Besides seemingly wanting to get me stuffed, Jesse also proposed some exercise – of the mildly frightening variety. His idea was to make a nighttime visit to 228 Peace Park. When I told my friends Curis & Shelley of this plan during our dinner at KGB, they didn’t think it was a very good idea, pointing out that it’s very dark there at night. However, when I was passing sometime after 11:30, it didn’t seem so scary to me.
During my stroll, I ran into a number of park characters: foreigners having a drink next to the pond, a homeless guy digging through trash for something to eat (he found an unfinished bag of Lay’s), a random guy seemingly trying to steal things from the tents along the main walkway (where vendors sell things in the daytime), a guy sitting in front of the stage all alone, with a couple doing the same thing not far way, lone joggers, gay men hanging out by the pagoda, a guy reading the newspaper under the monument, women in business suits hurrying through the park in the direction of the MRT, and students passing through in a loud group. In short, there were still plenty of people around despite the late hour, which made me feel fairly secure. I’m not sure the scene would feel that way a few hours later, but I’m not particularly interested in finding out, at least by myself.
If you’d like to find out exactly where the name of the park comes from, check out this article on the 228 Massacre.
And here are some of the things you might come across in the park: