Penghu Island

A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to do something very cool. One of the bands I play in, Militant Hippi, got a gig in a place called the Penghu Islands. On the above map, they are the islands to the west called Pescadores (I have never heard that name for the islands before but it's the only good map I could find). It's not an easy place to get to.

I got work off Friday and Stefan the guitarist, his girlfriend and I (Lindsay stayed in Taichung) took off to catch the ferry at 6:00AM. We met up with the rest of the band Paul, Dong-Yang and Michael and headed off to Chiayi where the ferry was supposed to leave from. It was a beautiful day, no wind at all but when we got there the ferry service had been cancelled because of a typhoon that had blown through a couple of days before (why it wasn't running that day, I have no idea). So we sped down to Kaoshung where there was another company had a ferry service. It wasn't running either (must have been a coast guard decision or something - no boats at all on this clear, beautiful day). We didn't think we were even going to make it but we eventually went to the airport as a last resort. All seats were booked but we ended up flying stand-by.

It was my closest experience or at least a tiny little nibble at what being a famous musician on tour would be like. A guy picked us up at the airport, and took us to a house he had rented out for us for the weekend. Then we get to the concert and it's on the waterfront for this fireworks festival the town was having. The stage was huge (as of now, I have no pictures. Lindsay owns the digital camera. But I will hopefully get some off Michael). There wasn't many people when we started playing and you can't really see out into the audience when the lights are on you but after our first set, I look out and there must have been two thousand people there. It was awesome. Don't get me wrong, there weren't groupies throwing bras up on stage or anything. In fact, it would be the equivalent of playing a Canada gig in a park back home or something. There were families, old people, kids, town drunks, etc. in the crowd. But cool nonetheless.

The rest of the weekend we played a couple of bar gigs. Everyone on the island seemed to dig our sound and the funny thing is, is that we are a very new band. We only had four songs and weren't prepared for this show at all. But I would start some bass riff or Stefan the guitarist would launch into a groove and everyone would join in and Michael and Paul would start singing gibberish (they can't understand English so it doesn't matter) and it all came together. We pulled it out of thin air and basically have six or eight new songs now. So that's that. There's some more gigs lined up in the next couple of months and I can't wait.

On Sunday, Michael and I flew back to Kaoshung and picked up the car. Our car, which isn't in great shape, always overheats and we constantly need to fill up the thing (radiator thingy?) with water. So in the parking lot of the airport I open the hood, take off the cap and fill it up with water. Then we are on our way. About twenty minutes into the drive, on the number 1 highway - the busiest highway on the island, the car starts to shake and I can't accelerate anymore. So I start to pull over to the side and as I'm doing so, it stalls. I put it in park and get out. Open the hood and there's smoke everywhere and there's water spurting out of the radiator thingy...and next to all that is the cap. I had forgotten to put the damn thing on! Not a good thing to do and I will never do it again. I fried some part of the engine and water mixed with the oil. It ended up costing 15000NT (about 500 bucks) and it took four days to fix. Michael and I had to take the train home.

So my first big concert was an expensive one. But it was worth every penny ... or NT, I guess I should say.

Geoff