Tainan & Kaohsiung
Tainan (5/17 - 5/18)
Forces had been conspiring around Andy and I, mainly his aunt and Hsuia-Sheng, and they contrived to send us to Tainan, the home of her uncle’s. So, before we knew it Andy and I were being whisked away on a bus to Tainan, along with Hsuia-Sheng and Andy’s Cousin Tzu-Ning. We got there and immediately shared a delicious shaved ice to help combat the heat. Eventually, Hsuia-Sheng’s uncle picked us up and we were fed even more delicious food at his home. On the way, I was surprised to see a Costco; it seemed drastically out of place. After we were recovered from our travels we were dropped off at our accomodations for the night, a spare room above the massage parlor that Hsuia-Sheng’s uncle owned. It was very spartanesque, containing simple mats in the middle of an abandoned floor; I loved it.
We then set out into the city, visiting several cultural sites including a store that had been bombed in the war, a museum of sorts, an old Confuscius school, and a fort that had been constructed by the Dutch during their brief colonization. The fort looked quite beautiful from the outside.
We continued walking for awhile and ended up going back to Hsuia-Sheng’s uncle’s place and sang Karaoke, which is apparently quite popular here. The funniest part was when a song from the Titanic came on and the background video took on a highly suggestive nature, highlighting some of the absurdities of Taiwanese KTV. We eventually ended up above the massage parlor and quickly fell asleep from our long day in Tainan.
We woke up sweating, it was quite balmy in the upper floors of the massage parlor. Once we had fully woken we were whisked to a quick breakfast of boiled meat and rice, then dropped our bags off at her uncle’s place and started roaming the streets again.
We visited a cool Banyan tree house and another ancient fort. We had a lot more great food, including oyster dishes and some sort of soy-based desert. It felt like we just kept on eating, because when we went back we played some more card games and then Hsuia-Sheng cooked for us, it was quite delicious. Afterwards, we joked around for awhile and Hsuia-Sheng made a very funny impression of Japanese girls on tv that overappreciated food. We eventually parted with Hsuia-Sheng, and her very accomodating family and got on a train to Kaohsiung, and arrived at a pretty nice hotel.
Kaohsiung (5/19)
We arose in a lovely air conditioned room that felt like a pleasant change from the previous night’s warm excursion. After a slow start we grabbed a quick continental breakfast in the upper floor of the hotel and then we were off. We went to a new art exhibit that a friend of mine recommended, it was really interesting. A lot of the exhibits were put together by the students and they seemed very professional in their design and execution. There was even a section with possible inventions, these seemed fairly innovative if a bit far fetched.
We ended up eating at the Taiwanese McDonald’s called “Dan Dan Hanbao”. It was far better than McDonald’s. We then walked around some more and ended up passing throug a long tunnel through the mountain on the east side of the city. On the other side we reached the university.
It was very beautiful, reminding me of coastal colleges in the states. We went to the beach and lounged around for a while, before strolling back towards campus to meet Andy’s cousin, Yu Shuen. She was very quiet and proceeded to walk us around the beautiful campus, before I knew it we were at the top of the mountain, hiking up steep trails. Once we got to the top we walked laterally for awhile and actualy came upon a family of monkeys that seemed quite used to the human appearance while still being cautious and retreating to the trees. On a similar note, there were a fair amount of stray dogs lingering about campus, far more than in other cities I have seen, perhaps due to the presence of the college students?
After our long, hot walk, we stopped in a quaint little restaurant where I once again partook of the glory that is “Nyro Mien” beef noodle soup, oh man it was good! After that we walked back to the train station and got on an express train back to Taipei for around $40 USD, and it took ~2 hours in comparison to the 4 hour bus and 1 hour train ride which cost $8 and $3 respectively, all very reasonably priced to traverse the entirety of this lovely island country.
