My third stop in Taiwan was Tainan, the oldest city of the country. Back in the days ruled and settled by the Dutch, it’s divided into a „new“ part and the old part, Anping, on the coast. I only had one day to see both parts, so after checking in at my hostel, I went off to explore the various temples, forts and shrines of Tainan. I started with the newer part of the town, which is easily walkable in a couple of hours. There’s hundreds of temples, so I picked out only the best ones in order not to get all templed-out too quickly. I can’t even tell anymore what were the most beautiful ones, as I just saw too many to remember which one was which! Here some impressions…
What I actually liked more than the temples though, was walking around some of the smaller streets of Tainan. There’s some really pretty areas, everything is really green, full with plants and the buildings are lower than in Kaohsiung. I loved Kaohsiung, but damn…I might like Tainan even a bit more!!
After a little lunch break, I took the bus to Anping to visit the old fort and see the old streets there. I was disappointed! Nothing of the charm that I had felt in the new part in the morning, instead it was all set up for (Asian) tourists with lots of stall selling whatnot souvenirs. Also the castle was nothing special, sorry Dutchies.
I then visited the tree house, which was kind of cool and bigger than expected. Basically it’s the ruins of a house, overgrown by trees. Kind of like Angkor Wat but much much smaller and no elaborate temple, just a normal house of course.
I also passed by the old harbour with its many wooden fishing boats, which I also kind of liked. Especially in the evening light, it was a pretty setting. I then took the bus back to the city, bought my train ticket to Taipei for the next day and went on a long hunt for vegetarian food which proofed especially difficult that evening. Tainan, it’s been good!
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