Taichung is cool. Like, really really cool. Not in a trying too hard sort of way, but just self-confident, like it knows that it’s attracting all the cool young people to live here, and it knows it can mix the modern middle-class lifestyle with Taiwanese traditions successfully and completely get away with it!

It is still most definitely not one of the big two cities here in Taiwan, as its public transport beyond the main highway is a bit infrequent, but once you get out West past the dilapidated but strangely enticing old Japanese central area, you find where the action is at.

I left Tainan from the main train station this morning, and to show me one more time how friendly the people are there, an old lady proudly greeted me in English as we were crossing the road, and even said “pleased to meet you”! Much better than the surly boy yesterday in Anping who said “foreigner” and then just stared at me – I really haven’t missed that! I got the slow express train from Tainan to Taichung, which still only takes 2 hours, and allowed a more leisurely view of the countryside.

Hello Taichung!!

There’s a great urban green walking zone called the Calligraphy Greenway, which is this wide pedestrianised stretch of land from north to south, linking the museum of natural science with the museum of fine art, allowing people to walk, mingle, relax, walk their dogs, without having to continually cross the road every 2 mins. Beautiful!

I wandered down into a department store as everyone seemed to be going there… And I may have bought a copy of the new Harry Potter script from a bookshop there (imported from the US) and got a free toy Hedwig as it was launch day here! I then treated myself to an icecream from Cold Stone Creamery – it was either that or a quinoa burger which was the other big food thing they had in this store. Really reminded me of Whole Foods!

I also noticed the massive prevalence of Japanese food here in Taichung – it seems that everywhere I walk here in the West District, I go past another Japanese restaurant. In honour of this, I had Taiwanese style udon noodles before walking over to Fengjia Night Market.

The night market is apparently one of the biggest in the country? It is near Feng Chia university so lots of students were there, but also entire families. It never fails to astound me just how many people are out on the streets eating and drinking so late at night! Stalls sold everything from t-shirts to stinky tofu, from pearl tea to “pick your own shrimp and then we’ll grill it on a skewer” and everything in between!

I personally decided to try to try one stall which had an incredibly long queue, and was for Massage Chicken (An Mo Ji Pai): it was so tender and juicy, and the stall holder was very friendly as well, and warning me about how hot the box would be so to be careful when eating, and that the spice was hot so did I definitely want any? He also complimented me on my crap Chinese 👌🏻 I’ll take it!