2011 Jiaoxi Hot Spring & Beer Festival / 夏戀礁溪溫泉啤酒嘉年華活動

Luckily a typhoon the week before delayed the festival until this past Saturday/Sunday. Free beer and a free mug (for ticket holders of public transportation, bus or train) enticed the expedition over the mountain range to the hot springs town of Jiaoxi.
Hopped on a Kamalan bus that took just 45-50mins to get there for only N$102 one-way.

Was the only foreigner there (not like that hasn't happened before at an event). The show was just getting started. The Jiaoxi government wants to "fashion this into a Taiwanese Munich" - yes a quote. Figure it'll take a decade to get even remotely close. But huge kudos for starting out with grand plans. The whole event was enjoyable nonetheless. Very local feel to it, as mostly I-Lan'ers were there.

Some obasans dancing away. Pretty funny. The showgirls from a typical electronics exhibition in Taipei had another gig that day.

Line up to get those free mugs (actually, a very nice glass mug) and free beer (can of Taiwan Beer, what did you expect).

First (and only) male drinking competition. 1000cc of pure local brew. If you cannot guess which guy won in this event, then you need to pour yourself a drink right now and down it.

The lady winner. She apparently is a veteran Kaoliang drinker (or her family makes it, the host was rambling). Her time to down the 1000cc was like 3-4 seconds. Faster than the male winner by a few seconds. Amazing.

Scored a second free mug. As a media event, the sponsors had all those under the tent raise their filled mugs for pictures to be taken by news photographers. Well, they had to make it look very full obviously, so they set up a full table of filled mugs all ready to give out to people without any mugs.
Caught the eye of the volunteer in the orange Hawaiian shirt who was happy to give the only foreigner at the event a filled mug. Hence, 2 free mugs and of course, 2 free Taiwan Beers. Not bad at all.

The event had a lot of food stands (typically night market stuff) off one side-street and 2 tents selling beer (one for Taiwan Beer and one for foreign beers) on the main street leading up to the stage . The prices were what you would pay in an RT Mart or Carrefour, but did get a San Miguel as it was cheap at N$50 for 500cc and was draft beer.