Sunday, September 28, 2008

Penghu Trip: Pictures again



San Shui beach (山水沙灘) in my opinion, is the best beach Penghu has to offer. The sand is nice and fine and it is uncrowded. Also very importantly, it lacks the jet skis whipping people all around up and down the beach. We visited another beach that was said to be "the best" and found that you couldn't risk going out in the water because of the jet ski operators towing their guests everywhere - literally everywhere. They would take them out to deeper water, run them up on the beach and ride parallel to the beach. There was just no safe place to be in the water unless you wanted to walk half a kilometer. We decided to drive about 6 kilometers and return to this beach instead.



San Shui has some nice facilities as well. There are nice, clean (I will continue to stress these two aspects) changing rooms, bathrooms and a small park area with benches, a gazebo and fountains to wash the sand away. Nearby is a shop / restaurant / guesthouse ? (not too sure because I never went over there - one look at the place and I knew it reeked of dudes and broheims) where you can rent beach gear. There were plenty of Taiwanese grabbing surf boards, boogie boards and floatie things from this shop. If there is a busy time at the beach, it's around 4-5. Dad getting off work and taking the family out and the princesses avoiding the sun.



This is the SiYu lighthouse ( 西嶼燈塔). It started off in 1778 under the Ching Dynasty as a stone light. In 1828 it was upgraded to a lighthouse and in 1875 made into a western style lighthouse. Next to a military installation which asks that you park in front of the base - no one did - and that you not take pictures of it - no one listened to that one either.
From the wall of the lighthouse fort I continue to steal more military secrets. A local know-it-all informed us that the cannon can blast the island of ChiMei (七美), which you can see in the background if you enlarge it. I'm not sure why you would want to do that because ChiMei is part of the Penghu archipelago. Local guy also said that ChiMei was where one on Yamamoto's generals had an underground command bunker. Maybe they still harbor some ill will.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What about the coral temple? I miss Peng Hu, rice, noodles, taiwan beer and fubar.