Tainan

Sometimes it's the little things you miss, a soft towel, a shower that is actually warm and doesn't constantly go cold every 30 secs, a bed that you can lie on without thinking why am I lying on bricks. Well this hotel ticked all the boxes and we even got a free caramel macchiato in the morning from their coffee shop 😊

Today we visited the Anping District which was the original ancient capital of Taiwan during the imperial times. For brunch we ate milk fish skin and fish ball soup and battered shrimp. We then walked along the canal to Anping Fort. Anping Fort, also known as Zeelandia, was excavated in the 17th century by the Dutch as a sea port for sea trading across South East Asia. Due to another typhoon heading towards Japan the winds were very strong, but luckily it stayed sunny! We then visited Anping Tree House, which was originally the warehouse of Tait & Co. During the Japanese Occupation it was the office and warehouse of the Japan Salt Company. After World War II, the salt industry in Anping declined, and this area was abandoned. After about 70 years of abandonment the site is now encased in Banyan Trees. Its absolutely incredible how these trees grow!

The late afternoon was spent visiting Shennong Street, a hipster coffee street, various temples and then finishing off in Tainan Wu Garden listening to a guy playing complex classical music on his recorder - he actually made the recorder look like a cool instrument!

In the evening we walked to Garden Night Market and tried coffin bread, a chowder in a deep fried bread (unexpectedly sweet!), scallion pancake (yum!), a hell of a lot of fried chicken and brown sugar bubble tea (honestly this stuff is incredible, obviously super bad for you but amazing!). Before coming to Taiwan I was never a fan of bubble tea but actually when you add a tonne of treacle and mask the bitter green tea flavour it's amazing! 😂

Annoyingly buses are pretty unreliable in Tainan so we had to walk back, luckily it was still earlish.

The rest of the evening was spent attempting to plan our next step, but with the weather constantly changing this is now becoming a bit of a chore. We have about 12 days left and have still not done any real hiking so we are thinking of heading northwards to try and get some good weather. We've decided to go to a place called Dulan which is on the south east coast, in hope for some OK weather. Let's see.Read more