Christmas in Taiwan: Caoling Historical Trail & Tainan

We arrived in Fulong in early afternoon and found our way to the beginning of the Caoling Historical Trail (after a close call with a guard dog guarding an abandoned house). The hike took a few hours and we travelled through a thick forest and ended on a grassy cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately we arrived at the cliff before it got dark, although our hike down into the town of Dali was a bit frightening in the pitch black. This trail was built in 1807 to connect two cities (Danshui and Ilan) and the section that remains today is one of the few historical roads that remains in Taiwan today. Once in Dali, we took a train back to Taipei then the High-Speed Rail train (which can reach speeds of 330 km/h) down the west coast to Tainan.

Tainan was an amazing city and the people were incredibley helpful and friendly (On the train from Dali to Taipei a middle school girl gave me a sandwich type pastry because she said I "looked so hungry and exhausted"). Tainan is said to house many of the ancient artifacts and temples in Taiwan, as well as some excellent traditional food (which we were able to sample in the "Traditional Food Alley"). Needless to say, we spent almost all of our time in Tainan visiting countless temples and historical relics. We visited the Altar of Heaven, Chikan Towers, Confucius Temple, Great South Gate, Koxinga's Temple, Lady Linshui's Temple, Matsu Temple, National Taiwan Museum of Literature, and the Wufei Temple to name a few. After a full day of sightseeing and being your typical tourist, we headed back to Taipei where we visited the small town of Beitou for some good fashioned Taiwan hot-spring action.

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