There's a children's book called Fortunately, Unfortunately that's a good summary of our day yesterday. We had great plans and none of them turned out as expected, although at the end of the day it was all good.

First was our hike up Monkey Mountain. The parking lot was packed with cars and scooters so we figured there would be a crowd with us on our hike. There were even a couple of monkeys hanging out on the roofs of some cars. As it turned out, those were the only monkeys we saw. We've never not seen any monkeys on the mountain, but that may have been because we were in a different section of the woods. We decided to follow the signs to the zoo since we've often talked about exploring there and had never gone.

The woods felt very jungle-like on this hike. The air was still and very humid and smelled how I expect a jungle to smell. We found patches of thick bamboo corralled into tunnels:

We also came across a little shrine tucked into the rocks near the zoo:

There was a cement wall that I thought marked the edge of the zoo (you can see it on the left in the photo above), but no. In fact, the zoo was a bit elusive. We found the entrance we've biked by many times:

When we walked up the drive from there we discovered that the zoo doesn't open until 9:00 and it was only 8:00, so not worth waiting around. We did see some animal statues, another, lovelier sign and some beautiful flowers.

Fortunately saw some monkeys in the parking lot, unfortunately never saw any on the mountain. Fortunately finally made it to the zoo, unfortunately it was closed, fortunately explored a new part of the mountain. You get the idea.

In the afternoon we had planned on going to the Dream Mall and the ferris wheel but it had started to rain at the end of our hike and continued for the rest of the day. Not the right weather for a roof-top ride. Instead, since the Dream Mall is pretty far from here we headed to the mall nearby to look for some kitchenware to bring home with us. We're still on the look-out for a nice set of chopsticks, bowls and spoons. It's what everyone eats with around here. Why has it been so hard to find? 

Unfortunately (see how this works?) we didn't find anything at the Hanshin Mall so we hopped onto the MRT and went into town to the Mega Mall. Everyone seemed to have the same idea on a rainy Saturday afternoon. The subway was packed.

Still no luck at the mall. But since we were downtown we figured we'd find some dinner. First we walked through the Liuhe night market. It was still busy, despite the rain.

There were plenty of choices for dinner, including squid on a stick for only 50NT, but we took a pass this evening.

Instead we ended up at a restaurant called The Beast where we were told they could squeeze us in if we promised to be done before 8:30. It being only 6:00 at the time we had no trouble getting in and out of there with time to spare. On our way back to the MRT we stopped in the night market and bought nougat to finish off our day. Fortunately, it was just a typical weekend in Kaohsiung.