Taking the train from Kaohsiung to Tainan
Now I am in Tainan. My third last destination on this trip that is going too quickly.
Today is also hot, with almost no visible pollution, I guess it must be windy. The clear blue sky is infusing the previous few days pollution directly into my skin. I am a strange grey color.
Because Tainan is so close to Kaohsiung, I had plenty of time for one last wander around the great city of Kaohsiung. Thats the last time I have to type the horribly spelt Kaohsiung.
As prevously mentioned, I wish I had more time there, but who knows, maybe Tainan will be even better. I have not been to Tainan before, even though it is after Taipei the most popular tourist destination in all of Taiwan.
I took the local train to get here. There is a local train all the way around Taiwan. In places there is an inner loop (mountain line) and outer loop (coastal line). Local line means it stops all stations and takes all day to go around Taiwan at a slow pace. I dont think anyone takes it for long distance, but it is good to know you can get to almost any tiny little town by train eventually.
My ride was all of about 50 minutes, and $3. Which meant despite hanging around my hotel before checkout as long as possible, I was hours too early to check in to my Tainan hotel. Not to worry, time for lunch and the games arcade.
On my morning walk, I was enjoying the fine looking streets of Kaohsiung, and damn it I had to type it again.
This is a huge gentlemens club. Probably quite exclusive, as I dont think Johnny Walker blue label is cheap. The building seems to be made of white marble.
Colorful flowers, so colorful. I prefer the American spelling of color.
More great streets I did not have time to walk down.
Here it is, the tri-force space ship building ready for take off.
The dual department stores of Sogo and Shin Kong Mitsukoshi. I had no time to go in either, but I think Tainan has both brands too, for future food court opportunities of a cheap dinner.
Here comes my train to Tainan. Despite being a slow local train, they have attached a sleek modern locomotive to the front. The carriages were a hybrid of what you might get on a bullet train and a local train. There are toilets even on the local trains.....hello mother.
The Tainan train station is the most basic yet. And there is no signs of an upgrade. I must point out that this is NOT the high speed rail line, thats some distance from my hotel closer to the mountains.
I was quite amused that at some point in the distant past, this many public phones were ever deemed necessary.
A random Tainan street. Yep, still looks like Taiwan. I wonder if the old Japanese and Dutch areas will look different. Yes there is a Dutch area of Tainan.
TRUE JESUS. I prefer the untrue.
I now can declare Donutes to be the best cafe, ever. Fantastic coffee, great service, 3 levels of seating, an excellent bakery on site. Australia needs Donutes.
Fun fact, the Chinese characters for Donutes translate in Pinyin to Duo Na Zi.
Donutes even has a huge library inside it with a ladder you can climb up and fall off. Its high enough to probably kill you if you fell.
Still a bit early, I hung out with some Taiwanese unemployed obese men and played car racing games.
This is just another example of the cafes in Taiwan. I might go here tomorrow if I get sick of Donutes. This one has dried flowers hanging from the roof.
Here is my hotel room. Smaller than the last, but very modern.
The unusual thing about this hotel is the enormous shower. Probably not depicted too well in the photo, but you can fit at least 9 people in the shower. Important if you are having a party in your room, which I am.
The old Hayashi department store
After the excitement of the last 4 days enjoying the city whos name cannot be mentioned, can Tainan possibly maintain the hype? Will it be a huge let down? Will there be footpaths to walk on? Will there be cheap food in foodcourts?
Maybe, no, yes, yes.
The down town area near the station is very very busy, but that was not my destination.
I first headed to the oldest department store in Taiwan, site of the first lift in Taiwan, the very Japanese Hayashi. It was old, touristy, and mostly still authentic, complete as you shall see with a shrine on the roof. Important for you to make peace before you jump.
I then decided to set out on a long walk from the oldest to the newest, hence my really creative title. Tainan now has its own mega mall, getting there was through lots of busy streets, many more than I expected. There were mostly footpaths. There were about 3 million scooters but none ran me over so that was refreshing, but then there was an enormous parking lot and a mostly empty new mall.
Not to worry, the food court was still great, and cheap. So cheap. I enjoy cheap food courts, I think I have mentioned that before.
Then despite my meal being enormous, I am now eating intereting lemonade flavoured jelly beans. Fun times.
I took a different path back from the new quiet mall, which went through a huge number of sports facilities. Undercover tennis courts, a hundred basketball courts, baseball, running tracks, ninja training courses, dog racing and parading grounds, badmington, everything you could think of, and they all had lights and they were all in use. All had a food cart or 2 and in between every one was a bubble tea shop. You can actually play baseball one handed whilst holding your bubble tea apparently.
Now I am back in my hotel room scrolling google maps looking for mountains, of which there are none. Not to worry, my last week in Taiwan in Puli and back in Taipei will feature MANY mountains.
Oh and one more thing, the fighter jets are back with a vengeance. The wikitravel page for Tainan actually complains about them buzzing the city 30 times a day and suggests you dont come here if you suffer from a nervous heart condition. I like them.
Near the old Japanese department store is an actual Jap-a-nees-ee looking shrine.
It is not at all brightly colored and there is no ATM or scrolling LED.
Here is the oldest department store. It is not a huge store, but it is 5 levels high and full of high quality Japanesey looking tourist stuff.
The roof shrine, with steps leading up to a leaping off point. This is where the Japanese occupying forces made their last stand. Those without swords for ritual disembowelment leapt off from here. A bit more history lesson for everyone.
If you climb up and lean out very far and put one leg over the edge whilst balancing your camera with one hand and using an outstretched free arm as a counter balance, you can take this photo of the view.
Worth the risk.
The inside of the store. So ancient.
Tonights random sort of blurry street scene. Actually theres another to come. Mainly because they are colorful.
This was the bank of Japan. Built in the Japanese Roman style.
Another random street scene on my very interesting walk between the old store and the new mall. There were a huge amount of actual restaurants along all these streets. Sit down restaurants with tables AND chairs, where the food is actually cooked in a kitchen rather than in the streets.
Tourist friendly Tainan.
Heres the new mall, and its vast parking lot.
The mall was quiet, it is Monday I guess, but the food court was still awesome. I think I enjoy food courts a little too much. Maybe there is a self help group or website or an app or something. Maybe I should start a kickstarter.
There is also a department store style basement food hall area, despite this place not being a department store to my knowledge.
Heres my amazing dinner. Its a hybrid fusion something. Theres a layer of omelette, with fried rice on top, then some kind of unusual tofu, and then Sichuan red pepper numbing chilli sauce.
As is always the case, I had to go into great detail that I wanted spicy, very spicy, please more spicy. And as often happens, the girl who sold it to me watched intently as I ate it, waiting for me to have some kind of unfortunate chilli related episode.
It was now late, for me, but I still had time to appreciate the carnival of curiosities on the way out. I sat on the pig on the merry go round until security came.
Then I had time to appreciate the bamboo gay rainbow. Taiwan is about to legalise gay marriage, the first place in Asia to do so. They like to remind you of that at every possible opportunity, even though it hasnt happened yet.
This is a giant bowling bowl-a-rama whatever. The photo is here because it has an AMF logo, and I realised I dont know who AMF are, I thought they might even be Australian.
No, they are not, AMF is American Machine and Foundry, and in their heyday, they made not only bowling alley equipment, but nuclear reactors, bicycles, and for a while they even owned Harley-Davidson. So there you go.
I like to educate my readers.
Last pic tonight, this is the largest building in the area. It is a huge Shangri-La hotel joint venture with Far Eastern Shopping Malls, strangely enough called the Far Eastern Shangri-La.
And horror of horror! I saw some white people hanging out front smoking. Hello fellow white people, enjoy your smoking.