Kaohsiung, Land of the Beautiful Temples & Sunsets!

This past weekend, Liz, Kailey, Karyn and I decided to make a bigger trip, where we actually spend the whole weekend somewhere. Kaohsiung was our destination.

On Friday night, we sped to the train station on our bikes right after work. We got there with about 15 minutes to spare, where we attempted to go through the ticket line but the machine wouldn't take our tickets. We had no idea why, then it was pointed out to us that the tickets were for the wrong day!

What do we do now? Well we found some really nice people who spoke English and helped us get the situation figured out! We ended up buying new tickets and then getting a partial refund once we got to Kaohsiung. (Even though we bought the tickets at the last minute, we were able to get seats, for which I am grateful! They have tickets for standing room too.)

We arrived in Kaohsiung on Friday night and my friend, Tricia (who I wrote about before) was waiting for us at the train station. She helped us in our quest of getting a refund for our tickets. Then she drove us to our hostel in downtown Kaohsiung. The hostel was really clean and lovely and it was pretty dang cheap! We shared a room with one other girl, who was really friendly!

We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and Tricia drove us to Foguangshan. Foguangshan is a huge Buddhist complex on a hill about 20 minutes outside of Kaohsiung.

This is the main attraction of Foguangshan! I believe it's the tallest Buddha statue in all of Taiwan! It's 36 meters (118 feet) high! (There are 480 smaller images of the Buddha surrounding the large one.)

Here's some more of the Buddhas surrounding the large one!

Me in front of the statue!

Up close and personal with the statues!

Me in front of the statue again! I just can't get enough pictures :)

Look at that pagoda! This is in the temple complex! It is beautiful!

I loved these little statues! They were everywhere!

I liked this one with no legs! All of these statues were small!

This is the biggest temple on the complex and IT IS HUGE! Seriously!

This is looking inside of the temple! Those Buddhas are also very big!

Inside of the temple! Look how small that person looks at the left of the picture!

All of the walls look like this up close! Literally from about a foot above the floor to the windows up above and from corner to corner, the walls had these statues in the holes!

Some more statues, but these were in a different part of the complex! These all have different poses and faces as opposed to the ones by the tall Buddha statue that all looked the same.

I loved these red gates! I have so many more pictures at Foguangshan, but alas I cannot post them all.

The complex has so much more than what I have pictured! It has a university and museums and more temples and pagodas and statues and souvenir shops and dorms... It is huge!

After Foguangshan, we made our way to the beach. We drove back to Kaohsiung! We took a ferry to get to the beach!

This is a view of the city from the ferry!

Me on the ferry!

Tricia and I at the beach! Liz, Karyn, Kailey and I changed into our swimsuits. Tricia didn't because she had to go somewhere else fairly soon, but she stayed and walked along the beach with us for awhile.

P.S. This was the first time my roommates and I had seen the ocean since we've been on this wonderful island of Taiwan! We've been here exactly two months today!

As we were at the beach we got to witness one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen! I love sunsets! Each one is so different and so marvelous!

Another part of the sunset!

Look at the color of the clouds and the water! I love the light reflecting off of the water!

It was a wonderful time at the beach! The water was warm and shallow, the sun was behind the clouds, the waves were just the right size. I love relaxing at the beach!

After the beach we went back to the place to get on the ferry and the line was super duper long. I think we only waited about an hour or so ;) I know this picture is dark, but this is Kailey, Karyn, and Liz waiting for the ferry.

We ended up going to the night market in Kaohsiung, near our hostel, after the beach on Saturday. That place was huge!

Overall the day was marvelous! I love exploring and seeing new places! One can learn so much by exploring and studying and asking questions.

This is Day 1 of our Kaohsiung trip! More to come soon... :)