Bliss: Umbrellas, Heat and a little bit of Whine.

The title would refer to our weekend trip to Kaosiung. We traveled there a few weeks ago , leaving on a Saturday at the whim of Will. I LOVE when Will has whims. He felt like driving, Wyatt and I were happy to comply, and we ALL wanted to get out of dodge. Yes, even in paradise, sometimes you want out. According to Wikipedia, the website for all things true and factual, Kaosiung "is in southwestern Taiwan and is located south of the Tropic of Cancer." (TRUE) Kaosiung is also home to the Hakka people, who first immigrated from China (http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/culture/hakkaint/). Their history is fascinating and we had a great time experiencing the culture, the food and of course the shopping. We toured the Hakka museum, ate noodles with the locals and walked around town. In the countryside of Kaosiung they are known for their handmade/handpainted paper umbrellas...(beautiful). We bought a few. It was incredibly fun. On the way home being heavy competitors,Will and I even had a healthy sized bet on what was wrapped up underneath the tarps on the trees(the fruit here is like, pre-packaged on trees) For the heck of it Will dared me to run over and look- I think he knew it was bananas(literally bananas) but really just wanted to see if I'd follow through and do it. FYI- NEVER dare me. I have yet to see my 500 NT (just in case you read this Will).Yeah so an incredibly fun time was had by all when we ignored Wyatt's whining about the heat and incessant complaints about walking. We did all this on Sunday though. Let me back up to Saturday, I'm jumping a bit ahead of myself. The drive took about 4 1/2 hours until we ended up in the city of Kaosiung. It reminded me of Singapore with its newness- but bigger, with 3/4 less congestion. It was baffling. As we were driving through, it was such a freeing feeling not to be in bumper to bumper traffic... even walking was a bit surreal not to have a stranger stuck to your buttocks like when in Taipei. It was AWESOME and as I said just moments ago... refreshing.....until Wyatt saw the park from our hotel window. Bummer. That's where the whine came in. He couldn't think of ANYTHING else all day but that stinkin' park. He spoke of nothing else all day but that stinkin' park. I appreciated his resolve, but it was SUPER annoying and I was starting to lose my temper. Being that I start to whine when I'm hungry and uh, Wyatt and I have a couple of similarities, I suggested perhaps we stop walking around the Love River, which we weren't all feeling a whole lot of and get Wyatt something to snack on. We stopped at this little restaurant and waited ages for food. Wyatt started chewing on ice when Will looked at him and said...Did you lose a tooth?!? Sure enough he did. I like to think that we're stellar enough parents to have noticed if our kid's tooth was gone earlier in the day...or the previous one. It's pretty obvious. Oh, and did I mention that we have no idea where his tooth went? Aren't great mom's supposed to save their kids first tooth? Well, I can tell you I wasn't going to go searching for where it potentially could have gone. (The tooth fairy came a few nights later after a note was written regarding the literal "lost" tooth). Anyway, after a bit to drink and the excitement over the gaping hole in his mouth, Wyatt's whine dropped a few degrees along with the heat. We were ready to proceed with the rest of our day. We walked around the night market and a little further down the river and found the blasted park on the way back to the hotel. By the time we got back, we were exhausted and thoroughly ready for room service. Fast forward to Sunday morning where we drove 45 minutes further south towards the Hakka village (refer to previous information)......Minus the whine good times were had by most.