We took our bags to Chinese lessons today – it was the other teacher who is much, much better than the one on Monday. She took our Line accounts (which I created only for the purpose of Taiwan travel as I don’t use it otherwise), and has been sending up pictures and videos all day. We took our bags because in the afternoon we would have to go to Taipei Main Station to catch a train to Chiayi. So after the lesson we went to the station, had a terrible lunch which made me horribly grumpy and then found a subterranean cafe to work in. Both I and the GF worked frantically, trying to complete our tasks before leaving for holiday – he succeeded, I didn’t, so did some work at night as well. Meanwhile the Woodland Creature and the Boddhisattva went to find their friends who are here with us. This is a couple where she is a fey Singaporean who is obsessed with snacking, and he is a Russian who likes to sleep. They both seem pleasant, not at all a bad group to spend a holiday with, and there is certainly a never-ending stream of snackables emerging from their bags, most from Hokkaido, their last stop.
Then the train and we arrived in Chiayi, a small town on the southwestern coast. Very different feeling from Taipei, a definite backwater of a place. Our train up to Alishan is in the morning, so we checked into a quite nice hotel, with a mystifying dinosaur theme, and went out for dinner.
Dinner was one of the best meals I’ve had since arriving in Taiwan. A sort of Taiwanese fishhead curry, mild but complex, with lots of tofu and tofu puffs and things floating in the soup, and the option of having rice or thin udon style noodles. Quite delicious. After this we went for Chinese style desert, the soupy kind in soya milk, again quite nice, and then the GF and I parted ways with the rest to stroll a little by ourselves. We found a little city park, with some impressive buskers – all singers who had courteously set out rows of chairs for their audience, and the latter were also courteously engrossed in the performance. All very polite.
The dominant street food appeared to be strawberries on sticks, with a shining glaze.
Then back to our room, where I am now working.