29 August, 2017
Only 3 days after we leave Sapporo, today’s headlines are that N. Korea had shot a missile over Hokkaido which set off emergency alerts and sirens on the island. It appears good fortune has been with us on our travels through Japan having escaped the severe flooding in Fukuoka, a typhoon in Honshu and the military emergency in Hokkaido. Long may our good fortune continue!
We checked out of the Cosmos Hotel at around midday and strolled the 200 meters to the waiting area for our train. We have reserved seating but we are not sure about how much luggage room there is on these trains.
It turned out that there wasn’t anything to worry about. Although there isn’t much luggage area we had space for our medium-sized suitcases in tiny end-of-carriage racks and the backpacks fitted nicely overhead.
The train was comfortable and the 2-hour ride was quite interesting as we passed through rural areas and unappealing industrial towns.
By the time we arrived in Taichung it was HOT, bloody hot. Our hotel is only about 700 metres from the station but there is no way that we wanted to drag our luggage in this heat in a new city. We caught a cab. Yes, we paid too much but the A$5 cab fare was well worth it.
The town looks and smells very much like a run-down Vietnamese town.
Surprise #1 – the exterior and interior of our hotel are a different story. The hotel is funky modern, our room is large and very neat and clean. We weren’t expecting much for A$75 per day (including breakfast) but this is better than some of the A$300 per day places in Japan. We even have free use of washing machines, detergent and dryers – and an ironing board for grown ups. Since it is free, we do our laundry before heading out to explore the area around the hotel.
Surprise #2 – following our hotel reception’s directions we find a ‘myfone’ shop 2 blocks up to purchase a SIM card. One of the staff spoke English and after listening to what I needed she very quickly arranged a SIM card for 60 days, unlimited calls, 2.2 Gb data, valid for 6 months for 500 TWD (A$22). I can also text and call internationally and incoming texts from the provider are all in English automatically! A great example of excellent customer service.
Surprise #3 – we call into a 7-11 for supplies on our return trip to the hotel. The cashier could speak very good English and when he saw our purchases told us how we could get a discount on a couple of the items.
By early evening it is much cooler outside so we go in search of a suitable restaurant and a car rental outlet. I had checked out prices of rental cars on rentalcars.com while we waited for the washing to finish and found the location of a car rental company near our hotel. Although we have booked a rental car with rentalcars.com when we get to southern Taiwan I have left the rental car for central Taiwan until we arrived here as the hotel has a car rental desk. We have had some bad experiences with rentalcars.com lately such as Sapporo in Japan and the booking for southern Taiwan was quoted in AUD then charged in Euro. Why? Their currency system is pathetic. I even tried to book a car for Western Australia with them and although I had the settings of Australia, quotes in AUD and the pick up in Australia when I tried to pay for the car it wanted to charge my AUD credit card in Euro!! Go figure! Anyway, that was my gripe for the day….
Surprise #4 – it turns out that the local car rental company was extremely helpful and their quote was NTD 5,000 less than rentalcars.com. They even threw in a free Garmin GPS, a 40% discount and we can pay any tolls when we return the car!
Time for dinner. We went in search of Miyahara, a shop which sells a variety of Taiwanese delicacies, has an ice creamery and tea vendor attached next door and a restaurant on the second floor in a converted heritage building.
The place is so popular that there is usually a 3-lane queue on the footpath just to buy an ice cream. By the time we arrived the place was crowded and it was unlikely that we could get in to the restaurant so we headed nearby to our second choice – The Red Brick restaurant.
Surprise #5 – The Red Brick is in a small side street and tonight there is live music. The place is only small but has a good review on TripAdvisor. The menu is small but the food is very good and the drinks are reasonably priced. The music is also pretty good.
Surprise #6 – after dinner we strolled past Miyahara again and the queue for ice cream had diminished so we stopped in for some very nice ice cream and “toppings” (Lynn chose 3 local biscuits – floral, pineapple and almond). The wall art was a cherry blossom tree made from broken white bowls, plates and saucers. Who would have thought that we would find such wonderful places in this town?
I think that our first impressions of Taichung were a bit harsh. So far, the people are lovely, the food is good and the prices are very reasonable. We may need to come back and spend more time here. 2 days will not be enough.
30 August, 2017
Breakfast was a bit ordinary at the hotel but compared to China it is satisfactory. What is it with the Chinese drinking orange cordial rather than proper orange juice? Still, we find enough Westerner food to keep us going for the day. At least the Twinglish keeps us amused.
Not adding butter and jam to bread before putting it through the toaster seems obvious to us. I can’t imagine what goes through the Chinese mind when they do this.
This morning we headed back to the car rental company to complete all the paperwork ready for tomorrow. It is still too hot to really enjoy sight seeing so we just plan to get a coffee at the Cafe across the street from the hotel and update the blog before we head out in the cool of the prevening.
After only finding one decent coffee place in all of Japan (The Double Black in Kiroro) we had low expectations of “Cama Cafe” in Taichung.
What a great find (Surprise #7)! This cafe roasts their own beans and the staff meticulously hand sort the raw beans. This puts a new spin on the term “Bean Counters”. No longer is the term just about Accountants.
Or perhaps she is an Auditor counting the beans for stock?
This evening we have booked in for dinner at Miyahara.
We have a window seat so that we can look out over an abandoned building on the other side of the creek. There is work being done on the creek to create walking paths and space for cafes similar to what was done in Seoul, Korea. Properties along this strip will be very sought after once the beautification work is completed.
Dinner was pretty good but we wanted to save room for some chocolate that we intend to buy downstairs before we head back to our hotel. The chocolate can be bought in slabs so I leave Lynn to buy our dessert and I plan to walk the 1.2 km to check out the night market based on directions supplied by our waiter. Lynn’s excuse for not going on the walk was that she thought that the chocolate might melt and she needed to get it back to our hotel refrigerator as soon as possible.
As it turned out the Taiwanese, or at least the staff at Miyahara, have the transportation of chocolate in hot weather sussed. Not only is the chocolate placed in a beautifully-decorated box (like all the products on sale), the box is also placed inside individual silver cool bags with small packets of freezer gel inside. Clever!
It is a cool 27 deg. C out tonight so the walking is not too strenuous but there is no sign of any night market anywhere near the point on the map given to us by the waiter. Still, I needed the exercise so a walk of a couple of kilometres won’t do me any harm. I came across an accident scene where a motorcyclist was passing a car that turned left. Nobody was seriously injured but the ambulance arrived while I was there just to check out the rider.
There are several night markets in Taichung but just not where our waiter suggested. On my way back from what turned out to be just a post-dinner stroll I came across a number of interesting colonial buildings that were worth a photo.
By the time I returned to the hotel room I was looking forward to either a beer or some of the chocolate, if Lynn hadn’t finished it off already.
Lynn purchased 200 gms of almonds in milk chocolate (rather than the 250 gms that I suggested) for a staggering TWD 900 (A$40). It was worth it! So nice to have a cup of tea and a slab of chocolate after a walk while watching a movie on Netflix.
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