Visiting Kaohsiung – KMRT and Urban Spotlight

A friend invited me to go visit Kaohsiung and so it was my first time to take the new Kaohsiung underground KMRT system. It’s gorgeous, although extremely empty when it’s not rush hours.

You know, this is one of the things that makes me very jealous of Taiwan. Taiwanese tend to focus on the fact that the MRTs and the Taiwan High Speed Rails (THSR) took too long and too much money to build. To that I can only say – it’s there, it’s running and it’s beautiful, and in Israel – a country of similar size with Tel Aviv Gush Dan area of similar scale to Kaohsiung (1.2 million people) – we’ve failed at producing anything remotely resembling those impressive projects. Similar things can be said about many of the highly advanced west-European economies.

This is what it looks like…

This is another thing that I doubt can work as nicely in Israel. It doesn’t even work that well in HK either. It’s just amazing how – most times – people line up one after the other and wait for passengers to get out of the MRT before entering.

Feel like taking a short ride?

I must say that I prefer the English speaking lady in the Taipei MRT. Although the British accent HK MTR lady sounds the best, the Taipei MRT girl sounds exotic. I remember falling in love with her instantly.

BTW – did you know that Kaohsiung is also working on building a “Circular Light Rail Transit”?

Here’s what one of the stations looks like from the outside :

This specific station leads to one of Kaohsiung’s night attractions, called Urban Spotlight, hosting a few live music cafes with nice lighting.

Here’s from one of the live music performances in the cafe I was sitting in. I didn’t think much of this next video, till I suddenly noticed there’s a guy sleeping in the middle of the screen

Kaohsiung is looking better and better each time I visit there.