More Tainan Adventures

Dear Reader,

This is the start of our last week in Taiwan. I can't believe it's already been two weeks. It feels like the time has flown by.

Saturday was a great day out in nature. First, we went on a wetland boat trip in Taijiang, then we took a tour of Anping Old Street, and then we explored Anping Tree House. While it was rainy our whole boat ride, it was super fun to see all the different aspects of the wetland, such as the mangroves, the different egrets, and the different fishing methods. The tour guides even let us hold some of the fish caught with one of the raft nets. While exploring Anping, I really enjoyed learning about how the tree house was originally an abandoned factory building, but then the government decided that they wanted to make something beautiful out of it to enrich the area with change and bring a new style to the old. On Saturday night a group of us went to Reverb Bar, which had a mock elevator door as their entrance, and had a few cocktails before heading over to a dive bar, where we got to dance and chat with other local college students. It was interesting to talk with them and get their recommendations of different places in Tainan we should check out while we're here. After the bars, we got chicken nuggets at McDonalds, and then Austin and I watched the Apple Cup at 3 am.

Sunday was our free day, and I decided to take it easy. I woke up a little later than usual and drank some tea in the morning. Later I joined Jennifer, WingHi, Natalie, Samantha, and Sydney Lai at Pho22 near the hotel to eat some warm beef pho for lunch. After that, they wanted to go to the Capybara cafe, so I decided to wander around the area since I'd already been on our last free day. As I was walking around, I stumbled upon a cute little shop with doodles of dogs on the outside. At first, I thought it was a tea shop because the sign said, "candy tea," so I tried to order tea. It turns out, however, that I was in a shop selling traditional Japanese candy snacks that people normally have with their tea. The lady at the counter showed me all the different flavors and let me try some of the candy—it was delicious. It had a light sweet flavor and was hard on the outside, while the inside had a texture consistent with jam or jelly. I decided to buy some and head back to the hotel to relax for a little bit before meeting up with Jennifer and WingHi to visit a temple. At the temple, we went through the process of visiting and praying to the gods and offering incense to them. After this, we returned to the hotel briefly to drop things off, change our clothes, and meet up with Carolyn, Samantha, and Natalie to catch cabs to Yuguang Island to catch the sunset on the beach. We got to the beach just in time to watch the sun dip below the horizon line and take some cute pictures. I've never been somewhere more picturesque. I enjoyed watching people surf on the rolling waves and feeling the light breeze coming off the sea. A little later we met up with Jessy, Kalin, Ned, and Austin and played some more at the beach before calling cabs and heading back to the hotel. We had a little trouble calling a taxi back to the hotel, since around 7 pm the cabs get busy. I wonder if 7 pm is equivalent to our 5 pm rush hour traffic? It seems that way, as we've had more difficulty calling cabs during this hour than others. When we finally returned to the hotel, we decided to go to Maodon for dinner. We arrived around half an hour before closing, but they allowed us to come in and eat. It was some of the best food I've ever had! The fish was SO GOOD and the dessert they gave us was really yummy too. I will definitely go back there before we leave to try something else on the menu!

Today is Monday, I met up with my group to check in on our design project. We met in the hotel lobby at 9:30 and went to breakfast at 91Brunch, a place that Evelyn suggested, and had some Gua Bao. I ordered a kimchi and pork flavored one and also a pomelo black tea. Both were delicious! At the cafe, we evaluated the state of our paper made of pomelo skins and decided upon our next steps. We decided that the paper made of just the white part of the pomelo held together the best, so we began brainstorming the different things that we could make with it. After that, we came back to the hotel to try and reshaped the paper into different forms using a rice glue that Khoa made at home. We're still waiting on the finished dried product, so we'll see what happens. Updates to come. After our experiment at the hotel, we met at the back gate of NCKU to go on another Exploring Tainan tour. This time we went to visit old craft stores in Tainan City. We went to an embroidery store, where they let us try to embroider their banners. It was an interesting process, I especially enjoyed learning how to sew the cotton that they used to puff their lettering off the banner onto the banner. The next place we went to was an incense store, where we learned about how they hand-make their incenses that are used for worshiping purposes. I didn't know that incense contained wood ash, nor that they are made by dipping bamboo sticks into a mixture of this wood ash, other ingredients, and water. After this we walked a while, briefly stopping at a movie theatre that still makes hand-painted movie posters, before ending up at our last stop, which was a confectionary store, with all kinds of different Taiwanese traditional cakes. Here we also got to try some of the snacks, which was super fun. When the tour was over, a small group of us went to go check out Snail Alley and stopped at a dog cafe before splitting up to get dinner. WingHi and I went to a ramen restaurant that used to be a barber shop and then decided to walk back to the hotel from there. We stopped at a few shops along the way back and got to see the nightlife and the full moon in the sky.

I'm currently back at the hotel, blogging with friends for a relaxing and reflective night. I can't wait for what the rest of this week holds. As always, here are some of my favorite moments from this week.