Total Miles Traveled: 39,985 (almost 40k!!!)
After spending a little more than a month in China, we headed to Taiwan which would be our home base for the next two months. Why Taiwan? It has the 3 “F”s. Family, food and friendly people! We get to visit my relatives who I don’t get to see very often, we can continue learning Mandarin, and we want to get to know the island better. On my previous visits to Taiwan, my brother and I followed my parents around and so we didn’t really know how to get around or where we were going. And though my parents would be around for a couple of weeks this time, we were excited to explore on our own. It’s also Lisa’s first visit to Taiwan!
Tainan City, in southwest Taiwan, is where my family is from. My Mom’s side has been there since the 1700s and my Dad’s side moved to Tainan in the early 1940s, before Chiang Kai Shek fled from China to Taiwan. My Mom and Dad grew up within a 5 minute walk of each other (!) in Tainan ‘old city’, but they met for the first time in Utah!
Every time I come to Tainan, we go to visit my grandparents’ grave to pay our respects. Here is my grandfather’s tomb in the Tainan countryside, among the pineapple fields (you can see the pineapple plants behind the tomb).
What did we do in Tainan you ask? Well, we visited with relatives and, when you do that, you eat. And you eat. And eat. A lot. Which is fine by us! Tainan food is fantastic and you can’t find some of the dishes outside of Tainan – not even in Taipei. Many dishes tend to have a sweeter taste – not quite sweet and sour, but definitely noticeable. Here’s a lunch spot where we had rice congee (a porridge) paired with your choice of a bunch of side dishes.
Here’s sauteed eelfish(?) over mee fen, thin rice noodles:
This was a good one – fishball soup with you tiao (kind of like a churro but without the sugar) and these giant dumpling-like things made of rice flour, filled with ground pork and shrimp in a delicious sauce. ((Drool))
This tiny place specialized in baozi – buns filled with meat/veggies. It’s a great snack when I was growing up and which I still buy in the States when I go to the Asian grocery stores.
We’ve developed a new hobby on our travels to Asia… Asian loose leaf tea (and all of the fun tea accessories that one uses – like the beautiful tea pot below). Taiwan happens to have some of the world’s best oolong teas grown in the mountainous regions of central Taiwan.
We’re just starting to scratch the surface on this new hobby and are already finding it to be similar to wine tasting and collecting, albeit non-alcoholic. Both have a rich history, complex processing, intricate ceremonies and fun tools. Have we mentioned the teapots?… Lots of fun. And the best part is, it’s totally healthy and might even have a slimming effect (which we need after all the yummy Tainanese food) ! Here we are at a family friend’s tea shop where we sampled some really great teas.
We stayed in my mom’s family’s house in the old part of Tainan. One evening, we heard a bunch of drums and banging going on out in the street below and saw this:
It was a temple celebration honoring the god in the temple next door to my Mom’s house. It was pretty neat to see the whole thing from our balcony, but in one of our next posts, we caught another celebration on video during the day.
Finally, what does one do at night in Tainan? Well, we’re not in to the bar scene, so we hit the night market instead. It was packed and a hangout for younger folks. Cheap tasty (sometimes unhealthy) foods and lots of knick knacks and clothes for sale.
And for your entertainment, we stumbled on this cover band in the local park singing songs in English. People were really enjoying it!
Next, we start exploring around Tainan … stay tuned…