Blogs from Tainan, Taiwan, Asia - page 2

We arrived back from our day trip up the coast, collected our bags, chose food for our train dinner from the gourmet delights at 7/11 and happily settled in with the free wifi at the station until it was time to board our train for Tainan. After a three and half hour trip we arrived at the large station right in the centre of Tainan. Tainan is still culturally alive, particularly around the temples, of which there are many. However with no accommodation booked at the beginning of a weekend - any place in Taiwan can be a weekend destination for local people as the distances are not great and public transport so efficient. We walked out of the station into neon lighting central - a very busy shopping area, buzzing with people at 9pm at ... read more

Taiwan has one of the three mud hot spring known worldwide (one is in Japan and the other in Sicily). So I thought I had to check it out. It is not a very well-traveled spot and people were really surprised I had even heard of the place. To get there I had to get the train and then two different buses. Once again the journey went fine thanks to people kindness. The station master in Xinying was really funny and once I had told him where I was going it would point at each arriving/departing bus and make a big cross with his arms to make sure I don't get on it. After about 25min, my bus was here and he pointed at it with a big smile. Xie Xie (thank you). I arrived in ... read more

In the 1600s Anping, a small island just off the coast of Tainan became an important trading post for the Dutch empire, and many Dutch administrators, missionaries and teachers moved to the area (its importance ended when the harbour silted up and it became a part of the mainland). The district retains some Dutch connections through cultural exchanges and various museums and exhibitions about the history of the Dutch in the area. One of the main sites is the fortress, which houses a museum charting the history of the lives of the immigrant Dutch. Many of the men who moved to Anping married Taiwanese women, though the women apparently could not understand why the Dutch men insisted on their homes being kept so clean! Anping also has a famous statue to a folk figure called Miss ... read more

For a more updated and comprehensive article, please see my 2021 guide to visiting Cigu Salt Mountain and Jingzijiao Salt Fields in Tainan, Taiwan . I love salt. I eat so much of it that my partner Emily says my hair will fall out. But I don't generally plan holidays around it. Until recently, that is. Staying in a countryside township in Chiayi County for Chinese New Year (read about it in my blog A Traditional Chinese New Year with my Taiwanese Family), we were able to escape all the drinking and Mahjong games one afternoon to do a little sightseeing. I'd heard about Taiwan's salt mountains from Taiwanese people before, but I never realized that Emily's family lived so close to the most famous one. ... read more

Danes je bil cas za Tainan. Ampak najprej zajtrk. Tokrat s Hansom, pri istih ljudeh kot vceraj skoraj isti frustk. Potem pa v center. Isto kot vceraj sem skocila na bus do zelezniske postaje, potem pa se sprehodila do muzeja literature, ki je precej impozantna, kolonialna stavba (iz japonskih casov). Zanimiv je zato, ker je na tajvanu veliko kultur, ki govore svoj jezik, tudi tajvanscina obstaja in jo govorijo, ceprav je uradni jezik mandarinscina, imajo pa se cel kup drugih jezikov, ki so seveda posledica razlicnih kultur. Pa se blazno prijetno hladno je bilo not. Pot sem nadaljevala po ulici Minsheng in ugotovila, da gre za porocno ulico. Vse stacune so bile namrec tako obarvane, z oblekami, fotografskimi storitvami, cvetlicnimi aranzmaji,drugimi rdece-zlatimi prckarijami ipd., in pred vsako je bilo cel kup cevljev, ki so so jih ... read more