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Tainan began with continued dealing of the wet belongings situation, including drying and washing and drying of things before the situation felt in control enough to check out the city. Very close to Kaohsiung, Tainan could have been done as a day trip, but we thought we would give the area 3 nights. The city does have lots of appealing, traditional architecture, and it is the kind of place that you just want time to stroll through at your own pace. We found a great Japanese restaurant and visited twice, enjoying the sushi, tempura, and soups (in general, we found ourselves eating more Japanese than Taiwanese food everywhere, although Troy very much enjoys dumplings.)
Our main excursion from Tainan was a trip to the Alishan National Scenic Area. This was booked several days in advance in fear of a ticket becoming unavailable, so this meant that we could not look at the weather forecast and pick the best day. Unsurprisingly, our visit was quite the cloudy and rainy day, but! This area is actually stunningly beautiful in the rain, in a sort of a dreamy, fairy-tale type way. The day began with what we knew was going to be our Chinese-language only tour group (who needs to pay extra for an English tour? Remember? Google Translate?) Our guide was unnecessarily extremely apologetic about his English language skills that were just fine, and our Malaysian group members were very kind about translating information to English for us whenever they could. Our guide led us through some lush forest trails that were reminiscent of British Columbia, and we enjoyed about 30 minutes of a truly magical atmosphere before the rains wiped away the light mist and everything became a bit of a blurry washout. Luckily, although the temperatures were markedly cooler at this altitude of over 2000 metres, it was still warm enough that we didn't end up freezing, and we had a nice surprise after leaving our walk to be taken inside to dry out at an oolong tea farm. Here we had a presentation on tea production that was entirely in Mandarin, but once again our trusty group members by this time seemed to enjoy the challenge of translating for us, and we were convinced enough to buy some quite expensive tea that Clare is positive will be worth it.
Some more sweet things about Taiwan include the fact that not only do Taiwanese seem to like French bull dogs (and that adorable Japanese Shiba Inu dog is commonly seen trotting around as well), there is a lot of cat culture in terms of cat cafes and various cat paraphernalia that is available to buy, and you just have to love a country that dotes on its domestic animals (dogs are frequently also spotted curled up cozily in pram-type carriages!) Also, there seems to be a great love affair with the Roots clothing brand! We saw a Roots store in Taipei, and tons of people are wearing Roots t-shirts - way more than in Canada. It is a comforting sight!
- comments
Carrie Who would have known lol....I wonder why Roots though??
Clare Hansen Not too sure, but it is certainly a very noticeable trend!