Tainan, Taiwan

We had seen all the places on our list in Tainan over the last couple days, so had a free day :) We debated just wandering around the random small alleys in the centre. Decided instead to head to the Anping District, about 20 minutes by taxi on the coast. There’s an old Dutch fort to see, a couple temples, and Anping Old Street with markets and small alleys.

Our taxi driver chatted with us on the drive to the coast, the first taxi driver we’ve had that did so. He had actually visited Canada recently, including Yellowknife to see the Northern Lights. He observed that during Covid when travel was largely restricted to within country borders, there were far more options for folks in larger geographical countries such as Canada, vs Taiwan, which is less than 400km tip to tip. In Canada there were also provincial restrictions, but Ontario itself is pretty big :)

We were dropped off at Eternal Golden Castle, a fort on the shores of the Taiwan Strait. Paid our entry fee, and walked around the ramparts. There’s not much to see except some replica canyons. It had a cool atmosphere though.

We walked along the waterfront through a park. It was warm today - the high was near 27C and sunny. The waterfront is being redeveloped, it will look nice when it’s done.

Between the hotel map and Google maps it was confusing to figure out where things were. The hotel map had the same sites marked in multiple places, and Google had yet something different. So we just followed the path along the waterfront.

Crossed over the canal and entered old Anping. It was bustling, maybe cause it was a Sunday? Or maybe this was normal every day? We weren’t sure.

There were lots of food stalls, nothing that caught our fancy, so we continued through to the restaurants just outside the market through small alleyways.

We ended up at a cute little Thai restaurant (Moveforward), rated highly on Google maps. It was excellent, although we might have ordered too much food. (And we had booked a NYE dinner special at 6:30pm back at the hotel!)

Checked out the Anping Kaitai Tianhou Temple after lunch. It was pretty nice, although we are getting a bit out-templed.

We figured out later that there are actually three forts in Anping, and the other two were a stone’s throw from the temple. Oh well. We were done for the day, and just grabbed a taxi home.

Relaxed and then cleaned up for our big NYE dinner special at the hotel. It was the first time in a while traveling that we’ve had a dinner special for NYE - usually these are pretty elaborate and extend to midnight. Here it was just dinner, we had to be out by 9pm so they could set up for the partyers. The soup course was the hit of the meal - a chicken broth with an egg roll.

Around 8pm we heard a pianist start up in the lounge, who was amazing. We settled up at the restaurant to head down to listen; and then realized the pianist was a guest who looked to be about 10 years old. He stopped playing after a couple songs :(

Back up in our room we watched a bit of the NYE fireworks in Sydney, and then went to bed before midnight our time, around 10pm.