Kaohsiung at Dawn- a Holiday Excursion

I'm normally more of a morning person, which is a bit of a rarity in Taiwan among the Western ex-pat community due to our mandatory evening working hours, so when the summer holidays finally roll around it gives us a chance to get out early and enjoy the early morning hours.  Here in the south, Taiwan summer days can get up to over 40 degrees with nearly 100% humidity during the typhoon season; meaning unless you feel like being an egg in a frying pan, the early morning and late evening are the only safe times to be outside.

This morning, we took our fabulous dogs for an early morning walk at 4:00 am and left the house for our own neighborhood excursion to Lotus Lake around 5:00.  We veered off onto a very small side street (東門街) and walked to the first of a string of parks that run alongside the lake.  On the way, we saw a really well maintained community garden- something that took both of us by surprise because you don't expect to see a large produce garden in the middle of large apartment blocks.  Still, the quality of produce looked quite good (although we weren't brave/stupid enough to tempt the fates and try some)!

Once we got to the park, we noticed something hovering over the small, lotus-filled pond that we had never noticed before: a rock dove (pigeon) coop.  Local farmers in surrounding counties often keep birds of various kinds in coops constructed above their townhouses, but this is the first time I've seen one squarely in the middle of a very busy city (Taiwan's second largest).  It's a very obvious reminder of Kaohsiung's speedy development; in fact, the area we walked through this morning was farmland just 20 years ago, so perhaps it shouldn't really be that surprising that bird coops are still around.

By the time we walked across the bridge over the train tracks of Kaoshiung's major depot to the door of Lotus Lake it was a little after 6:00, and the sun was already really strong.  I managed to snap a few photos of the lake and its more notable structures (the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas) including the new water park on our way.  We walked halfway around the lake in search of breakfast before the sun was just too intense to continue (and everything was closed anyway!), so we decided to turn around and begin the walk home in search of food.

We stopped by a local breakfast shop for a traditional Taiwanese breakfast of Danbing （蛋餅）and then returned home around 9:00 to walk the dogs... again...