Wanderlust of the Asian Variety: Spring Scream

Last weekend was Tomb Sweeping Day in Taiwan, a holiday where people remember and honor their ancestors by praying, and like the name suggests - sweeping their tombs. Many Taiwanese take this time to spend with family, but as a foreigner I took the opportunity to travel down south to Kenting, the very southern tip of Taiwan. Kenting is a small town with one main road lined with Thai restaurants, shops, and beaches. It's in the tropics, so while it's often rainy and cold up north, the south is a sunny paradise!

I went to Kenting with 6 friends to check out Spring Scream, a 3 day music festival full of strange Asian bands. We hopped on a night bus near our dorm and headed down. We had to change busses in Taichung, but didn't realize that we would have to wait for 2 hours, so after a little bit of down time we decided to entertain ourselves with a game of charades. One of the girls on the trip happened to have the charades cards from cranium...as English teachers we are always prepared (i always have a deck of cards, a bag of candy, and a ball in my bag). With words like evolution, hypertext, and roller coaster, we did more than just entertain ourselves and by the end everyone in the bus station was watching and enjoying our game. After our two hour wait we boarded another bus ending up in Kaoshiung. We arrived there around 4am delusional from lack of sleep, and managed to cram 7 people into a taxi. The drivers here always amaze me, but this guy outdid even my expectations for Taiwan. He somehow fit a 3 hour drive into about 1.5. How did he do this you ask? Well apparently the motorcycle lane isn't just for scooters anymore, and speed limits are optional. After an hour and a half of panic on my part we pulled into a camp site near the festival, set up our tents, and passed out for a few hours of blissful rest.

Our camp site was pretty basic, but for about 4 bucks a night it was a great deal. Our fellow campers included a guy who at 10am was already having his own personal half clothed rave, which ended up to be a good preview of what the weekend was going to be like. In the afternoon we wandered down to check out the festival for the first time. It was held on the grounds on the old light house in the middle of the woods, and was a bunch of stages, food stands, and tents set up. My dreams of odd Asian music came true, and I saw everything from heavy metal to rap to reggae. There were also a few foreign bands with a severe lack of talent. Although I really enjoyed the crazy music, my favorite part may have been the food stands. There was a Mexican stand where in one day I think I ate at least 20 quesadillas. The guys running it knew our names by the end of the weekend.

The second day after enjoying a day of sun at the beach we hit up the concert again, and then decided to head back to a party on the beach, so we made our way out of the festival towards the light house. As we exited the grounds we came across a race track with cars drifting, kind of like the Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift. I didn't see Vin Diesel, but I guess not all of the movie was based on fact. All that separated us from the cars sliding around on the track was a thin plastic barrier. At the time I was intrigued by the race and wanted to watch, but looking back this may not have been the safest option around. After we got our fill we cabbed back to the beach to hit the party. It was a crazy scene - the beach was packed, there was a DJ booth and people dancing, and fireworks going off in all directions. People had set up little torches in the sand to sit around, kind of like an instant camp fire.

Our last day we woke up again bright and early because of the heat in our tents, and decided to get some last beach time in before heading back to the dark dreary north. The beach we had gone to on Sunday was pretty crowded and dirty, and swimming in the water was a game of avoiding the floating trash. Somehow we didn't discover the pretty and clean beach until our very last hours in Kenting.

Our group in the bus station on the way down to Kenting