Right next to the Kaohsiung Airport! Hippo butts (‘pigu’ in Mandarin). There’s so much innnteresting foliage in Taiwan I went a big crazy with the photos.
You thought it was a rock but it was a very cleverly disguised speaker!What fun texture is that? Hippo skin
Had a nice conversation with a Czech guy who was selling cake. This was a fine night market with lots of treats and I got some new summertime socks too!
These grapes covered in a candy glaze were fantastic! Definitely recommend
Woahhhh! Driving in Taiwan is a bit scary – mostly because of all the scooters! But I got roped into it. TRIAL BY FIRE!
The bank: If it doesn’t say ‘no parking’ – it’s parking!
Foreign traffic directions are fascinating to me!
Good Morning! This is the place we got a lot of our breakfasts from when we were in quarantine hotel
Customized scooter for the outdoorsy type
I haven’t been to Mos Burger since I was in Japan in 2019! Good to be back! And…this one sells produce? In case you want extra tomato I guess! For some reason they were playing “White Christmas” – in February!
Fascinating toothpastes!
So during the quarantine period I developed a severe stabbing pain in my back whenever I shifted my body while laying down. It didn’t seem to be going away so we went to the hospital to make sure it wasn’t anything serious. They put us in a little room off to the side, and they had to bring a mobile x-ray machine in because during quarantine I wasn’t allowed in the general hospital halls or areas. They scanned me, but apparently the x-rays didn’t turn out because I was too chonky. Not sure how that works but that was what was explained to me! So the doctor just gave me a bunch of pills and said I could come back for an MRI in 2 weeks, but by then we would no longer be in Kaohsiung so we just went ahead with our travel plans and I suffered through the pain. Seems whenever I travel there’s always some problem – when I was in Japan it was frozen shoulder. We paid them some money and then I was off to try to manage the paperwork for my travel insurance. Fun fun stuff!
My first subway trip in Taiwan! From the Houyi station to Pier 2, where we saw lots of weird art!
Of course there’s 7-11 kiosks in the station, and they had my favourite, chocolate covered grape gummies!
Near Pier 2 there’s a book store called Eslite which is kind of like Taiwanese Chapters. I bought some Traveler’s Notebook products and unbeknownst to me at the time, there was a promotion – we got 2 free beers!
Yes. At the book store.
Many cool things were seen
There was a food market area, and yet you weren’t supposed to take off your mask or eat the food they were selling. So confusing!A military presence!A tiny lighthouse!
As the sun went down we were treated to the light show. Here’s the Music Museum pre-dusk and at night. One of these is not my photo, can you guess which one?
At dusk we took a tram to the Lingya District (not far)
We met with my wife’s older sister and her family at the Canadian restaurant called Yaletown Bistro! We got the typical Canadian fare – poutine, Montreal smoked meat sandwich, and of course a Nanaimo bar! The owner is from Vancouver and was super friendly.
After that, we went home and distributed our gifts from Canada to the family.
Quarantine is over! It’s warmish outside! Kaohsiung is a noisy place! Finally I get to be outside in Taiwan during the day!
Outside Mom’s apartment.
First thing on the docket is to get a haircut. Pro tip: if you’re white, don’t go to this place
Not a great haircut, but you might see a corgi
I walked around and found my first street food – which was a drink – I got guava and yakult (yogurt), delicious.
Got to see our quarantine hotel from the outside. One of the things I looked at every day was the 9×9 stationary store across the street. This photo is from the door of that store. I bought pens!!
Royal Hotel – we spent 2 weeks trapped inside here watching the doves cavort in that tree.
Typical Kaohsiung street views – notice the abundance of scooters. Because of the pandemic, whenever you went into a business you were supposed to scan a QR code for the purposes of tracking any spread. Naturally me and my phone took forever to do this.
If this restaurant was open when I was nearby, I would have tried it.
Residents in Kaohsiung don’t have lawns, so they do what they can by having gardens in planters out front! Also check out the crazy trees!
AFTERNOON: ANPING OLD STREET, Tainan
Wife’s sister’s friend drove us 50 minutes North to Tainan City for the lantern festival. During the afternoon we walked about and found some fun places in Anping Old Street, including Miaoshou temple, a crazy soft serve ice cream shop, and some place with fun crustacean mascots.
Scooters are ubiquitous, and of course they have a scooter sharing programI picked up this cap from the market, which you will see me wear for the rest of the trip!
Sadly, the lantern festival was called due to rain, so at dusk we travelled to Ba-Wei hot pot/ginger duck restaurant on Anping Road where we met some of Erica’s old friends who luckily speak English!
The Anping Canal, unless I’m mistaken
Unfortunately comfortable seating is a rarity at these kinds of restaurants, as you can see the stools are tiny. I had hurt my back somehow during the flight and/or quarantine hotel and I had to stand up periodically to manage the pain.
A great first day out and about! By the way, if you come across these – they’re delicious. It’s like what if bubble gum ramune was an ice cream!
We were surprised how full the plane was, giving that it’s a pandemic, but also it’s around Lunar New Year so maybe we should not have been quite so surprised? All the paperwork leading up to this moment (COVID test, etc) was a nightmare of stress and confusion. I don’t recommend it. It was even worse for my wife, who actually handled it! The flight was 12 hours, not including the usual preflight waiting. I’m not sure about the benefit of waking passengers for 2 meals between (what was for me) midnight and noon, but okay. The movie selection on the plane was not great, the ‘classics’ were essentially old Bond films, so I finally watched Goldfinger. Yes, I had never seen Goldfinger.
IMAGE: I was number 29 to take the test, I was NOT number 29 to get my results 🙁
Once we landed everyone had to take a COVID test. This involved waiting to be called, in order of your passport number. Fun fact: Taiwanese passports start with numbers and Canadian ones start with letters, so I was pretty much dead last out of around 250 people.
IMAGE: A small army of Taiwanese health personnel. Now I truly feel I’m in a pandemic movie
Then we had to go through the rigmarole of getting simcards and setting up apps for the government to check in on us that we were quarantined and doing our regular self-tests. All that business took about 4 hours. Then we got into the quarantine taxi for the long drive from Taoyuan to Kaohsiung, which is were my wife’s fam lives.
IMAGE: Getting hosed down for the quarantine taxi
The highway from the airport is SO HIGH UP! Higher than the buildings and trees! I love the shape of the tree line in Japan and Taiwan, always reminds me of M.A.S.H. even though M*A*S*H was filmed in Malibu Creek State Park in California.
IMAGE: driving driving driving from Taoyuan Aiport to Kaohsiung
It’s over 3 hours drive from Taoyuan airport to Kaohsiung, which I spent with a spider in the back seat. Overall we were in transit roughly 22-23 hours!
IMAGE: my first close encounter with Taiwanese fauna
The quarantine hotel was adequate and our room was on the second floor. Mother-in-Law’s house was just a few blocks away so occasionally relatives would drop off stuff for us – like fruit!
We would spend the next 2 weeks confined to this hotel room. They provided us with enormous amounts of disposable plastic (ugh…) including disposable razors, many toothbrushes and tiny toothpaste bottles, etc, of which we used maybe 10%. Plastic waste is a huge problem in Asian countries, as far as I can tell. We took the leftovers to mom’s place, as I’m sure the hotel would just throw the unused items in the trash.
IMAGE: disposable plastic toiletries
The hotel provided meals (which my wife prepaid for) but they were crap, so we cancelled that service after a few days. Luckily, Uber Eats was there for us. My closest contact with non-wife life was oriental turtledoves that frequented the trees outside our hotel room window.
IMAGE: oriental turtledove eating the crumbs I left for ’em
I spent the next two days drawing, working on Ruin Nation, and watching movies. There were 4 reliable Hollywood movie channels on the hotel TV, and while the audio was in English, the sound on the TV was not great so it was hit and miss (English subtitles were not an option). Old movies on youtube were my go-to.
I also did a lot of sampling of the local cuisine! If you’re on facebook or twitter use the hashtag #torentries to see all the details
The government also left us a care package! A big bag of snacks, masks and bleach. I learned something interesting about Taiwan garbage collection – but more on that later.
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