Exhausted in Tainan

STILL not fully pictified!

Tainan was on the itinerary for it's many, many historical destinations - temples, gates, forts, etc. As it turned out, we could only muster the energy for about half of it's treasures, but it was a nice and walk-able half.

The breakfast and the juice. Yummy!

First thing in the morning (after blogging, of course) the kids, Rachel and I headed out for breakfast. Q was tired and his neck was bothering him so we promised to return with food he'd like and he stayed home and stretched. First, we discovered DELICIOUS grapefruit juice at a chain "Red Tea" stand. Better than the juice, however, was the strawberry sour plum milk. Wow!!! Another HIT! After such yumminess, we decided to top it off with our favorite, danbing. Having finished it all, we got a sense of where Q could get a massage, where Rachel could get a towel, and where we might like to go. Then we got Q his very own grapefruit juice and 6 meat dumplings and headed home with the great news that 3 of our must-see spots were only a few blocks away and ON THE WAY to a massage.

It might have been the good news, or the food, or the break from the rest of us for a bit, but Q felt up for the adventure so we headed out. But getting all of us ready and going the same direction is like steering a very large ship - it takes a while to move it. So by the time we got back out the door, we needed lunch! I don't remember the specifics of what we ate - only that it was in a hot upstairs that supposedly had AC, and that the meal felt like a "miss."

Back to sight seeing, our first stop was to the Chihkan towers. (This is pronounced much like "chicken." I was laughing and tried to explain this to Alex the night before, and he didn't get it, "chicken" sounded so much like Chihkan.) This was a fort built by the Dutch in roughly the 1660's. Here is the history lesson:

This place cost our group roughly $10 to get in. I was curious, given our Dutch ancestry, if I would feel an emotional connection to it. I liked it's history about as much as I enjoy any piece of history (can I just say I am such a history FAN!) but it didn't have that special pull I thought it might.

If you were thinking the building above don't look very "Dutchy," you're right. Here is a model of what the Dutch structures looked like.

This is Koxinga - the George Washington of sorts of Taiwan. The statues commemorating the Dutch surrender are to the right of Weese in the picture 2 above

The kids favorite part was feeding the fish. This might have been because it was in the shade and quite pleasant and entertaining. Still, we dutifully covered all the ground we had the attention span to take in - we payed, after all!

Below is another cool piece of history:

Here are the girls, AT the school

What diligent scholars!

Veeve by a row of turtles with stone tablets on their backs.

I don't remember the significance of this stone horse with broken legs. Bet there is Stew!

And Q's favorite Stew and Q shot, thrown in for good measure

Directly across from the Chihkan tower is the temple to the God of War.

Perhaps beyond physical fatigue we are REALLY suffering from temple fatigue, so we walked the whole place, but moved on to the next temple, Tainan's temple to Matzu, in short order.

There she is. Isn't she lovely?

These fearsome gate keepers have eyes and toes that follow your movement! Oooh. Ahh.

Tainan, by the way was a city whose temple density seemed to exceed Utah's chapel density. It seemed EVERY CORNER had a temple on it! At first I wondered if we were missing something cool. By the end of one day, I didn't even care.

However, if the Matzu temple visit will be remembered, it will stand out for what we saw inside. Many temples play worshipful music in whatever genre appeals to the worshipers, I assume. So that we heard music here did not immediately get our attention. It was too bad it didn't, because unlike the other music we heard, this was NOT canned. We discovered as we progressed through the temple, that in one of the posterior shrines, there were maybe 12 women, all dressed in white, singing and playing music and bowing to whatever deity and assistants they stood in front of. I only caught the tail end of this spectacle, but appreciated it very much. However, Taoist temples still fail to connect for me on any spiritual level, and though this was a great cultural experience, I still felt no connection to this form of worship. (And sadly, I only got a short video of this and NO pics. Sigh.)

I wish I could ask a devotee more about their faith - IS it faith, or does it come more closely to superstition? Do they really believe, or is it a preservation of family and national culture? Heck, these would be fun questions to ask devotees of MY religion. If we "love the church" or "love being Mormon," what about it DO we love and why?

Mango and kiwi bign.

Anyway, taking in these destinations took us about 3.5 hours. We were tired and extremely hot, and heading back to an air conditioned place to SIT DOWN seemed in order. So back we went. AFTER a stop for some bing (shaved ice). But I do have to say, this may be the only things we do better at our home in Utah than I have been able to find on the streets. Still it cooled us down.

We made a few other great stops on the way home too. First, Q decided he would get a full body massage from one of the massage shops on the way, so we left him and planned to meet at the apt when he was done. He reported it was a good massage, but it also was more of going through the motions of a massage and less intuitive than the massages he loves from Rachel's mom, Stacie.

Next, I sent Rachel on with the kids and dashed across the street when I saw a promising-looking bakery. WHY the Chinese are so fabulous at pastries I have yet to figure out, but WHOA! I bought what looked like a small glazed poppy seed ring. I knew it wasn't that, only because I hadn't seen them in Taiwan. What I did get turned out to be something like a giant, glazed croissant doughnut filled with chocolate! It was divine, and an incredible shame to share 6 ways. I also bought a loaf of croissant bread for a part of breakfast on Sunday so we wouldn't hit the morning melt-downs we'd enjoyed the day before in Fenqihu. We also stopped and got another two strawberry sour plum milks to have with our giant doughnut.

Back at the apartment, I marched the kids through a round of showering off our sweat and dirt in preparation for bed and the sabbath the next day. I did more laundry too (some of our batch from the night before STILL wasn't dry) while those who weren't in the shower watched a movie. The plan had been to head out in the evening, perhaps back to Chihkan tower for a concert there or being taken around by Alex who offered to show us more of Tainan, but we didn't have it in us, so we left the kids with their TV viewing, and Q and I ventured out for a late dinner.

What we sought and found was a bian dan (boxed lunch) shop. But we tried ordering American style - choosing what WE wanted - a meat entree and 2 veggies - instead of being given their set volume and portions with only a few items varying by preference. This approach failed, and probably the food wasn't very good anyway. Our methods confused them too, which I found a bit ironic: here we were ordering Asian food the way Americans order and eat it, and it was just too American for the Asians.

So while that was a miss, I was pining to hike back to the pastry shop so Q suggested we just get ice cream bars instead. He chose a red bean bar (why? right? Well, Q LIKES red bean) but I very wisely went with a peanut ice cream bar. It tasted like the peanut butter ice cream shakes I make at home, so of course, Q was very jealous, so of course I shared with him. This ALMOST hit the spot, so when we stopped in to a 7-11 for more water (oh, and we bought bananas for the next morning too), I convinced Q to share a hazelnut filled chocolate wafer bar with me, and that treat completed our date. Who says Mormons don't enjoy a little "wine." This was our intimate, TGFK little moment to unwind and put us in a happy mood for the rest of the evening - just like alcohol, I'm told! :)

We got back, shared dinner with the kids, ran them through brushing, looked up and wrote down directions for the church, contacted Alex, angled 3 fans at the wet laundry, blogged, and went to bed! Phew! What a day!