Tainan

Adventuring outside of Taipei, we took the High Speed Railway down to Tainan.  Accidentally missing the tourist booth at the station that had maps, bus schedules etc. we found it rather difficult negotiating the city.  Tainan is about a 20 min free shuttle bus ride from the station.  However, we were uncertain as to where the shuttle bus stops were, so had to keep oriented all the time so we knew how to get back to the station.  After walking for a few miles trying to find the City tour bus, we managed to find it.  However the guide books said it was free on weekends....NOT!  Our first ride was free because we didn't figure it out....and we haven't had much luck finding people who do speak English here.  Regardless, we managed to have one of the best zhongzi for lunch, find one of the two forts, find the old city and walk around, eat ice cream (it was about 70 degrees down there) find the HSRT shuttle bus stop and make it back to the rail station.  Success!?
K

It was the our first time out of Taipei and it was on the high speed rail ! You know that I said that they strap rockets on the back of the metro? Those aren't  rockets they're fireworks in comparison! Eventually  we got to our destination and we caught the shuttle bus. What ensued was chaos. First we got off at a stop and tried to find a temple we passed.Then we decided to walk to the city hall, with moved farther away as we walked.  Then we tried to find a specific bus that apparently didn't stop at the city hall so we had o walk all the way back to the bus stop we were first at then we got on a bus that stopped at a fort but apparently we were going the wrong direction so we got off the bus and visited the fort. We caught the bus in the  other direction. We got off at the old part of the city, found an Oyster kiln (where they made a type of lime, just like in Williamsburg!) and went to a tourist market then caught the right shuttle to the station.  What did I learn? One, that the buses aren't free on Sunday like they advertise and two, each bus driver has a different fee.

Me,
Out!


The buses in Tainan are confusing because there was no english so we were confused (everything was written in traditional Chinese characters....not even any pinyin).  There were many stops but we didn't know which one was which. So, mom thought that mabye we could find the bus by walking down the road which took us to the city hall. We realised that we the bus that would take us back to the high speed rail stopped just outside of the city hall. But since we didn't see the right stop for the city tour bus, we walked all the way back. We finally got onto a bus which we hoped would take us somewere mom wanted to go. It did. It took us to a fort that mom wanted to see. So that was a plus. We also went to a market where we ate ice cream filled corn shaped case. After we finished eating the ice cream filled corn thing, we got onto the bus and headed for the HSRT shuttle bus stop at city hall, then to the HSR, and then home!