Day 7
Tainan → Taichung
So we got up and
prepared our last full day in Taiwan. After we had some breakfast in
the hostel, we decided to go visit the sights in Central-western
District (the heart of the city government and some sights) of
Tainan, along with a little bit of the Eastern District (the two
districts are separately by the main railway).
We first went to a
place called Chekam Tower. It is one of the most famous attractions
in Tainan and many restaurants were built around it to accommodate
the tourists. Chekam Tower had a long history and was the second fort
built by the Dutch colonists after Fort Zeelandia in Anping District.
The Japanese later conquered Taiwan from the Qing Dynasty in 1895 and
demolished the fort, and rebuilt the fort in the Japanese
architecture style.
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| Chekam Tower |
We encountered a
large group of kindergarten students walking around the site. Most of
them seemed to enjoy themselves and it was fun to see the different
personalities between different kids. Most of the kids were well
behaved, and yet, I felt the teachers had a lot of responsibilities,
as it was not easy to oversee more than twenty 5 year old kids.
After we saw the
Chekam Tower, we walked about three hundred meters to the Confucius
Temple. There are many Confucius temples in Taiwan. The one in
Central-western District of Taiwan was probably the most famous of
them all, thanks to the architecture styles and the number of
exhibits. The Confucius had a traditional Chinese style building
layout. There was not much to see inside the temple, besides that
fact that were some alters who were dedicated to Confucius and his
disciples. There were also some interesting ancient Chinese musical
instruments that I have never seen before.
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| One of the buildings in the Confucius Temple |
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| Some of the displayed musical instruments |
We were hungry and
decided to grab some snacks, after we spent the morning visiting
Chekam Tower and Confucius Temple. We went to a grocery store, where
steam buns were their specialties. I ordered a matsutake flavoured
bun with bamboo sticks and it was absolutely delicious. The aroma
lasted in my mouth for many minutes.
We tried to catch a
bus to the Tainan Main Train Station so we could headed to the East
District. Unfortunately, the public transportation in Taiwan was very
poor and nothing came for half and hour. We gave up and flagged down
a taxi instead. The ride took about five minutes and we headed to the
East side.
We still had about
three hours to burn before we have to catch the train to Taichung. We
went to see the campus of National Chengkung University (NCKU). NCKU
is the most prestigious university in southern Taiwan and has a
campus that is pretty enough to be considered a sightseeing
attraction. After touring the campus, we felt hungry again and walked
to a pedestrian-only shopping street for a quick fix.
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| Part of the campus of NCKU |
We ordered some very
good fried rice for a very cheap price in a fast food style
restaurant around the shopping street. The restaurant probably served
cafetaria style so everything is quick. I chatted to one of the
restaurant staff who was also a student at NCKU. She seemed pretty
excited when she knew that that we were from Hong Kong. However, she
enjoyed the shopping parts of Hong Kong, because Hong Kong has very
little restriction on exports and imports. After we finished with our
lunch, we headed to Tainan Park and saw three male ducks (presumably
bachelors or brothers) hanging out together. They walked and swam
together and I thought that was cute. Kelvin, Ben, and I hung out in
park until 3 in the afternoon, when we decided to get on the
northbound bus to Taichung.
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| Tainan Park |
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| Very pretty blooming lotus flower in Tainan Park. Photo credit to Calvin |
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| One of the better ways to spend the hot afternoon in Tainan Park |
The bus arrived
Taichung at approximately 18:00 in the evening. We headed for a
dinner in a local night market and went to Eslite Bookstore souvenir
shopping around Taichung First High School district. Then we headed
back to nap for the last morning.
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| Back to Taichung and the night market crowd again! |
