Taiwan Trip 2010 (Day 7)

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.

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.

One of the buildings in the Confucius Temple

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.

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.

Tainan Park

Very pretty blooming lotus flower in Tainan Park. Photo credit to Calvin

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.

Back to Taichung and the night market crowd again!