I had one more day in Taichung and was hoping to use it to go on a day trip to Sun Moon Lake… Sadly it was not to be as the weather was so atrocious, the hostel staff advised I wouldn’t see anything really and it wouldn’t be worth travelling such a long way under these conditions. So I needed a new plan, so decided to go to more far flung attractions within the city itself.

I first made my way to Tunghai University in the far west of the city to admire the Tang Dynasty style architecture and in particular to see the Luce memorial chapel, as its architecture is particularly striking. It seemed to take forever to get there but was greeted with more rain, and some students practicing street dancing to ‘Uptown Funk’ – brilliant!

After wandering around campus, I decided to go to the National Museum for Fine Arts which is in south Taichung. I saw there was a bus that directly connected the two locations, perfect! Or it would have been had the bus arrived. It was supposed to come every 15-20 minutes but in fact took nearly an hour to arrive. Don’t trust the number 75! I was thankful that our bus stop was actually sheltered from the rain, as the one across the road had no shelter!

The art museum was quite enjoyable (for those who know me they’ll know just how weird that sounds!) – it was free which always helps, and had exhibitions of photographs of Taiwan from the last 120 years which is well worth seeing to show how the country has changed, and particular to understand more about Taiwan’s indigenous tribes. The exhibition of prints had some beautiful pieces… And the museum was the perfect shelter from the rain!

I then walked down the rest of the greenway past the canal to visit Taichung’s best known and oldest temple, Wanhe Gong, from the 1700s.

A quick bit of uninspiring “Japanese” food then off to bed!

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.

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!

 

I spent another day in Tainan and was greeted by the day with an incredibly loud thunderstorm and some typhoon warnings – excellent! Once the rain died down, I decided to make the most of the day that was left by first having a lovely little cake and then going on an excursion to Anping, a district of Tainan in the west of the city, right on the coast and famous for the old Dutch fortress that was the first non-indigenous settlement on Taiwan, which remained until Koxinga defeated the Dutch. I went together with two other girls from my hostel. As well as seeing the sites, of course I got to try the food! I ate a “bingheguai” – ice monster, which is made from shaved ice with fruit syrup, with icecream at the back and a drink below. Delicious!

We then went to visit Anping treehouse, an old colonial building which was abandoned and now has a banyan tree growing inside and within the structure itself – very striking. The rain then heavily came down and with the typhoon warning in mind, we ran to catch get bus back inland, but not before trying the weirdest food I’ve had for a while courtesy of my travelling buddy, from a shop called Teng Xi Jia Icecream, which was a prawn cracker tube filled with vanilla icecream and flying fish roe – it was distinctly seafood-y and honestly just as weird as it sounds! If you want something weird give it a go but I probably wouldn’t choose to have it!

After returning to the youth hostel, I met up with my old friend Sandra, who I originally met in Leeds! She took me and my travelling buddy on a mini gastronomic tour of Tainan – we had niurou tang (beef soup) which is slivers of raw beef in a clear clean beef broth – a gorgeous delicate dish, and the beef cooks beautifully in the piping hot broth. We went to have it at a streetside restaurant called Ayi. She then took us for danzai mian, which is wheat noodles either in a pork and shrimp broth or with a sauce if you are having it dry (as we did), served with prawns, garlic, bean sprouts, an egg, and a pork ball.

We then went to Shennong Street which is one of the best preserved old streets in Tainan – so beautiful. Finally we went to have Taiwanese fried chicken, which is more like popcorn chicken but with different seasoning, more salt and pepper and some chilli as well. We ate it in a 7-11 and I drank a cold Taiwan Beer with it 😬

So so lovely to see Sandra and so generous of her to spend the evening driving us around Tainan! Please come back to the UK and I can take you for good food, ok?

 

After the clear heat of Taipei, I felt like I was ready for a change: I planned to go to Tainan and although I knew it would be hotter there (as it is in the south of the country), I definitely wasn’t ready for the increase in humidity!

Before I left Taipei, I met my lovely roommate who was also from the UK, from London, and had studied Chinese in Sheffield and was waxing lyrical about the programme. I knew I should have gone there! I then got my backpack back on and made my way on the metro to Taipei Train Station to get the HSR (high speed rail/bullet train) to Tainan, which would take less than 2 hours to cover the 160 miles at around 170mph. I stopped by the Taipei Station Bento shop to get a lunchbox – had pork cutlet with rice and salad.

The train journey itself showed me just how friendly Taiwanese people are; a lovely older chap was sat next to me, he was from a town in the north of Taiwan called Hsinchu, and told me about the speciality foods I need to try, both from his hometown and from Tainan. Lovely conversation, apropos of nothing!

Once the high speed train arrived in Tainan, I realised that the station was not actually in Tainan at all but about 12 miles from the city. Supposedly there was a free shuttle bus but when I arrived at the bus area there was absolutely nothing, so I walked to a local train station and caught a tiny local train into the city.

The hostel I am staying in is down a tiny alley with a little temple, the hostel itself is nothing to write home about (no functioning sink, tiny showers, the room I was meant to stay in is flooded, lots of staff who have filled up the small communal space etc) but hey free laundry!

I ventured out for a walk around the area to get my bearings, and when I returned to the hostel I met my roommate who was from Australia. We then went out to grab some food and had a delicious zongzi (sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves stuffed with pork and mushroom) and a beer. I then decided to set out to find a cash point that would accept any of my UK bank cards as so far I hadn’t managed to find one.

It took me over an hour and 7 different cash points to eventually find one that would accept my card! Citibank, I love you ❤️ I then continued on to another bar to have a local beer, which I felt was well deserved!