How to spend 1 day in Kenting, Taiwan

Kenting is the national park that makes up the southernmost tip of the islander Taiwan. It’s a place full of majestic cliff top views overlooking the ocean and wonderfully fresh seafood straight from said ocean. We spent the day driving around between scenic destinations.

It was raining pretty steadily at the beginning of the day, which dampened my mood and the views, but luckily the skies cleared up by the afternoon. Kenting has some of the best coastal views I’ve seen in Taiwan!

Despite the views, my favorite part of the day was lunch (are you even surprised anymore?) We ate at Hou Bi Hu, a little area filled with seafood restaurants. Each restaurant had a set of 9-15 aquatic tanks on display in front, filled with the various fish, shellfish, and other seafood you could select for your meal. Want huge multicolored pastel lobsters? How about parrot fish? Uni the size of pomelos? You can have all those, and much more in addition to your more typical options. It was quite fun walking down the bustling hallway and peering into the bubbly tanks to see the different options offered by the various restaurants. A few restaurants had absolutely huge puffer fish (I’ve not yet tried pufferfish so I’m not sure what the general size of one is, but these were really big in my opinion- about a foot long!) and they were actually quite cute with their big round eyes. One of the restaurant owners reached into the tank with her bare hand and grabbed one of the puffers to show us and I thought it would inflate but gladly it didn’t. We ended up choosing a restaurant advertising a 25-piece sashimi boat for…get this- just over $6 USD. And it was so good and fresh! Oh my goodness…why can’t sushi prices be like this in New York??