You've probably never had reason to visit Taiwan, unless you've been on a business trip. Even if you have, your itinerary was probably restricted to the capital, Taipei. I wanted to see what's there other than Taipei, and finally settled on Tainan for two reasons - It supposedly had the best food scene in Taiwan, and secondly, it was the old Taiwanese capital and had a lot of historic places to visit.
My reasons to visit Taiwan were three-fold. It allowed hassle-free visa processing if you had a valid US Visa, and was a short hop away from Philippines which also had easy visa processing. Thirdly, it had the cheapest bullet train, about half the price of the Japanese Shinkansen, while using the same locomotives! My spot "outside Taipei" had to be on the Taiwan High Speed Railway (THSR) route, and I finally settled on Tainan for the reasons mentioned in the opening paragraph. I only had 4 days in Taiwan, which meant a frantic one-day trip to get to Tainan, sight-see, and get back to Taipei. I reached Tainan in the evening, and headed straight to a night market, something that Taiwan is famous for, and Tainan, especially so. Tainan’s most famous night market is called the Hua Yuan or Flower Night Market but as luck would have it, I arrived on a Wednesday, a day on which the Flower Night Market is closed. My host said I could try the Wusheng Night Market instead. Most night markets operate on 3-4 days of the week, but there are enough night markets that you will always have one open every day of the week.
Public transport is a nightmare in Tainan, with infrequent buses, and no metro. I finally got to Wusheng Night Market. It was crowded, and not as organized as the night markets I would see later in Taipei. . I braved a queue to get a grilled meat bun for NTD 40. It was delicious and peppery, had meat, onions and some vegetables in between a bun. I would have had one more if it didn't mean having to queue up again.
The next day was for sight-seeing. Tainan was the old capital of Taiwan, and also a port which had changed hands with the Dutch, and so I decided to visit the Anping area where most of the Dutch colonial buildings are. I purchased a day pass for NTD 150, which allows entry to 4 attractions out of a collection of 5 (Anping Tree House, Anping Old Fort, Chihkan Tower, Eternal Golden Castle and Taiwan Warship Museum). However, it being 10th October, a Taiwanese holiday called TenTen, the Eternal Golden Castle was closed. My first stop was at the Anping Calligraphy Museum, which was right next to the Tree house. There’s a lot of Chinese calligraphy on display, but the most interesting activity was making a Chinese character on a surface using a paint-brush and water.
Next was the Tate & Co Merchant House, which was an old colonial building used by the Dutch as a trading office. There happened to be a museum exhibit going on which showcased the history of Taiwan, and the role Tainan played in it. They had some old advertisements for Oolong tea.
I then headed to the adjacent Tree house – a really old colonial house that’s been overrun with a banyan tree. It’s pleasant to walk around it. There’s also a water wheel outside it, and an observation deck.
My next stop was the Anping Old Fort which was a fort set up by the Dutch as Fort Zoolandia. It’s a fairly large area with its most distinctive feature being a tall watch-tower (cover-pic of this post). You can climb to the top to find views of the entire city on all sides. This tower is fairly new, and wasn’t part of the original fort, but is still quite popular and is featured on all the Tainanese fridge magnets & souvenirs.
It was close to noon by now, and I had lunch in the street stalls that lead the way to the Anping Old Fort. On my way back to find the bus stop, I chanced upon this beautiful Buddhist temple – The Anping Kaitai Matsu temple which was filled with lots of intricate carvings. I saw a lot of devotees come up and make wishes at the temple.
The daily pass allowed a visit to either the Warship Museum or Chihkan tower. Chihkan Tower is a very pleasant place right in the middle of town, which is surprisingly quiet though being surrounded by traffic. This also used to be a Dutch outpost, but got destroyed by an earthquake. The current tower was rebuilt in its place. It seemed like the Tower was made of wood, since there’s a restriction on the number of people allowed at the top (40 at a time). There’s a small but beautiful garden with koi fish in the premises.
As I had just the day in Tainan, and had another bullet train to catch to get back to Taipei, my day in Tainan ended at this tower. A really nice town, that probably I would have enjoyed more if I had more time.
(Visited Tainan in 2019; Originally published on my old travel blog Amazing Tourisms in more detail)
