I’m slightly sunburnt, don’t know if I’m suffering from a residual hangover or if it’s all in my head, lost my sunglasses in the ocean, have a messenger bag full of sand, saw more hotpants, legs and bikini tops to last a lifetime and a camera full of photos to sort through.

Without a doubt, Kenting beach is the place to be in Taiwan over the long weekend in first week of April.

Situated in Pingtung County on the Hengchun Peninsula in the south of Taiwan and backed by a bank holiday which gives you Monday to recover on the trip home, Kenting gets taken over in the first week of April by seemingly the entire youth population of Taiwan.

Dubbed ‘Spring Scream’ (which is an actual event but more recently is the name the weekend has come to be known by), the music festival is well known island wide and features outdoor concerts, beach party raves and a bustling night market.

During the day there’s the eastern beach to relax on and go for a swim. Weather wise Kenting was perfect and sunny the three days I was there, I’m told it’s like this all year round. I suddenly understood why my boss told me she was worried I wouldn’t come back when I told her where I was going for the weekend.



The Music

Spring Scream is first and foremost a music festival. I didn’t make it to the actual ‘Spring Scream’ concert this year but I did go to the two Spring Wave events.

There’s basically two events for Spring Wave, a local one ‘Maobitou’ with Taiwanese bands and then a rave party ‘Hengchun’ featuring international DJs. We went to the rave one Hengchun and while Saturday night was pretty good, Sunday night wound up being pretty quiet crowd wise.

I have a sneaking suspicion most of the action is at the Maobitou event as I remember seeing a much bigger crowd there as our taxi flew past.

Drinks prices were ok, red bull and vodka set you back $100 TWD a cup and beer was $250 for 6 bottles. Not as cheap as 4 big cans for $100 TWD at the night market but certainly better then some of Taipei’s bars pushing nearly $200 TWD a bottle.

There was ample space at Spring Wave to do your thing, some might say a little bit too much space given the crowd size but whatever. Better more then less.

One amusing aspect of Spring Wave was the dancing girls on stage (you can see them in the first photo of this article). They’d come out at random intervals dressed in a bikini top and hot pants complete with a furry ‘tail’ and shake their stuff. Immediately when this happens there’s a surge of guys towards the stage and about 400 video cameras get whipped out.

When they finish their set and disappear again (they came out a few times during the night) there’s then the mass exodus of said guys back to wherever they were hiding before the girls came out.

The other amusing thing I saw was this statue on the right near one of the beer stalls. It was a massive big white baby, with one hand holding a beer and the other his penis.

I’m not exactly sure what the reference was there but I definitely think something got lost in translation! Oh and yeah, that’s my finger half in the photo… drinking + dancing + taking photos is asking for trouble.

A smaller crowd size at Spring Wave I think is probably due to the fact it isn’t near the main Kenting area. To get to the place we had to take a taxi ride that felt like it went on for 30 mins. It sort of feels like to get to Spring Wave you wind up taking a taxi that covers half the distance back to Kaohsiung.

Alright if the event is massive and everyone is staying nearby in tents or something but if you’re heading back to Kenting afterwards it’s a bit far.

As we found out on Sunday night, by far the better option seems to be the free beach party that kicks off on Kenting beach. There’s a dj setup, enough sound equipment to fill the beach, a bar behind the dj area and a stack of people to party with into the morning.

Not to mention the random fireworks that go off all night (no health and safety here, they are launched by randoms in the crowd!). If I did it over I’d probably have saved myself $1800 TWD and just given Spring Wave a miss and gone directly to the beach party.

Next year I’m going to make the effort to be better organised and attend the actual Spring Scream event. Everything I’ve read and heard about it makes it sound like something anyone in Taiwan should experience at least once.



The girls

Unless you’re in Taipei the rest of Taiwan is usually pretty conservative dress wise so it was awesome to see people let their hair down at Kenting. Unbelievable short mini skirts, hot pants featuring legs that went on forever and bikini tops were the go here and there’s enough of it to drive anyone crazy.

Then there’s the promotional girls who, while you do know they’re just there working at selling beers or whatever, are still nice to look at.

(Evidently my camera phone doesn’t work too well in night situations where there’s a lot of different light sources so getting clear photos was tough).

During the day the beaches provides plenty of eye candy opportunities too.



Accommodation

Not surprisingly the key to accommodation is planning well ahead. If you leave it to the last minute expect to be gauged by hotel/motel owners. I’ve heard that they deliberately keep a few rooms vacant and then put prices through the roof over the weekends.

Hotels and motels seem ok priced, we wound up paying $4000 TWD a night for a twin queen bed suite. The room had its own bathroom, was clean and had a balcony view so I can’t complain. The 11am unasked for loud wakeup banging on our door on Monday morning was a bit annoying though. Checkout wasn’t until 12pm so I have no idea what that was about.

There is of course hostel type accommodation but that of course comes at a price. Sharing a space with 10 other people isn’t my idea of a good night so I’d probably give it a miss. The most budget accommodation I saw was a big warehouse type building with mats and pillows lined up on the concrete ground. Think refugee camp. I guess alright to crash for the night but good luck getting any actual sleep!

One alternative to staying somewhere is to just crash on the beach. For obvious reasons the main Kenting party beach is out but the east beach which is a short walk away (in the McDonalds direction) was pretty good.

We had no accommodation for Saturday night and after Spring Wave just caught a taxi to the beach and crashed. I was in a tshirt so it was a bit chilly with a slight wind but it was only a few hours till the sun came out and all was good again.

There’s nothing quite like waking up on a beach and going for a swim at 8am after a night out with blue skies and the temperature at a warm 25-27 degrees C.

Just don’t do what I did and dive into the water with your sunglasses on. I jumped in with them on, came back up without them and then spent the next 20 minutes hunting around with my feet trying to find them. I have no idea where they went…

If the sun is too hot there’s beach umbrellas for hire along with plastic chairs. The guy selling them just runs over and whacks up the umbrella for you. I’m not too sure on the price though (somebody hired one out for us while I was asleep) but I imagine it’s cheap. For entertainment there’s also jetskis and of course the ocean itself which was sparkling clean.

I took this photo at around lunch time when it was in full swing. It does look a bit cloudy but the temperature must have been around 30 at this stage. Overnight the beach was quiet and till around 9:30am or so we pretty much had the area we slept in to ourselves. Going by the photo we slept on the otherside of the main clump of umbrellas.

Having gone to the rave party at the other beach closer to the main area of Kenting, I’d advise not trying to sleep there. Simply put the beach area was trashed. Which I guess is what you’d expect after an entire night of massive crowds.


Next year I’m definitely returning and will make the effort to hit up the actual Spring Scream event itself. Not sure if we’ll go for two nights on the beach (warm showers were nice at the hotel) but one night is definitely an option.

Come Tuesday it’s pretty much back to business as usual but for at least one weekend it was nice to see Taiwan let its hair down. I don’t know where exactly everyone came from but if all it takes is a beach party to get people to relax here in huge crowds then Taiwan needs to do it more often.



Related posts that might interest you:
  1. Revisiting the girls of Spring Scream – Kenting Taiwan
  2. What Taiwanese couples do at the beach (not swimming)
  3. Taipei’s ‘artificial beach’ is just a big sandpit!
  4. Black glasses with no lens: Stupid Taiwanese fashion