of the building from where we arrived. A more interesting bus stop across the street, with deteriorating Umbra Buddy-like figures supporting the paper-airplane roof, promoted “100 years of Kaohsiung, 1924–2024”.Without the need or patience to study them closely, I found the timetables completely bewildering.Our next bus was electric, but otherwise the same on the inside.Up ahead, I saw the Chang-Gu World Trade Center (長谷世貿大樓), the third-tallest building in Kaohsiung. I’d ridden past many times on my scooter, but never stopped for a closer look. We decided to head inside.In the lobby, the directory boards were blank and the elevator instructions were more complicated than just ‘get in and push a button’. Nonetheless, we decided to see how high we could go.The first elevator got us to a sky lobby on the 35th floor. It had a great view to the north.We got in one of the upper elevators and hit ‘50’. The creakiness of the ride, and the dated style of this golden plaque, were reminders this building opened more than 30 years ago. At the time, it was the tallest in Taiwan.This is what greeted us on the 50th floor.There were some demolition workers at the far end of the room. We called out to them, and they said we could look around as long as we accepted responsibility for ourselves, and watched out for nails on the floor.We were standing here. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.Kaohsiung’s two tallest buildings—85 Sky Tower (85大樓; 348m) and Farglory THE ONE (遠雄THE ONE; 268m)—were visible to the south-west.85 Sky Tower’s disproportionate size is clearer in this photo. It remains Taiwan’s second-tallest building (and one of my favorites).Looking south-east, Xiao Liuqiu Island (小琉球) was visible on the horizon. It’s around a one-hour drive then 30-minute ferry ride from Kaohsiung, and is famous for its sandy beaches and sea turtles. By all accounts, it’s a tropical paradise. I’m yet to visit.To the west, the enormous Kaohsiung Main Station (高雄車站)—still under construction—snakes through the city. The train tracks have been undergrounded, and a 750-meter-long elevated green canopy built across the roof and surrounding roads. When it opens, it will create uninterrupted cycle and walking track across some of the busiest parts of the city.Waiting for the elevator to go back down, I noticed this impressive retro tile art. But unfortunately the next few minutes of our lives were less impressive: after the two public elevators never arrived, we assumed the call button was disabled, so we took the service elevator—which was full of demolition materials—down to the sky lobby on the 35th floor. However, once there, we were unable to send it back up. The doors wouldn’t close. While trying to figure out how to undo our mistake, a rightly pissed-off demolition worker exited from one of the public elevators and started yelling at us for stealing his service elevator. “I kindly let you look around, and then you stole my elevator?!” he yelled in Chinese, with good reason. It was the first time I’ve been yelled at in Taiwan. I, too, would’ve been pissed off if someone stole my elevator.I remembered a reader of this blog had told me about the Kaohsiung House of Prayer (高雄廿四小時敬拜禱告中心) on the 39th floor (thanks Peter!). We had a quick look, but it was closed and empty. So it was time to get back on a bus. Soon we spotted this double-golden-arched McDonald’s. I’d seen it before on Instagram, but had no idea where it was. We went in for a cold drink and a snack. In the right conditions—think reflective wet road at night—this scene would be 💯. That’s something I don’t say about many McDonald’s.We hopped on an eastward bus towards Fongshan District (鳳山區), one of the historic centers of Kaohsiung.This bus had inexplicable tinsel and a Christmas stocking. On September 20.We got off near Fongshan Station (鳳山車站), a brand-new building in one of the oldest parts of the city. For now, only the station part is operational. But eventually it will house a cinema, community center, library, and shopping mall. The roof design references traditional Taiwanese architecture, and—I guess—the various arches reference the old city gates. This was my first time seeing the completed exterior. I was impressed.It was time for dinner. We decided to catch a local train back to Kaohsiung Main Station.There were 10 departures over the next 45 minutes.I was amused by this sign on the platform……It was originally spelt “Fengshan” (using Hanyu Pinyin), but the ‘e’ was covered over, to change it to Wade–Giles spelling. (Taiwan officially uses Hanyu Pinyin romanization for all words except some proper nouns, like Fongshan.)This is the local train we took back to Kaohsiung Main Station. On the inside there was standing room only, but it was 100 times cleaner and brighter than any of the buses had been.Soon we were standing under the canopy of Kaohsiung Main Station, which we’d looked at three hours earlier from the 50th floor of Chang-Gu World Trade Center. Although the station is functional, most of it—including a new hotel and shopping mall—is still blocked off for construction.We rented a couple of electric YouBikes and rode to a hotpot restaurant for dinner.Our meals were NT$265 (NZ$13) each. Mine included vegan miso hotpot with noodles, fried tofu (the non-stinky variant), and a kumquat lemon tea. Later, we rode the humid 3km back to my house, where my delivery order of two orange green teas (NT$75 / NZ$3.75 each, including delivery), was waiting. I recommend orange green teas to anyone concluding a public transport adventure.
