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  • Day 4

    Taichung - Phew no rain!

    September 28, 2018 in Taiwan ⋅ 🌬 26 °C

    When asking about getting to Taichung everyone said don't take the bus and take the train instead. Obviously we decided to ignore this advice and go for it anyway and I'm glad we did! The bus was very empty, comfy and took pretty much the same time as the cheaper train and their was a bus every 15 mins! 2 hours 45 mins on the dot and we arrived in Taichung, blue skies! Unfortunately our host for couch surfing isn't available till 10pm so we needed to stash our bags in lockers. I'm so glad we have such small bags as we were able to fit them into the medium lockers, well with a pretty hard shove!

    To be honest we didn't know very much about Taichung until we got here and it actually has quite a few things going for it. It has a lovely park in the middle which is full of various birds, Miyahara which was a bit like walking into a Harry Potter shop selling various posh delicatessens, a small but scenic river walkway, the original bubble tea shop, a street full of animation street art and rainbow village. To sum up Taichung I'd say it's an Instagramers heaven with all the fun photo ops dotted around.

    The people have been very lovely so far and understanding of us not speaking Mandarin, but it's not held us back in daring to go into restaurants and point at food or just say 2 and hope for the best. When looking for lunch we wandered through an area that had all its shop signs in Vietnamese, it made me feel so happy. I have such incredible memories from Vietnam 😍 For lunch we went to a very busy looking restaurant and had pork knuckle noodle soup. It was really nice.

    In the evening we took a very round about journey (seriously it took us nearly 2 hours in the complete opposite direction to where we need to meet our couchsurfing host later) in hunt of the famous Feng Chia Night Market for its highly rated street food market. Was it worth it, YES! Although some of the stalls were the same it was also ideal for all those instagtamers out there. We had a crispy duck filled bao (Amazing!), the one and only fried chicken (a must eat in Taiwan), what looked like a hotdog but instead of the bread bun it was steamed rice (oddly sweet but had to be tried) and a custard tart (yum).

    Drained and tired we headed back to the bus terminal to pick up our bags and then went to meet our couchsurfing host just in the nick of time. Phew... what a crazy day (again)!

    As I mentioned this is the first time we have ever couch surfed and to be honest I was a bit nervous, but wow, I'm sure they won't all be this incredible. If they are wow. We are staying in Kevin's art studio which is in a private apartment about half an hour bus ride from the town centre. It is absolutely incredible. We have the whole flat to ourselves for free. We have our own private double room with ensuite, a kitchen, a washing machine and the best part is all his absolutely stunning art work around in every room. He's said we can stay as long as we need! I don't think this is the usual couchsurfing experience but I'm over the moon with it. We've decided to stay till Monday, so that we can cook vegetables!
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