Kenting Taiwan

Kenting is like that carnival that comes around to all the small southern American towns with rides and food that make you want to vomit... Despite this sentiment, Kenting is a great city to see. Its a backpacker city with lots of tourists from the north, in this instance because of the Chinese New Year. Food stalls line the main drag offering a delicious mixture of culinery possibilities. Its a tough decision between steak and noodles sizzeling on a steel plate, pork, beef, or chicken on a stick, milkshakes, smoothies, fresh fruit of all kinds, rice, pizza, and my personal favorite; grilled sausage on a rice bun drenched in spicy and sweet sauce.

Our first task was to find our hotel, a church that was offering extremely cheap lodging. Unfortunatly we were forced to sleep on a mat in the gym with twenty other travelers who all seemed to snore. We rented an electric scooter that only exceeded 20 km downhill. So we dangerously putted around the city unable to go far without replacing the battery (This is the only scooter available to a person without an international or Taiwanese drivers lisence).

Our first night began with a few beers walking around the street and trying out different bars. Our nice waiter asked us if we wanted free tickets to the club upstairs or to the fire show. We opted for the fire show which turned out to be a strip club. No fire was involved. Sandra decided to try one of the weird roadside carnival stalls and ended up with a bungee cord around her waist on a giant trampoline screaming 30 ft in the air. After that debacle, we met some people from Spain and had a few drinks. We were both surprised at the amount of Spanish speaking people that lived in Kenting. We ended up drinking with the band of a Mexican restaurant after their gig and met some American English teachers from the north of Taiwan. We swapped teaching stories and headed to bed extremely late and drunk and didn't rise until 10.

We explored the coast the next day. The highlight was getting into a giant rubber ball and hurling down a huge hill. The beaches were mediocre at best and the weather was dismal.

Kenting seemed like a pretty cool party town, but a place i could see myself skipping if I needed to. The food was the best part, but you have all of the same options in Taipei. I think its just one of those places that is dominated by backpackers. I can't imagine spending a long time there, but I was happy that we made the trip.