21 March 2017
Fort washing machine
Day trip to Fort Zeelandia in Tainan
Today I went to the Dutch part of Japanese Taiwan, before doing my washing, we shall cover both in turn.
Anping is where everyone kept coming ashore to take over. The Dutch East India company managed this in the mid 1600's and soon after ran the entire country for about 50 years.
Much like all the other places where the various 'East India Companies' sent a few fat guys to take over a country, I will never understand why millions of locals didnt just decide to cut the crap and decapitate them. I guess it happened eventually, but how did they get established in the first place?
At Anping they built a series of forts. Actually the forts are all over Tainan, and they all used to be absolute sea front. But massive land reclamation over the years to build air force bases to annoy mainland China means that these forts are now nowhere near the actual sea, but they are near canals.
The Dutch fort I visited today is called Zeelandia, which means new sea I think. Theres another country full of Dutch convicts named similarly.
The rest of Anping was a bit underwhelming, the so called old streets dont look like anything special to me, and what you mainly have to look at is temples and churches. So many religious donation boxes. Also tourists and school kids. Buses full of people everywhere.
The school kids seem completely uninterested. They had all bought fake lego from an old street market stall to assemble whilst they were looking at the fort.
Anyway, todays activitiy was deliberately quite short, as I had washing to do. I returned to my hotel, to find they have no laundry! Shocking. So I found a nearby coin laundry on google and loaded up my suitcase with sweaty sunscreen infused clothes and set out to find it.
It was nice and modern, and you buy card thing to control all the machines. I fed my change into the card machine and was issued a card.
Now to buy my washing powder, with the card? No. Now I have no change, and a card loaded with money that cant be used to buy washing powder.
What I needed was a convenience store. Taiwan has the highest density of convenience stores of anywhere in the world, I know I read this fact, but today, today my friends, I was smack bang in the geographical centre of convenience store sparsity. I roamed the streets for 30 minutes hauling my suitcase in oppresive heat into the oncoming scooter apocolypse looking for somewhere to buy a drink I didnt want so I could get a 10 cent piece as change to buy laundry powder.
My struggle.
On my way to the bus I went down an entire street full of nothing but electronic components shops. Remember Tandy and Dick Smith? Of course you remember Dick Smith still if you are Australian, but when I review this in 10 years time perhaps our memory will be fading.
There are basically no good electronic component shops left in Australia. A shame, cause those 6 cent 100 ohm resistors are a good money maker.
The bus stop has some dodgy looking USB ports and a phone shelf. I left my phone there and will collect it when I return this afternoon.
Here is the Fort Zeelandia. So many windmills and blue colored pottery.
The whole time, I felt like I was being watched. And I was, by multiple drones.
A bit more wall. There was multiple levels of excavations and re built areas showing you the whole history of the place archealogically, if thats your thing.
There is no concept of gender fluidity in Taiwanese schools. Boys wear blue tracksuits, girls wear red.
The transsexual bathroom debate continues to rage on for another week!
It is blossom season. I dont focus enough on blossoms. They are different blossoms to Japan blossoms but blossoms none the less.
The dutch liked to manicure trees whilst defending from Genghis Khan.
There are 2 museums / snack bars on the site. This one has a diorama, actually so does the other one. Nice annoying fluro light reflection.
Todays leafless tree of the day photo! Somewhere around here is a shed with a banyan tree growing through it. The internet says its one of Anpings top attractions, I saw the photo online and decided I didnt need to see it.
I also decided I didnt even need to photograph the oyster shell cement kiln, which literally was just a shed, not even a tree growing through it.
You can climb up the fort tower and enjoy the view. Annoyingly its completely sealed in perspex sheets to ruin photographs and make it hot as hell.
There were just too many temples in this area. So I took a photo of just one.
Probably photo of the day, the interesting looking home to wild dogs, that is also the fishermans graveyard. I wonder if they actually buried people here or just erected stones in memory of people lost at sea?
Future residents of the above graveyard.
This is not the old shopping street in Anping, its a regular street in Anping. It is much nicer than the shopping street in Anping.
Water is running out of the demon swords. Children decided to speak to me here. I chose to try Chinese, they responded, USE ENGLISH SPEAK!
This is the famous ancient preserved shopping street. Really it is, I checked twice. Its just a few stands selling junk between ordinary looking buildings.
A man made canal replaces what used to be the ocean. I had to look a lot on google to figure out where the city proper is. Tainan is huge. The bus ride was over 30 minutes, the actual city is on the horizon.
These tall buildings are a new satellite city.
I remember seeing these very bright orange trees on the bus to the buddha theme park the other day. I couldnt get a good photo out the bus window, so was happy to find another.
Again, this used to be ocean I think, there are big breakwaters on the horizon here and some farming fields. The swampy bits became mangroves, and apparently the black spoon billed something bird sanctuary.
A bit more canal. A map showed a warship parked along here. But there is no ship. False advertising.
And here I am proudly holding my card which I loaded all my spare change onto only to find it did not allow me to buy detergent.
I loaded about $4 Australian onto the card, which was $2 too much. As I left I gave my card to a little old lady who was entering with her washing. She looked at me very very suspiciously as she snatched the card.