Day 12: The Quiet Town along Zhongshan Road...

~25th March 2014~

There is always the other side of the picture. Taipei is the heart beat of the country. Kaohsiung is the working force of the nation. This is the lackadaisical side of the country. It's like a sleepy hollow. There was not much activity along the road, just a few shops which caters to no one at all. How did they survive in such sleepy town? I would not want to pull up my shutter. I would have shift out of this place in search of a better job. The bus stopped to get lunch for everyone, left only 4 of us as one has gotten down. 

The pig finally woke up as I got down to see what's there for lunch. There was nothing that I wanted on the menu but can't be choosy when there were no other choices.

This was just like driving along Malaysia's highway overlooking hills and greens. You know why there's no high speed rail along the east coast? That's the backbone of the island like we have our Banjaran Titiwangsa in Peninsular Malaysia.

That rock further out looked like a sleeping bear. You see, after looking at so many rock formation, the imagination just runs wild. 

The houses just looked so run down. This is the real Taiwan, not what you always watch from tourism videos to promote the country. One must not forget that a country has real people living there where some of them faced poverty. As Jesus said, the poor will always be among you. 

One of the passengers in the bus asked the tour guide why were there so many Christian cemeteries along the coast. I was half awake and half asleep but I was curious to know how would his explanation turn out to be. I was quite pissed with the way he explained it. He, who has no knowledge of Christ, has discounted the Saviour as someone non-existent. If I could preach in Chinese I would start preaching in the bus and gave him a piece or two of my mind. He said that because the people along the coast were poor and the missionaries brought food stuff every Sunday, so they became Christians just because of the food stuff. But in truth they still pray to their idols. Oh, man... were you there to witness that? The whole of Taiwan should thank God that there are praying people in the country if not the country would have disappeared with so many catastrophes and China could easily trample that land without lifting a finger. Only the poor has the time to go down on their knees to pray earnestly for the country. Do you expect a rich businessman to go down on their knees and pray for the country? There might be a small fraction of rich who would do that but they would be more interested to pray for their business. God fed the poor through the missionaries... it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Whether the poor accepted the Lord for the sake of the rice and flour or not, you are never there to witness it or fully understand what's in their heart. One should not simply give such explanation to another tourist. Just say you don't know, you won't die. No one expect a tour guide to know everything.