Last week we went to the southern tip of Taiwan for a four day trip to Kending (Kenting). Here is the second video, showing you places on the southern side of the Hengchun Peninsula.
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Smokey Joe's
Chateau Beach Resort
Add: No. 2, Kengding Rd., Hengchun Township, Pingtung County (屏東縣恆春鎮墾丁路2號)
Tel: (08) 886-2222
Website:
Howard Beach Resort Kenting
Add: No. 451, Kengding Rd., Hengchun Township, Pingtung County (屏東縣恆春鎮墾丁路451號)
Tel: (08) 886-2323
Website:
Piccolo Polpo (迷路小章魚)
Add: No. 68 Nanwan Rd., Hengchun Township, Pingtung County (屏東縣恆春鎮南灣路68號)
Tel: (08) 888-2822
Website:
Ocean Blue (海餐廳)
Add: No. 111, Kending Rd., Hengchun Township, Pingtung County (屏東縣恆春鎮墾丁路111號)
Tel: (08) 886-2800
Website: ocean-blue-kenting.com (Chinese)
Banana Bay香蕉灣
Eluanbi鵝鑾鼻
Hengchun Peninsula恆春半島
Jialeshui 佳樂水
Kenting National Park墾丁國家公園
Nanwan南灣
Sail Rock船帆石
Southernmost Point of Taiwan台灣最南點
Xiaowan小灣
Gear used for this video
Camera:
Panasonic Lumix GH4:
Lenses:
PANASONIC LUMIX G X Vario Lens, 12-35mm:
PANASONIC LUMIX G Vario Lens, 100-300mm:
Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8:
Panasonic DMW-MS2:
GoPro Session 4 & 5
Travel in Taiwan magazine Jul./Aug. 2017:
South Coast
Between the Maobitou peninsula on the west and Eluanbi peninsula on the east, this is Kenting’s most popular tourist area, with a high concentration of beaches and resorts as well as restaurants, bars, cafes, and boutiques.
Nanwan, or South Bay, is in the crook where Maobitou and the main body of the Hengchun Peninula meet. This is the best and most popular locale for inshore frolicking—swimming, windsurfing, jet-skiing, kayaking, banana-boating, skin-diving, snorkeling, what have you. There are change rooms, showers, and shops renting all necessary gear/toys. Adding to Nanwan’s allure is the fact it is second only to nearby Kending town, which we visit next, for restaurants and watering holes.
Kending is fun-central in the park. This is where all the action happens at night. Highway 26 does double-duty as the town’s main street, and as the sun retires over the western horizon each day local residents don vendors’ hats and line both sides with food stalls. Backing them are scores of bricks-and-mortar enticements, with everything from cafes, bars, and restaurants to indie-designer jewelry and crafts shops. On the town’s eastern edge are some especially entertaining sights – small lorries which, once the shutters on the back cabins are lowered, magically become bars and pizzerias. Owners set up seating alongside. The former are stocked to “the rafters” with famous spirits brands, and the latter have flatbed-mounted brick pizza ovens.
Off Kending’s eastern end, in a pretty sheltered cove, is the Xiaowan (“Small Bay”) beach, directly across Highway 26 from two of the park’s resort-hotel queens, one of these the Howard Beach Resort (see Box). During the day a wide range of watersports equipment is available for rent at the beach. At night, after the water-focused fun ceases, the wide-deck wood-theme café/eatery here transforms into a mellow open-air bar, ’70s rock complementing the soothing music of arriving waves.
East of Kending is Banana Bay, site of a miniscule fishing harbor. On either side of its cement breakwater walls is easily accessible upraised-coral shoreline, beyond which is an underwater world popular with divers.
Nearby iconic park attractions are Shadao and Sail Rock. The first is a magnificent 300m stretch of protected beach that actually shines. In the on-site exhibition hall, it’s said this is Taiwan’s purest shell-sand; the coast makes a dramatic 90-degree turn here, meaning materials are washed in and churned but not easily washed out. Sail Rock is a towering 18m-high slab of exposed coral offshore said either to resemble a Chinese imperial war junk or US President Richard Nixon’s profile. But what I see is a Kenting angelfish.