The western end of Tainan is Anping, which was once a bar of land or sand enclosing wetlands and lagoons. Yesterday we took a taxi there (I fear my resolve to take buses has been broken by the heat), stopping for a terrible lunch. The GF didn’t think it was as bad as I did, but I was also not feeling particularly well and was in the uncomfortable position of being hungry and not wanting to eat. It was a vegetarian restaurant – sadly, the GF’s new dietary restrictions mean that this is often the type of place I find myself at – and much of it tasted like it had come out of a packet (eg a ramen pack) but with all salt and alliums removed, leaving not much at all.
It was very hot and I was feeling quite unwell – nothing serious, a lady’s complaint – but we staggered on to Fort Zeelandia where the site museum had blessed air conditioning and a place to sit in the room playing a film. The film was peculiar: an animated tour of the museum itself, and one could see what it was showing through the half-open door – but it was good to sit down for a few minutes. The fort itself was perfectly pleasant – there was a very nice overgrown wall, some trees, a few trenches for excavation, and the fort itself, rising up high enough to catch a breeze but not so high that climbing up felt like a hassle in the sun.
We went on for coffee and here I ordered a hibiscus which turned out to be very good indeed, reminding me of the karkaday we drank in Upper Egypt some years ago. This (along with a paracetamol) revived me, and I thoroughly enjoyed the next stop, at the old merchant house where there was a despairing attempt to allude to history with the usual model of a European sailing ship, but the real attraction was the house overgrown by massive banyans, up and down the walls and acting as a decayed roof. Very attractive and I say this as one who visited far more overgrown buildings around Siem Reap. Here it was, as is usual in Taiwan, carefully tamed, with walkways taking one to the level of the roof, and carefully installed metal beams to support the structure without ruining the appearance. The walkway led out for ten metres or so into the wetlands by the house, and suddenly it became quiet and far away from the city, the view of the sea blocked by a high path running along a tall green-fringed bank.
We went on to find the path. It turned out to be what seemed a very pleasant bike path, though without much of a view over the sea as it was blocked by a hedge. Every now and then, however, we got a glimpse – not the sea after all, but a slow, wide SE Asian style river or inlet.
We went down to a lower path, passing a very healthy nest of rats (country rats, so less vile, I hope, than city sewer dwellers) and walked some distance there, passing wedding shoots (two brides, one groom; perhaps it was a wedding dress shoot) and a Crufts style training ground for dogs. Funny business, dogs. When we climbed back up the hedges were gone and there was a fine view over the flat tropical river and across to where it met the sea and the waves of the South China Sea suddenly appeared.
Eventually we got to a road and hailed a taxi, and returned for a quiet dinner and an excellent film: Tokyo Godfathers by the late, lamented Satoshi Kon. Superb stuff, despite the somewhat cringe-worthy caricature of the trans character, at least early on.