After a few incredible days exploring Taipei we hopped on the High Speed Rail to the city of Kaohsiung, staying at Jia’s Inn, a cute hotel close to the city centre and the Liuhe night market. I particularly liked the look of their dining room where we spent a morning enjoying a buffet breakfast.
It was in this hotel, in our room on the tenth floor, that we were woken at 4AM by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake. A rude awakening, which left me shaken in more ways than one, I distinctly remember a lamp which hung on the corner of the ceiling of our hotel room bouncing back and forth, between two walls. It took me an hour to get back to sleep, once the adrenalin wore off and I didn’t feel any more shaking.
The earthquake occurred on our last night in Kaohsiung and as a result the High Speed Rail back to Taipei the next was cancelled, as were all bullet trains, understandably. As I wrote on my social media:
Back in Taipei after a long day. The High Speed Rail was not running in the south due to the earthquake so we had to catch a packed, slower train with standing room only, and then change to the HSR, which added around four hours to the trip.
I caught up on my podcasts and survived on 7 Eleven sandwiches. A proper dinner now and then off to Hong Kong in the morning!
We has a lovely time in Kaohsiung otherwise. It is such a lovely part of the world and I hope to share some more photos and experiences soon.
via Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Any kind of tables or chairs
Mario Travels 
I’ve only ever experienced two earthquakes…one was more a tremor in the UK when I was convinced the roof had decided to slide off the house and the shower cubicle was shaking like mad…the other was at Wellington airport near Christmas when the decorations were swaying about like crazy…but both of those were a lot closer to the ground than being on the 10th floor! Must’ve been terrifying!
It felt so surreal. My cousins back in Chile were unimpressed though, as they live through earthquakes and tremors on a regular basis, some much stronger than this.
In fact, the worst one I ever experienced was back in Chile when I was 1 year old. As the story goes (I don’t remember it), Mum was giving me a bath when an 8.0 earthquake hit quite close to the capital. I was all lathered up so she couldn’t pick me up and began to panic. My uncle grabbed a towel and wrapped me up and they took me to a safer part of the house.
I love stories like that! 😄 Thankfully I can’t imagine 8.0.