An easy day trip to Chiayi from Tainan
Today being my last full day in Tainan, I decided to leave it and take the train to Chiayi (Jiayi), the next town over.
Jiayi is where you can take an old train up to Alishan, and then various older trains around the various parts of a big mountain. Its a tourist paradise. But its mostly still broken due to earthquake.
You can take a 3 hour bus ride, each way, from Jiayi station, with no guarantee of a seat back, and numerous reports of people who did not get back for days who eventually decided to hitch hike. Its very difficult to do as a day trip if you want to hike at all.
As it turns out, that didnt matter, theres really only 2 buses a day to one of Taiwans premiere attractions, and I have missed both. I dont really understand this, I had the same issue getting to many parts of Japan, where the bus runs for 3 weeks a year in the hottest part of summer, except on weekends because the demand is too high, and closed mondays. No really, Japan decides to not run buses because of high demand.
Anyway, I decided to head to the sun star killer death tower. I dont know its exact name, it has both sun and star in the name.
Nearby is a very well regarded botanic gardens, a good place for an hours walk through tall trees and greenery, and it was indeed very good.
I will discuss both more using my photos below.
The train journey from Tainan to Chiayi is about an hour, and costs between $2 and $3 I think. Trains come every 20 minutes. The issue was, I did not know if my Easycard would be accepted at Chiayi or not (you cant cross regions or something), so I spoke to the guy guarding the easycard gates and asked him. His response was, in English, 'If you dont know the answer to this question you should not be riding the trains in Taiwan'. Thanks for that.
I found out that it was fine to use my card when I arrived. For the return journey, I thought I would just grab something at the station convenience store for the hour ride back. Except they had run out of food! About all they had left were aged eggs shrink wrapped in plastic and hot duck necks. Really, they had ample supplies of both. So I had to find an alternate food source.
Waiting for my train at Tainan, I spent some time reading the newspaper. Just like the parks in mainland China, they have pinned a copy up on a notice board so no one has to pay for their own.
Here is the main street in Chiayi. It was nice and wide, with a footpath. However not all the streets here were as pedestrian friendly.
The Chiayi station is being rebuilt. Nearly every station is being rebuilt. Is this the Taiwanese version of the school funding scheme we did in Australia to prevent a recession from being recorded?
Chiayi's favourite son is clearly a baseball player, immortalised in gold.
Nice tree.
This is the local tax collection office. Clearly they are good at their jobs.
The local temple is of a high quality, its next door to the tax office, it even has a glass lift attached to the side of it.
Across the road from the temple, things are not so good. I call this sad old man cyclist pedals past collapsing roof. Prints available, various sizes.
This building is across the road from a huge modern university. I presume its full of students living cheaply.
One of the trains you used to take up to the mountains. I recently also learned that there is now only one road across the mountains, the other one was due to be reopened after a billion dollars of repairs, but then a typhoon damaged it again, so the government has decided its closed forever.
Which means deep in the mountains there are basically brand new roads sealed off going over mountain passes and through tunnels more than 3000 metres high. Sounds like a challenge.
The Chiayi park has lots of paintings on show, of the park. I saw some people doing paintings too. Presumably at some point theres judging of which paintings get featured in the park.
The sun star sphere tower comes into view.
Nearby is a restored Shinto shrine, now the Chiayi historical literature society.
A bit more of the galaxy doom tower.
You can stand on the top and look down through glass. If the sun shone through the glass dome at this point its energy would focus through the parabolic lense and melt my shoes.
The top levels are an art gallery, and there was some kind of invite only launch going on with free cake. Perhaps the judging of the park paintings, except they werent of that.
I tried to pretend to be a New York Times art critic but they would not give me any free cake.
The view from the top is open air, no glass!
The baseball stadium where the gold statue above did his best work.
I was very appreciative of the open air tower.
Now it was time to descend over a cliff into some greenery, which was great.
Except there are huge spiders, seriously they are a foot in diameter!
The park was very nice, there were dirt, gravel, wood and concrete trails to test out. I think my feet liked wood the best.
In addition to spiders I saw squirrels, lizards, dogs of course, and this very unusual land bird. I dont think it was capable of flying. Later I might see one on a stick battered and deep fried.
Time to leave the park and start my journey back to Tainan.
I purchased some traffic shoes. No footpath here, just shoe stands in traffic.
Seriously, thats extending out into the road by metres. Trucks are swerving to avoid.
One last photo of Chiayi.
And as mentioned, no food at the station other than mister donut. So a stale mister donut it is. Not a very satisfying lunch.
The Tainan flower night market
Its my last night in Tainan, so I went to a night market. This night market is only open on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, and I had read that it is impossible to get into due to being so busy. I think that must be the case on the other days cause this Thursday it was just reasonably busy.
The flower night market is just one of many such night markets in Tainan, they seem to go hand in hand with temples, and theres a hell of a lot of temples here.
Getting to the market took me to the Northern part of the city, a side I had not been to at all previously, and it is quite different.
The streets are wider and more modern, its greener, there are more parks and modern looking apartments. Using my detective skills, I have therefore worked out that where I am staying is the original old part of the city, and the north part is the new part of the city.
Of course this being Taiwan theres the possibility the north part of the city used to be the old part and was at some point destroyed in a natural disaster.
Anyway, I enjoyed my long looping walk around the northern part of the city, everything is bigger over there, less claustrophobic, a bit less neon.
Tainan as a whole is a very clean city. It goes on and on forever. There are indeed lots of temples, and lots of food places. The food places are mostly outdoors, this is something I dont really enjoy, which leads me to two outdoor food stories -
1. I watched a scooter repair man empty an entire can of WD40 onto a bike chain strung from the roof, and most of the overspray just went all over a food stalls vegetable buffet.
2. I watched some people sitting and eating some kind of pigs blood soup with oysters in it, whilst a construction crew armed with angle grinders sprayed sparks directly into their soup. They never flinched.
Here are some new apartments, on the north side of Tainan, the south city of Taiwan. The northern south. BEI NAN.
After quite the walk, I am at the night market. Note the flags. I think you walk around the outside and spot the flag of where you want to go, then head that way.
Not too busy!
Tonights blow torch options include whole cuttle fish.
Plenty of seating at the steak houses. I think I have worked out the steak houses always have the seats cause you need to use a steak knife, and thats not easy to do whilst standing.
Where as eating these bugs can be done whilst wandering around. You can get them with chilli. I like chilli.
This Singapore laksa house is by far the most popular place. Taiwan is very popular with Singaporeans, half the time I research where to go its written by a girl from Singapore (always a girl). So I am wondering if all the people eating Singapore style laksa are from Singapore.
If you are going to eat east mountain duck heads, you might as well eat the best east mountain duck heads.
You can also make yourself up a bag of mixed lollies, now with added night market flavour.
Or you can have some fried bacon wrapped cheese. Good for the healthy.
I predictably ended up back at a steak house (plastic table), to enjoy somewhere to sit and eat.
Now it was time for a long looping walk back. Here is tonights night temple.
This almost looks like Singapore, except there are scooters. Its a kind of indoor / outdoor hawkers hall.
And here I am, enjoying a discount clothing warehouse that goes nearly as far as the eye can see.
Last photo for tonight comes to you courtesy of a convenient overpass. Enjoy a bit more neon.