A-bloomin' in Tainan!

Last week, I took another trip down to Southern Taiwan to finally visit my dad's classmate, and also my new friends, Anita and Jacky (Jay?), in Tainan. As usual, I left Taoyuan at around midnight and got to my destination ridiculously early. I didn't want to wake my uncle or Anita, so I decided to wander around the train station on my own and take some pictures


It didn't take long before I found Tainan Park, which, incidentally, was also celebrating their own bloom festival (I went to the bloom festival on Yangming Mountain in Taipei the week before). I haven't (and at this rate may very well never) posted about that bloom, but in my own humble opinion, the one in Tainan was infinitely nicer. There was a much wider variety of flowers and they were all over!





Not to mention, the park was pretty magnificent in itself!





Around 7am, Anita and Jay found me hanging in a tree and brought me to eat a breakfast of famous fried Tainan 蝦捲 (xia juan, shrimp rolls), which were WAAY better than the ones I had in Danshui, and a thick, clear, slimy 魚羹(yu geng, fish soup).



With the last bits of shrimp and soup down the shoot, we headed off to our first big destination, 安平樹屋 (anping shu wu, Anping Tree House)! It was originally constructed in the late 1800's as a salt warehouse for Tait & Co, a Japanese salt company, during Japanese occupation over Taiwan. It was abandoned over 50 years ago and has since been abandoned and totally reclaimed by nature, hence it's name! It was restored in 2004 by the Tainan government and reopened to the public as the National Anping Harbor Historic Park!




By the time we finished looking around, it was already almost noon and about time to go meet up with Yi-Ching, who was also coming down to visit Anita that day, but we couldn't very well leave Anping without getting a taste of their famous 黑豆花 (hei dou hua, black bean curd!)



Stay tuned for part dos of day one of my second amazing trip down south!