I visited East Taiwan not West Taiwan! (Day 1&2 vlog)

Alright, so we're at the airport JFK and we're heading to Seoul for our first leg of the flight. It's 22 hours. It's actually my first time going to Asia. Can you believe it? So I'm kind of excited, but also kind of nervous about the long flight because I remember when I was little when I took that long flight. It was a horrible experience. We're in Korea now and we have a long layover, so I'll take this opportunity to look around. First time ever here, so quite excited. So that was my first experience with the ASEAN airline. Never been on one, but it was pretty nice actually. The food tasted great and the service was really nice. So where I'm sitting at is probably the second closest I'll ever be to being to mainland China. I'm at the Incheon Airport, which is actually a few hundred kilometers. We finally arrived. Kind of in a hurry because I have a train to catch in like half an hour. Found my place for SIM cards. Can you believe it? I'm finally in a speed train and it's in East Taiwan, not West Taiwan. There is no Chinese mainland China tourist in Taiwan now. I had a whole conversation with my Uber driver and he is somebody who seems to be... Because you know how there's like three different parties here. You have the Green Party, the Blue Party and also the White Party. So he seems to be more along the White Party and he was telling me the perception that he has about the United States, which is actually dramatically different than what we're used to and then the perception I was telling him about Taiwan, which again is so different. So it's good to talk to people. All right, so our first stop is gonna be finding sandals. Why? Well, for one the hotels didn't provide them because of new law, but also second I didn't bring any and also third it's a staple of Taiwan, these white and blue sandals. So we're gonna go to the sandals store and we're gonna get some for ourselves. Here I've got my sandals ready for the rainy weather. Probably gonna use these in the hotel as well. 100 NTD, which is three bucks in USD. Not bad. It's pretty good quality actually. It has like a... Here, let me show you. It has like a very thick sole. It's got treads on the bottom. So hopefully I don't slip in the rain if I wore these. They're not split-toe like the ones. Actually, maybe I should have gotten the the the thong looking ones. Those might be a little more grippy than than these. But oh well, got them. Look at that. The street gives me like a Japan type of vibe, which obviously in Taiwan there's also history with Japan as well. That's a lot of old Hong Kong action film posters. For this guy belongs to the Green Party, which is the DPP. Here in Tainan, I think most people are pro-DPP or they vote DPP, which is green. Which is actually interesting because if you look at the divide of Taiwan, half of the country that's on the side of the coast that's closer to China is more pro-green and then the other half farther away across the other side of the coast or I guess faces the Pacific more is more KMT, which is the blue. Very interesting. In Taiwan, much like in Japan, they don't have a lot of TV ads when it comes to political candidates like they do in the United States. And so basically people do a lot of street style campaigning and big billboards. It's very old-school for election stuff. It's almost 端午節, which is Dragon Boat Festival, and you have shops doing the rice, I don't know what they're called, zongzi in Chinese, but they're like sticky rice wrapped in some kind of leaves. I don't really like them. Never really liked them when I was little either. Here, finally, Shennong Street. It looks really nice. It's a little bit different than all the other little back alleys. This one has obviously more shops. The paper lanterns look really cute. It's very unique. It's raining really hard. I wish I brought my umbrella. But it's okay. Who needs umbrella? Nice little shops. Oh, there's a graduation up front. It's very cool. This restaurant or what is this, a bakery? I think it's a bakery. The name of it is the emperor does not attend his meetings. And it seems like the emperor is also not in the store. How about we take a take a selfie with him. Hello. He doesn't really like me that much. It's okay. We'll move on. Okay, a lot of stores are closed actually. Well, look at this. So there's a lot of temples. The religious situation here is very diverse. There's Buddhists. There's people that believe in western religions like Catholicism, Christianity. There's also obviously the traditional like Chinese worshiping of different deities. Very cool. This is one of the temples. It's called Golden China. Very interesting. Oh, this is very cool. So I believe I'm correct. These are Dutch tiles. The Dutch have these ceramic tiles that they do. Very similar to like China but Dutch. If I'm correct that is. Hey, look. It's Colonel Sanders. What's he doing here? That's very cool. So there's a very short street, but it has a lot of characters to it. That is a soldier from what? World War II? You think you're getting ice cream, but no, you're just dumping garbage. Now more of the street Very very Japanese. All right, we're gonna go to 7-Eleven and find an umbrella and check out what's in there. I'm gonna get soaked at this point. So maybe I want a poncho instead. Okay, what else do they have? You can get tea eggs here, which is awesome. I might come here for breakfast tomorrow. So these are ten. No, sorry. They you save ten yuan. I don't know how much they are though. You have all kinds of egg sandwiches. Sandwiches. You have fried rice here. You got different kinds of noodles as well. We'll come back. For now, we'll just get a poncho. I'm ready, man. I got my poncho. I got my slippers. So I'm ready for the rain. All right, fit check. Looking good. Oh my god, I'm already sweating. This is gonna be so suffocating. And today's not even a hot day too. Maybe I made a bad decision. I should have wore an umbrella. But it's so hard to walk around with it and then film at the same time. Whereas this one you can just you know do this and sweat your butt out at the same time. How great is that? And the best part is I hope I can fit my backpack behind me. But we're at our place for tonight. The Oyster All You Can Eat. It's a little cute design. It's not open yet. Half an hour until it opens. So we're just gonna walk around until it comes and opens. Very excited for this. So I ended up not being able to go to the All You Can Eat Oyster place because it's outdoor. I didn't realize that until I waited. And obviously it's raining. So I ended up at this lamb soup place. So down in the south of Taiwan, they're also known for lamb soup or lamb, basically lamb dishes. So I'm gonna try this. So the soup is very different. It's like when I'm used to in like northern China, it's like a very very flavorful, very deep like a lot of cumin flavors or a lot of vinegar in it for lamb because it's like very pungent, you know. But here it's like a very subtle flavor. It's very different. So the way they do the soup is use ginger and it gets rid of a lot of the gaminess of the lamb. It has that little subtle flavor, which is actually really good. Because if you don't have it, then you can't even tell it's lamb soup. The meat just falls off the bone. Good morning. It is day two. We're still in Tainan. We're gonna go get the famous beef soup. And then by after we check out, we're gonna go ahead to Kaohsiung via just a train. And then we'll go check out the beaches in Kaohsiung. But first, let's go get some food. Here's the fit check. We've got the sandals. Something very interesting. Most places are only open for about eight hours or so. It's very different because a lot of these places aren't open till 10 or 11 and they close at 5 to 7. So that's like about 8 to 9 hours only. Compared to, you know, a lot of places in America, which is pretty much open from 9 till 10, that kind of thing. Restaurants, even coffee shops, aren't open till 10 a.m. But which is interesting because I thought you'd want to get up early considering it's so hot. Nothing's open except until you get to the street where everything is open. So that's where I am right now. We're here for some beef soup. So this is on the street. It seems like a fish congee. So we're going to try that. Apparently it's part of the Michelin must visit or Michelin guide. So we're going to come back. And next door is where we're going to be eating. Even the way that they do the ginger, which is very interesting. And you get this ginger with a special sauce in it. So I'm going to mix that in. Everything here is like, you think it tastes so bland, but it's actually really well seasoned. And that's the best part is you don't want it to be so, you know, artificially seasoned like with MSG and things like that. Really good. All right, on to our second spot, this is also a famous dish here. It's a mackerel congee and it has this like gelatinous but clear soup. And you have the mackerel balls here. I put some just minced garlic, some a little bit of hot sauce and a little bit of vinegar in this. So let's try it. Let's try it. I don't even know what to call this, like a congee or That's very good. Wow, this is so it's a little bit sweet. It's savory, but it's not overwhelmingly sweet. So this is a bowl of this is just 40 yuan, which is 40 New Taiwan dollars, which is about a dollar. $1.07, which is very cheap, but very good. So this place that they're actually known for this sort of a rice pudding type of situation in a bowl and then they gave you the sauce, the garlic, the the hot sauce and you can add on. Let's try it. It's a savory dish. It's not that sweet. It's actually really, really, really good. All done. So good. We're now at the Anping district, which is in to the west part of Tainan City Center. And behind me is the earliest temple of the sea goddess Mazu, which is actually means the ancestor mother, ancestral mother, something like that, but is the goddess of sea and this temple is allegedly the earliest one on the island. I think they're the Ming dynasty defeated the the Dutch, the Europeans on the island and basically took over and then came the Japanese period and then the Republic of China period, which is until now. So the modern sort of contemporary slash modern history of Taiwan is about 400 years old. Very cool. This is the map of what Tainan's Anping area looked like during the Dutch occupation. So you see there on the bottom right is the fort and then on the other side, there's the island. We're now in front of the Anping fort, which was built by the Dutch East Indian Company. You can see in the back here. Up here is the statue of Koxinga or Zheng Chenggong is a late Ming dynasty general that helped to defeat the Dutch on the island and to establish Ming dynasty's rule of this island. The Taiwanese government is more conscious about the historical preservation of history, right? So even if they're trying to do lay down some infrastructure, they would actually go around it, which is pretty difficult and challenging considering this is an island and land availability is not the most available, so to speak. But they still try to preserve this. Obviously part of history is being able to show people of different generations what happened here and not hide it unlike what they do in China. The Dutch have their trading fort, the trading post here. Then you have the different dynasties in China, the ones from the Qing dynasty, ones from the Ming dynasty. So it's a very good intersection of history of the island and then you also have the Japanese. All right, so I'm taking a break in front of the tree house. Anping tree house. It's a very nice little place and let's talk about Tainan. My experience so far, food is great. The culture here is very different related to contemporary China, which actually I think it's a very normal thing, right? You wouldn't be out of the ordinary to associate this place with anything. But the history of China in that it used to be part of the Chinese civilization, the Ming and the Qing dynasty. And you see this reflected in the way that the city, at least in Anping here, is developed. It's a mixture of European and Chinese influence. But speaking of today, you don't see anything that's closely resembling cultures from mainland China or the post CCP period, which I think is a good thing because I mean for a very long time Taiwan's identity has been Taiwan and not very much of part of China. But still, you know, the language is obviously similar. Here down in Tainan, more people speak Taiwanese dialects than Mandarin. And in fact, I have a hard time communicating with them because of that. But most people still know Mandarin, so it's good. It's a very slow lifestyle. It's very peaceful. It's very quiet. Nothing's open right now. So that's kind of a bummer. Obviously coming from New York, I'm expecting a whole different lifestyle. So this is on me and not on them. Everything else is very nice. One thing I did notice is there's no garbage cans because I think the way that they collect garbage is the garbage truck comes around and there's nobody there to help you, you know, collect trash. So people come out from the street from their homes to throw the trash bags into the garbage truck. So I think that's why there's no public, at least I haven't seen one, public garbage can or garbage bin. But if you're inside a transit station or a train hall, obviously there are garbage bins there. But that's just such an interesting thing. And I think this is pretty common in Asia, too. I think in Korea, you also have a hard time finding Japan as well. But the streets are clean. Nobody, you know, is dumping garbage randomly on the street, which I think is very nice. Just anywhere you look, the streets are very clean in the sense that there's no garbage around.