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Published: April 28th 2007
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Ray and I headed on another day trip this time to Tainan (the oldest city in Taiwan) for a little culture tour...I enjoyed it since i only had to travel 30 min, she on the other hand had a nice 3 hour ride but we had a good time so i think it was worth it!!! We had not been on a 'road trip' since neither of us had come to Taiwan, sooooooooooo we decided to rent a scooter and have one. Since the Goblin provides me with 125 cc of power, rach had no reservation on driving all day in the city---the power of the 125 compared to her 90 was a little thrill haha. As we venture off to our first destination, following the map, as i was the navigator (tho do not hold this against me for i did a great job reading the roads) but we managed to get a little side tracked, but thus is our life and for some reason, which i think we were ment to end up there, we had manged to go to the edge of the city and hit water..
YES A BEACH..SAD WE DIDNT HAVE OUR SWIMSUITS..WHATEVER IT WAS DIRTY beach
far away it was clean, closer we got it was dark sand, trash everywhere, even in the water. ANYWAYS. but we stopped for a the usual self picture pose and put our feet in the water, got gawked at and headed back on the road. We finally made it to our first stop--Ainping. Here rested Ainping Fort (settled by the Dutch).
BUT once again something else caught our eye. what you ask?!!? a street. what kind of street?! shopping. though i have to admit we did a good job not spending money. just only a few practical purchases. 😉 When we finally arrived to the Fort....our snese where hit with the most intense smell of
STINKY TOFU i have ever experienced i am talking 'dirty feet, and trashed, mixed with poo' (taken from rach) and i am sorry to say that it is a smell that you will never want/will get to experience w/o actually experieincing it in person!-so it is described in the best way possible. There wasn't much excitment to this fort, pretty much climbing the swirly stairs to the top of the tower--while eating the most delicious shaved ice with sprinkles, and looking at the view of the city (which wasnt the beautiful) was the most exciting thing we did while at the
fort. ha. but when you pay 50NT what more do you want. Back on the scooter we ventured to what was supposed to be the Confucious Temple, but like most situations, we couldnt find it for the life of us, after all the flipping times we drove aroudn that block and still no luck. So we went back on the 'round about' where rach enjoyed herself driving a little too much to reach the Grand South Gate...it was free. it had cannons we took a picture under the entry. Up next was the Temple of Five Concubines...here was a temple with five concubines and bonsai trees. and in the distance (it is still hard for me to say this w/o pain) a water slide/park. as we
got real excited and were pissed once again we didnt bring our swimsuite this excitment didnt last long until we realized that there was no water on the slide nor could we hear what was supposed to be kids screaming and laughing as they went down the slide...HELLO TAIWAN its hot NOW why don't you ahve these places OPEN!!! After some time of driving thro side streets we actually found the Confucious
Temple!
WeI! Here we snapped some pictures, listened to music that was blarring loudly in the open area and saw WHITE CHILDREN who we tried to talk to but i guess maybe they spoke chinese?!?! wo buchi dao. all i know is they were RUDE and looked at us liek we were...well foreigners AND THEY WERE TOO so whatever. maybe they were mute. anyways after seeing some cool architecture we headed across the street were we grabbed a bit to eat...partaking in the best QUESADILLA (NAPOLEAN VOICE) in Taiwan. Our last stop, BEFORE THE BIG BASEBALL GAME, was Koxigna Shrine....in the courtyard there was a boat. we might have found where capt jack sparrow went in pirates 2 hahaha.
AND as we were heading out of the bathroom we head a lot of noise to the left of us so we wanted to check it out. what did we find you ask?! a MATZU temple with a mini parade happening. i really just enjoyed the red and green man (where rach later found out from one of her teachers the red guy is the ears of matzu and the green guy is the eyes of matzu. they report back to the things they have seen and heard along the way) they were funny since u could see the actually taiwanese mans head int he middle of the tall guys' stomachs ha. so after are ever so adventerous cultural tour we headed to the bball game..
NoW the UNI Lions and their hottie catchers deserve a blog of their own!
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