Travel Blog

Last night, I rounded up the more liberal thinking folks around

Kaohsiung

to partake in a local tradition: shrimp fishing.  It has been uncontested that this is a phenomenon unique to

Taiwan

. Thai mountain people eat stir-fried crickets. Xinjiang Chinese eat deep-fried scorpions.  Taiwanese people shrimp and then eat them.

The idea of shrimp fishing conjures images of shrimping boats a la Bubba Gump. Uh… no that exotic.  We walk up a concrete ramp into a light grey sheet metal warehouse of about 1000 square feet.  In the center there is a concrete pool of nebulous water where shrimp are allegedly farmed.  Twenty local men sit around on a variety of pink, grey, and green plastic-injected chairs with shrimping rods, smoking cigarettes, drinking Taiwan Beer™, and eating grilled shrimp. A bar characteristic of an 80’s dive bar in downtown LA was obviously shipped in crates and resurrected here.

Imagine this scene.  I, in my Pepe Jeans™ off-white sweater jacket, walk in with 4 fashionably dressed women toting handbags the likes of Fendi™, Gucci™ and LV™, each with Starbucks™ Vanilla Lattes in hand.  There goes the neighborhood.  I contemplated bringing out my ipod mini to play some down tempo music; but restrained myself to prevent inflicting psychological damage on the locals. One local later asked: “You folks from

Taipei

?”

We pick up shrimping poles lined up on the walls as if pool sticks, go to the blood stained mini-fridge full of chicken liver, and off we go. You have to first tie a line with 2 hooks onto the pole, then cut miniscule pieces of liver for bait.

A nice Taiwanese man stuck the entire end of the rod into the water to gauge the depth, and helped me adjust the bobber.  You then put the bait in the water and wait. The shrimp eat the liver, you eat the shrimp.  The food chain simplified.

We talked. We laughed. We took pictures like tourists.  We all caught shrimp, racked them onto a grill, and put them into the convenient oven at the facility and sent them all to shrimp hell. Then we ate them.  Yum.

To recover from this oxymoronic urban outdoor experience, we all went to the opening of a new lounge bar called Loft.  My new found friend Thomas meticulously designed every piece of furniture and décor over 6 months and finally opened to debut his artistic sense. We enjoyed a bottle Moet surrounded by purple velvet drapes, comfortably upholstered red couches and pillows, with down tempo music as background. It was another good school night in

Kaohsiung

. 

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