Tainan, Taiwan

It was very foggy out when we woke up - we could barely see the railway station across the tracks. As the sun rose and burnt off the fog, we realized there was quite a bit of pollution here in Tainan. Our iPhone doesn’t give an air quality index for cities in Taiwan, but it looked bad. I guess with all the cloudy days we hadn’t noticed.

The hotel had pretty good western options for breakfast - we both went off-menu and ordered French toast with scrambled eggs on the side. They actually had teapots too!

The forecast called for clouds with no rain, and enough of a UV index to require sunscreen.

As soon as we stepped outside the hotel it started raining, so we went back up to grab our umbrellas.

Most of the buildings in the core have a sheltered walkway, so it was just on occasion that we used the umbrellas. Probably did not need sunscreen though. It ended up raining most of the day, but it wasn’t an inconvenience.

We started at Tiantan Tian Gong Temple. I quite liked this temple - it was really beautiful. The rain seemed to be keeping some tourists away - Google maps said less busy than usual at all the outdoor sites today. I took a lot of pics. There was a good description in English at the entrance about the highlights of the temple.

We randomly walked by Chuan Mei Theatre, which has hand-painted movie posters advertising what’s playing. Wouldn’t have gone out of our way to see it but it was cool to see in passing.

We also randomly walked by a lantern shop where an artist was painting the lanterns. They were okay with pics so I took a few.

We stopped into a couple other smaller temples along the way to Grand Matsu Temples, which were okay.

Next up was Grand Matsu Temple, another highlight of the day. Matsu and Mazu are transliterations of the same word, I’ve just used whatever Google maps uses to make it easier to search for.

Grand Matsu Temple is extensive and very photogenic. I got some good pics of the various ceremonial instruments and tools, such as the percussion temple block, halberds, moon stones and fortune sticks. Some of them I just took the pic and looked up afterwards to figure out what they were called.

A quick visit to Chikan Tower, which was built as a fort back in the 17th century and later turned into a residence. It’s now being restored, with half of it under scaffolding.

We walked through a street market looking for lunch and ended up at place on a street corner, slightly outside the market. Had the pork with rice set meal, which included a salad and miso soup. It was really tasty.

On the way to our next stop we passed by a bào bīng place (shaved ice with fruit and fruit-flavoured sorbet on top). We ordered the mango version - it was excellent!

We found our way to Tainan Art Museum Building 1. We really enjoyed the exhibit - A Garden in the South – The Su Shi-xiong Commemorative Exhibition which chronicled the ceramics and art of Su Shi-Xiong through his life. It included works by his wife and daughter, also accomplished artists.

Next was Tainan Art Museum Building 2, about a five minute walk, and included in the same ticket.

Building 2 had some interesting contemporary exhibits. The highlight for us were the pieces on loan from the National Palace Museum in Taipei. This included the Jadeite Cabbage, one of the most well-known pieces from the museum. We had read that it’s quite small, so weren’t surprised. This exhibit was heavily guarded.

On the walk back home, we stopped into the train station to buy tickets for Jan 1 to get to the HSR train station (the high speed train doesn't come into the centre of town).

We also finally figured out how to access the bridge over the tracks. There's a ticket dispenser where you have to press a red button to generate a ticket, which allows entry to the station (otherwise only train ticket holders are allowed) to cross the bridge.

Overall it was a really good day with lots of highlights!