HardKhoraTravels: From Taipei to Tainan

Quick announcement about my blog and then I'll get back to my HardKhora Travels. I'm in the process of changing my photograph format and adding my own water mark to my photos. So if you visit some of my older posts during this process you might find none of the images will load, and you'll now know why.

So I left off with Meg and I going to Tainan, since we had changed our plans and came back to Taipei early. It was a good thing we did because some of our friends continued south and ran into more issues finding places for the night. Their solution was to setup a tent in a park they found, which they later found out was more of an elementary playground but still an adventure!

The trip to Tainan was more for transportation with the typical train ride that I'd grown accustomed to in Taiwan. The only odd event on our way there was, the gentleman that checked tickets stopped when he saw us and motioned for our tickets before we'd even left the station. Normally, tickets are not check until much later into the train ride. He wasn't checking other people's tickets. I handed him both of our tickets but he gave one back and displayed his pen after some searching. Meg and I watched while we gave each other looks, as we waited what for what felt like ten minutes but was still at least five minutes of waiting. What we got back from the gentleman was a ticket full of writing, the man telling us “Welcome to Taiwan”, and not our five minutes.

The Tainan train station was a very busy place and even had a guy doing a one-man band show.

Getting to Bike Taiwan Hostel wasn't very difficult. If we had known how to navigate the roads there, we could have walked from the station. It is about a mile walk from the station. The hostel was well kept. The man that owned the hostel also ran it. He was a great resource and very nice. The hostel also had two bathrooms and four showers. The first level shower won't easily run out of hot water with a tank-less water-heater, the second level shower will most likely run out of hot water on you after about 10-15 minutes with a ten minute recharge delay, and lastly on the top floor there are two outside showers which are really nice. The top two showers are great for warm days but both are unlikely to run out of hot water with a shared fifty gallon water-heater to keep you singing in the shower.

Meg and I went out from the hostel after dropping our belongings off within about thirty minutes of arrival. We made our way to an old fort named Chihkan Tower, which dates back to a Dutch base but has been mostly built over with newer installations. While waiting for a bus to take us to the old fort, we found some good street food for a snack. I ate Pikachu and Meg ate Hello Kitty. We also filled up on some Washington apples that we had brought along from Taipei. The apples were just as I remember them in Seattle.

On our way to the fort we found an Authorized Service Shop, and I'm surely not the first tourist to take a snap shot of it (see below). I saw some more temples on the way. Tainan had a lot of temples and I would see one of the oldest temples in all of Taiwan my last day in Tainan.

We found the fort but wanted food first, so we settled on Sen Maw Rice Food. They had a lot of bowls with famous people's signatures that had eaten their “World Famous” rice cake. I would point out I had never heard of this place until then, and as I am the world to myself...I find it a highly suspect slogan. I had the famous rice cake and it was good. It was sweet and had a Jell-o like consistency with bits of noticeable rice grains from time to time. I also took an image of the menu from Sen Maw Rice Food's adjacent restaurant to show how you would likely order from most food establishments in Taiwan. A little more detail on the matter...You get a disposable menu—like that in the picture—and then mark the quantity of each item(s) you desire and give it to a waiter or anyone that works there.

We actually visited one more temple after dinner and before going into the fort.

The fort (Chihkan Tower) had a lot of awesome looking trees and statues. I didn't take any pictures of the Dutch remains because it was just a few brick walls that had been dug out for visitors to see. Inside the fort there were a lot of documents and some historical items. I'm a sucker for dioramas as well, which they had a few. Taiwan is known for LEDs. LEDs are used in a lot of places and added to a lot of historical sites such as the fort I visited. Most of the time I don't appreciate updates like LEDs added to historical places but they put on a cool light show while we were there. I found the on-site store to be well priced. I'm used to the idea that anything in a closed area or building will be more expensive than outside facilities, but in Taiwan that generally wasn't true.

After the fort we wandered over to the art district (INSERT NAME FROM MAPPPPP) and found some cool lanterns and such. Tainan had a lot of old buildings and historical sites. I would strongly recommend going to Tainan if you make it out of Taipei. I felt a little more like a celebrity in Tainan though, because we got a lot more people staring at us or saying hello to us just to run away in giggles when we replied hello back. Meg and I even made a friend that night while walking around; the woman was excited to talk to foreigners.

We started getting hungry by this time and walked over to the night market, which wasn't too far from the art district. The night market in Tainan was really great. Crowed, but not as much of an issue since it was just one big lot and no tall buildings to box you in. The night market there reminded me a little more of a fair because they had games to play as well as the usual night market items. We picked up a belt for me and a hat for both of us. There were restroom facilities on-site. One thing to note is that most busy restrooms will have indicators of occupied stalls on the outside for lines to form outside. I've found that the indicators aren't always accurate and if you're just going to use a urinal than you won't need to bother with the indicators. Another thing to note is that public restrooms are more likely to have squatty-potties than homes or hotels. I never used one but did find it entertaining to look at them...sorry no photographs.

On the way back to the hostel, we found a motel that looked more like club from the outside than anything else. Not long after the motel, we found ourselves getting a little turned because what I found was that most maps you'll get or if you download some won't show all of the street names just that there are roads in some places. Most streets will have street sings though. Our confusion came from the fact that it is common to have streets with the same names but different sections numbers and that the sections won't always connect to the same roads. If you go down a road you might see a section 1 and then section 3 and won't ever see section 2. There is a section 2 and in this example it just doesn't connect to the road I had you go down...thus, we missed our section for this reason.

The next day, we got some quick food before going to see an old Dutch fort, which is different from the other old fort mentioned before. I find sometimes just the little things impress me. On our way to the fort we stopped at a 7-Eleven. I purchased some hot food and they gave me a mess bag to carry it in so not to burn one's self while carrying the food and for the food to cool down on the way. What I thought was additionally cool was that the bag came in sheets and until it was broken up I just thought it was cloth like that of a napkin to put under my food to carry it with.

We didn't get as lost this time as the day before but we had also rented bikes from the hostel for only 50 NT for each, which is about $1.50 USD, so even if we had got turned around again it wouldn't take long to make up the ground. I had gotten used to Taiwan traffic enough at this point that I felt confident biking around. We ended up taking our time getting around and took a bike path we found on our map. It was a great detour and we even some found make shift rafts locals use for fishing to explore.

Along the way we stopped our bikes and I had some local fruit, which was also brought with us from Taipei like the Washington apples. I don't know the name of the fruit but once you've had it you'll know it when you see it. It has very little taste and has a pear/apple texture. I didn't enjoy them much but they are only 5 NT each as compared to Washington apples at around 60 NT, and it makes it hard to pass-up while on a budget.

We eventually continued our way to the fort after stopping and seeing the ocean, which was great and reminded me of home but the beach was more like that of California. We stopped and looked at a restored Japanese styled home and some local buildings. I found it much more common to see small homes propped on top of larger buildings. We took so much time getting to the fort that we arrived there close to closing and decided not to enter and I just took some photos from the outside. We decided instead to get some food at the market just outside of the fort. After Meg had coffee and we had snacks, we wandered around between the buildings in the are. We came across an old barracks (Haishan Hostel) that had been turned into more of a kids museum than anything else. Lucky, they had some dioramas at the museum, so not all was lost :) We kept walking and at looking at local buildings until we found ourselves back at our bikes and with empty stomachs again.