Day 2: Tainan

Aunt Alice and I woke up at 7:15 am to catch our 8:30 am train to Tainan. I slept through the night with only one pee-break at 3:40am. So basically, jet lag has been defeated. Yay!

I noticed that the trains were very similar to Japan's Shinkansen bullet train. It only took us about 1 hr 40 min to get from Taipei to Tainan. When we arrived we went to get a taxi to take us to the hotel so we could drop off our luggage. We ended up hiring the taxi driver to take us around Tainan for the morning/afternoon. He had lots of recommendations of food that local people liked. 

The first place he took us was to eat some very fresh fish in soup. 

Then we went to our first actual location which was the Chihkan Tower. Along the way, we saw people carrying statues of gods in the street.

"Chihkan Tower is the landmark of Tainan and its most famous historic site. In 1653 the Dutch built Fort Providentia in this area, and the Chinese named it "Tower of Savages" or "Tower of Red-Haired Barbarians". Chihkan Tower is its official name today." ~ blurb from admission ticket

The admission fee was 50NTD per person, which is very cheap for Canadian standards ($1.75) but we regretted it later when we realized we could have gone in for free because my aunt has a card stating that she has a disability and she's allowed to bring one person with her. We were able to enter the rest of the destinations for free. Whee!

Math is everywhere!

Vase-shaped doorway

Wavy window

Yay pressed penny machines! #1

The taxi cab driver, Mr. Lin, also recommended that we try the melon drink. Aunt Alice had the melon with kumquat and I had the melon with pineapple. They were very refreshing. But I was hot and thirsty so I would have thought everything was good. There were lots of people!

The owner also sells lottery tickets

We also happened to pass by this really nice park near the water where there were statues of a fortune goddess for sailors so we stopped to take pictures.

Hehe bench!

Mr. Lin then recommended that we try this rice cake thingy. I personally didn't think it was anything special. It had pork in it.

Next we went to this famous fort called the Eternal Golden Fort. We were lucky enough to catch a demonstration of the cannons.

Actual black swans

Mango Tree

No mangos =(

Longan Tree!

 

Then we went to this random temple. 

At this point my camera ran out of batteries and I had to charge it with my new portable battery pack, courtesy of my aunt. So if the pictures are not that great, blame the ipod touch.

Interestingly enough they play automatically!

Next we went to the An-Ping Fort which is also very dutch in design.

Yay! Another penny machine!

Chinese weapons

Dutch weapons

It was fun seeing the Chinese vs Dutch weaponry. You would think that the muskets and the rapiers would be better than the spears and bows but actually the Chinese won that battle!

So a little background...Tainan was Chinese and then got invaded by the Dutch. This man Cheng Sheng Gong headed a battle to fight back and won. Then another century later Tainan was invaded by the Japanese. Currently it is back under China. Poor Tainan...

Now it was time for more food and this time it was tofu dessert with red bean. It was nice and cool and refreshing but I think the tofu is smoother in Hong Kong.

Time for the An-Ping Tree House! This placed used to be a storage for a salt factory and then it was abandoned. Then came the Banyan Trees to take it over and now it's a literal tree house.

Too bad there was no penny machine here. It would have been really cool.

The last recommended food was this place with fried shrimp and fish ball soup. Very nice! Apparently it's a place for locals and there really weren't any tourists. Even though it seems like we ate a lot, everything was only about 30 NTD or so (that's $1 CAD) so it wasn't expensive at all. And let's not forget that we got into everything for free or else we'd be spending $50 NTD per person at each location.

After this Mr. Lin took us back to our hotel for a rest. Goodbye Mr. Lin! He was a nice man, even if he though Canada had its own language.

This hotel was apparently very cheap...$1300 NTD per night ($45 CAD) and you get what you pay for. My aunt's friend found it for us. We were on the 7th floor but we found the wifi didn't work so we were moved to the 9th floor which had super fast wifi but the beds were not as firm. I'm not anticipating a restful night on a lumpy spring mattress.

Notice that there is no shower curtain to separate the shower from the toilet. 

Then we rested for a bit before heading out to a Tainan night market, the Flower Market which only opens on select days. It was very crowded but we found some good food.

 End of Day 2!