Tainan Pictures
I went to Taiwan recently, and I thought I’d share a few of my pictures. I won’t pretend to know anything, because this was one of very few times that I did absolutely no research about the country I was visiting prior to…visiting. I knew woefully little about Taiwan before I stepped off of the plane. I basically knew that Tainan (台南), Taipei (台北), and Taiwan (台湾) all share kanji. I knew that Taipei was the capital and that Tainan was the more cultural city, being the oldest on the island. I knew the basic gist of the country’s political history from my Asian Studies classes back in college…but that’s pretty much it. 
And if I’m perfectly honest, I still don’t know very much. So I’ll leave the instructive sounding stuff to other people and just show you random shots that I liked for one reason or another. I’ll sum up stuff that I “learned” after the gallery.
I did “take away” some observations, in spite of my total tourist mentality (or perhaps due to it?). 1) Tainan is way cooler than Taipei for the lazy casual cultural tourists. I’ll elaborate on this when I post my Taipei pictures. Here’s an analogy for you SAT-prep nerds out there. “Tainan” is to “Taipei” as “Kyoto” is to “Tokyo.” 2) The ridiculous stuff is often cooler than the famous stuff. I honestly thought the Anping Tree House was cooler than Anping Fort, which is the more historical and more widely known attraction in the same area. 3) The Dutch were freakin’ influential EVERYWHERE. Ha ha. Going through the museums and histories, I often found myself wondering if things had gone differently, would Dutch people rule the world? 4) Night Markets are the coolest thing to do by a long shot. Way cool. Still couldn’t bring myself to try stinky tofu, though. (臭豆腐 = literally “smell” + “bean” + “rot” according to my limited / Japanese understanding of the characters. [Obviously, 豆腐 is "tofu" normally. I separated it for effect.] Whew. Very accurate name.) Most people who’ve tried it say that they love the stuff, but dude…..I had to hold my breath to walk by the little stalls selling it. I’m all for expanding my formerly uber-picky culinary horizons, but I just don’t think I’m there yet. 
By the way, the English “fermented tofu” seems redundant to me, since tofu is “fermented soy bean curd.” But yeah, that should tell you how pungent it is – it’s twice rotted! Ha ha. 5) Walk everywhere you can. Only take cabs for long distances. You get to see so much more of the city. Anyhoo, like I said, I’m still unfortunately ignorant of a lot of cool stuff in Tainan, but I got to know the city over a few days. Good times. More on the Taiwan trip – specifically Taipei – later.
