Terrific Taiwan

To wrap up our around-the-island tour of Taiwan we made stops in Taitung, Kaohsiung, Tainan, and Taichung, before heading back to Taipei to catch our flight to Istanbul. Yes, that’s tying together a lot of “Tai-“s, and I hope that I didn’t mix any up!

Before describing those stops, I just wanted to note how easy the logistics of traveling in Taiwan were. In contrast to Sri Lanka, where we were often figuring out how to get from one place to another (bus, train, PickMe?) on the fly, in Taiwan I just hopped on the TRA website and booked all of our trains in advance. Sure, it was less adventurous, but it was a nice change.

Now normally, arriving in a new city also means trying to figure out how the public transit in that city works, but in Taiwan, we could just use one card to pay for any public transit in any city we made it to. It’s so easy that they called it an EasyCard, and you can just top it up at 7-Eleven. Now I can’t imagine Toronto and Montreal getting together to figure out a common payment system to make life easier for everyone, but they managed to do it in Taiwan. This meant that we didn’t hesitate to take the bus whenever it was convenient. Though I’m sure the kids will still complain that I made them walk too much…

Another thing that, personally, I really appreciated in Taiwan was being able to get a bunch of running in. Every town had some decent running routes, either along a river, a canal, the coast, or rice fields; there were washrooms everywhere (iyyk); and I didn’t have to worry about traffic or stray dogs chasing after me.

With those generalities out of the way, here are some brief notes on our stops. As usual, we spent a lot our time eating fantastic street food and drinking bubble tea. We made lots of use of our translation apps, since a lot of the menus were just in Chinese.

Taitung – This one didn’t even make it in our guide book, but we decided to give it a try and enjoyed a couple of nights there. Though I can’t say it was particularly exciting, it was pleasant. We ate well at the night market, and spent an afternoon walking and seeking shade in the Forest Park, which didn’t have as much shade as we were hoping for in the heat of the South! As a bonus, Elsie and Ben got invited to join in a rather complicated game that a group of Taiwanese kids were playing at the park. No one spoke much English, so the rules weren’t always clear, but they had fun.

Kaohsiung – The city is an industrial hub, but also has a cool hipster/yuppy art district out by one of the old piers. This was a very pleasant way to spend a few hours, exploring the installations and the little shops. Given the heat, we also embraced my suburban roots and spent a few hours at the mall in the AC, replacing some clothes that had seen better days. On another day, we visited the Tiger and Dragon Pagodas at Lotus pond, where we made sure to enter the dragon and exit the tiger. As a result, we are supposed to be in for some good luck!

Tainan – Here, we spent a lot of time wandering the small streets to find delicious food. We also made it to the Anping neighbourhood, where there was of course an old Dutch fort from the 1600s, because there seems to be an old Dutch fort in every country we visit. There was also a Chinese fort from the 1800s nearby, built to prevent the Japanese from invading. But despite it including “eternal” in its name, the Japanese took over 20 years after its construction.

Taichung – We only spent one night here, since our flight was fast approaching. But we spent a bit of time in the lovely Taichung Park (made during Japanese rule), before finding a huge night-market in a shopping district. It was Saturday night, and the place was hopping!

We then caught a train to Taipei, where we spent a lovely afternoon with friends and a sushi train. Then it was off to the airport for a late flight.