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Published: April 28th 2007
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Let me start off by saying "WOW" what a weekend. I crammed about as much as possible into a weekend. I will start with our trip to Tainan.
Tainan is the oldest city in Taiwan, it was where the Dutch settled years ago. So as you would expect there are many Western influenced buildings around the town. So Mare and I headed there on Saturday morning. I had a 3 hour train ride and she only had a 30min ride, so I was up early. But we got there around 11:30, got a map from the information booth and headed out back of the train station to rent a scooter. We decided to do a scooter tour to change it up a bit. So we went to the first place and he said oh well you need Taiwan drivers license...well, no i dont have one, but i do own a scooter. But he just sent us to the next place. This place would rent to us I only had to show him my ARC, my scooter insurance card and my international drivers license. $500nt later we were on our way with a 125cc motorcycle. I loved it since I
only drive a 50cc, it was nice to drive something with power. Unfortunately I never knew how fast we were going cause the speedometer was broken...but not like they would want to deal with a foreigner anyways. So we headed out of town to Anping. Anping Fort was settled by the Dutch many many years ago.
In the process of trying to find the fort we found the beach. We went a little too far but you know we love the beach so we made a quick stop there. I was so excited and Mary mentioned she should have brought her suit, but once we walked down to the beach we saw it was for the best that we had no intentions of swimming. The beach and water were disgusting. And I'm not talking Lake Erie, Maumee River disgusting, no, this place was filthy maybe like the Cuyahoga river back in the day. Trash lining the beach, floating and even sinking in the muddy water. The sand was really dark and I'm convinced it wasn’t special sand but so much dirt it turned the sand dirty too. The worst part was there were actually people swimming and probably swallowing
the filth infested water. I hope they have health insurance. So the beach was a bust but at least we can say we went. A pretty good spot to get lost at in my book.
After the beach we checked the map again and we attempted to find Anping Fort once again. This time we were successful cause we could see it from the scooter, duh. So we parked the scooter and walked around the area surrounding the fort. It was full of vendors. What would any trip be if we didnt go shopping and ate lots of food. We walked around eating and shopping for a while then we went into the fort. While we were walking up the stairs we were greeted with the awful smell of dirty feet, trash and poo or otherwise known as stinky tofu. This pungent smell bombards your senses and tortures your stomach, begging you to puke up whatever you have just eaten. How people can find this smell mouth watering is so far beyond my imagination. We quickly ascended the stairs leaving the nasty smell behind for others to enjoy. The fort was pretty boring as expected, after all it is
history. We walked up the cool tower to see around the fort and Tainan, then we walked down and left. Thankfully none of these places really break the bank for admission. The fort was only $50nt (less than $2 us).
After the fort we headed back to the city to go to the Confucius temple. Well when we checked the map we thought we had the right place but we could not find the temple for the life of us. We drove in circles and decided we could not be blind but the map was wrong. So we moved on to the place. Trying to find the Grand South Gate, once again we drove around in many circles before actually finding the gate. Not much to note other than it was a big old gate with some cannons, and it was free. At this point we decided to trash the map and just drive and see what we could find. Next we found the Temple of Five Concubines. Once again another temple with more history. The best part was when we went to the bathroom I noticed pictures of baseball player beyond the fence. Upon closer inspection I discovered
it was the baseball stadium!! We had found out earlier there was a baseball game later in the evening, so now we knew where we were headed later. So we were excited but we still had 2 hours to kill until the game. So we hopped back on the scooter and drove around some more. Believe it or not we actually found the Confucius temple!!! We had only been one block away before. So we drove around trying to find a spot to park, well the great thing about Taiwan and scooters is you can pretty much park anywhere you want and no one will do anything. So we went to see yet another cool looking temple, took some funny pictures and walked around a bit. Then we headed to a cute side street, right across from the temple, with shopping and restaurants. We made a great discovery, the best quesadillas on earth!! This is no lie, I have not even had quesadillas this good in the States. They were delicious and only $50nt. I may have to go back to Tainan just for the quesadillas. So filled up on food and we were ready for more sightseeing. We headed
to the Koxinga Shrine. We found it no problem and we ran into a cultural festival. We walked thru the shrine and around the beautiful gardens and once again while at the bathroom I heard some familiar music on the street behind the bathrooms. So we headed to check it out. We discovered a Matzu temple where they were preparing to take Matzu on a parade around town, and you thought I had had enough of Matzu, oh no!
After the shrine, I had to make a run to 3c for some more batteries, I didn’t want to miss taking pictures at the baseball game. Batteries in hand we headed to the stadium a little early for the game......
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Doug
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A joke your students back home might enjoy
Your mention of Mexican food reminded me. A Mexican fellow always wanted to see a New York Yankees home game, so he goes to the Big Apple for that specific purpose. He talked about his trip to his friends, most enthusiastically, on his return to Mexico. "Americans are such kind people", he said. All the seats in the stadium were sold out when I got to the game, but the staff very kindly suggested that I could get a could view from the top of the flagpole. Everyone in the stadium wanted to make sure I could watch the game and not miss anything. Just before the game started, everyone stood up and sang 'Jose can you see?' ". Don't get me started. Otherwise, I will say that Ireland is the richest country in the world because its capital is always Dublin.