Tainan

2010/04/30

Confucius Temple, Great South Gate, Chihkan Towers, Anping Fort, Tainan Night Market, Tainan Park

A long time I planned to visit my friend, who study in Tainan. However it took almost 2 and a half months to realize it. I had finally enough time together (3 days), so I can travel to the south without problems. According to that we agreed I will arrive on Friday and Michal will show me Tainan. The original plan counted on travel to Penghu islands west to the main island on weekend. However things changed and we traveled to Maolin Recreation Area. (More about that you can find in adequate article.)

Michal has an exam in the morning, so we agreed I will arrive to Tainan around noon. I woke up in 6 and in 7 left my room (even so I wanted to leave in 6:30 ... classics :) ) The bus left from Taipei Main Station exactly in 8:00. Price was 260 NT$ (= 150 CZK), which is really cheap! According to the plan the trip should take 5 and a half hours.

A SMS woke me up in 12:17. When I looked around, I found out we approached some city. Michal just wrote me where I am and if I will manage to arrive after 13:00. When I almost finished my SMS I really haven't idea as I don't know where I am (Tainan was final station) a driver stopped and cried something in Chinese. Everybody quit, so I did it also. It turned out I am in Tainan ... more than one hour prior the planned time, very nice.

I called to Michal and explain him all the situation. He said he will wait for me on the far side of Tainan park, where we stopped. I took a walk around and took some pictures when somebody called my name from behind. It was him, Michal arrived in less than 5 minutes. We packed all my stuff and headed toward his dormitory to take his camera.

After some time in his dormitory we took the scooter again and drove directly to the Confucius Temple, my first visited landmark in Tainan. In front of the temple is a very old tree, which was supported by wooden stuffs. Even so almost dead, the tree was obviously very valuable. I took several pictures of it. The tree was really weird :).

Inside the Confucius Temple complex (price 25 NT$ = 14 CZK, Tainan citizens for free) I found only slightly decorated temple with several snakes on the roof and another mythological animals in front of it. Later on I discovered all the Confucius Temples are less decorated in comparison with the rest of Taiwanese temples. Beside the main temple we found there also a small museum dedicated to the temple.

It was after 13:00 and we were hungry, so we attended a small restaurant just beside the corner and bought seafood noodles with original fruit juice. For Europeans, even so it can be surprising, all the juice was really all from the fruit and the price was 25 NT$ (= 14 CZK) for 0.4 l drink. Paradoxly in the Czech Republic the cost would most likely exceed 80 CZK (= 150 NT$).
Just across several roads we came to the Great South Gate. It is a part of ancient Tainan fortification. In fact except Hsinchu, where only the Gate remained, this was the first remain of Taiwanese fortification I encountered in Taiwan. (This is due to the fact Taiwan was long time overlooked by Chinese dynasties as not valuable island, so there is a lack of extended fortifications except some big historical cities.) As you are allowed to climb up the fortification and go round, we did so and took some more pictures.

The third stop was Chihtan Tower (also known as Fort Proventia), two similar temple-like towers in nicely kept park. As before, entrance 25NT$, Tainan citizens for free. We spent there about half an hour, because this part was really interesting. You can walk through both the park and the towers including the second level, so not only the temple floor. From the top, you can see Tainan well. The city looks like Taipei in the streets, but buildings are much lower.

During the visit of Chihtan Tower the weather changed from cloudy to sunny and hot and we decided to go to the beach to swim. We returned to the dormitory, took swimming shorts and headed to Anping area, where is the Tainan Dutch fort from the age of their reign in Taiwan during 17th century. We swam in the warm sea. The slope was mild so even 50 meters from the shore we still can stand on our legs. The beach was clean and almost empty, but we didn't stay there long time. The sunset was coming and we wanted to see the Anping fort.

The fort was close to the beach, so we were there in 5 minutes. Except the fort (also known as Fort Zeelandia) you can find there a decorated gate and a typical Asian temple. We checked both and entered the fort. The entrance was the same, as always. The fort offers nothing special, just some remains of the star-like fort from the 17th century and the estate on the top with newly built observatory, which is quite ugly and definitely doesn't suit to such a place.
We ate a supper in surrounded restaurant and moved to the south of Tainan to see the Five Concubine shrine. It's rather a park, the shrine is small and it is not possible to attend the inner part. In addition the dusk came and it was very difficult to take pictures there. Even so we wanted to attend the Koxinga's shrine located close to it, we can't. It was already closed. That was quite a pity, as Koxinga was one of the most important people involved in Taiwan history.

In the evening when the day changed to dusk and later to the night, we attended the Night Market and tried several delicious foods here. Especially the local specialty - oyster omelette. Who doesn't know that, I can highly recommend this :)

During our way back to the dormitory we attended the Tainan Park, where we took several pictures of the pagoda in the middle of a lake. Except us there were just dogs wandering the park.

We finished our day with planning the weekend trip.

2010/04/30 - Tainan [30 pictures]

Tainan
Chihkan Tower (Fort Proventia)
Anping Fort (Fort Zeelandia)
Koxinga
Oyster Omelette

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