On Friday, I decided to take my father to Taijang National Park with the scooter! Yes I have rented a scooter and become almost Taiwanese now!! If you plan on renting a scooter, make sure you get your International Driver's License before leaving your country.
It was a 20min scooter ride from downtown Tainan to the park on a beautiful Friday afternoon. The first stop we made in the park was: The Taijang Campus (台江學園水上屋) because it was marked as a scenic spot on Google Maps 😜 Well we first entered into the building which we thought was the visitor center but it happened to be a police office! When they saw us entering they quickly yelled for a young women to come help us in English and tell us that we were not in the right spot! We did however find the Visitor's center behind the police station where a lovely woman speaking perfect English explained to us where the boat ride we were looking for was. She was so nice, she thought I was a student or a teacher! Which I would feel super flattered if my face wasn't covered by a mask and a hat I was wearing. I doesn't help either that since Covid started the only non-Asian people in Tainan are either students or teacher living in Taiwan!!
It only took a 10min scooter ride thankfully to get to the correct spot: Sicao Green Tunnel
(四草綠色隧道)
Taiwan's eighth national park, Taijiang covers a patchwork of coastal lands north of Anping Harbour. The 50 sq km of land and 340 sq km of sea include tidal flats, lagoons, mangrove swamps and wetlands that are critical habitats for rare fish, crustaceans and mammal and bird species.
The ride is actually pretty short, about 30 minutes total and unfortunately because during these crazy times we were the only foreigners on the boat, the tour was narrated in Chinese... A few years ago when I took the tour with a customer, we were able to spot a lot of strange looking small crabs. Strange because those little crustaceans have one claw a lot bigger than the other: male fiddler crabs.
I looked up on Wikipedia these types of crabs and I found this specificity of the fiddler crab rather amusing:
Fiddler crabs live rather brief lives of no more than two years (up to three years in captivity). Male fiddler crabs use the major claw to perform a waving display as a form of female courtship. Females choose their mate based on claw size and also quality of the waving display
Even though we did not see any crabs this time, it was a fun ride! We even met a 30 year old Taiwanese who heard us speak French and started translating some of the tour guide's speech for us. After the tour we asked him where he had learned French and he said in the south of France, in Valence. I wasn't sure I heard right so I made him repeat, after all how were the odds of running into someone who spoke French (right now because there are almost no tourists or foreigners) but who actually studied and lived in the same town where we are from!!! Such a small world!
My dad and I after the boat ride!
Sicao Dazhong Temple 四草大眾廟
Next to the tunnel is a gorgeous enormous temple dedicated to the Marshal of the Sea.
The Sicao Dazhong Temple (四草大眾廟) enshrines the Marshal of the Sea (or Dazhong Ye), called Chen Tze (also known as Chen Yu), a Taiwanese general of Koxinga.He was known for his bravery and skill at fighting, and once defeated over 300 Dutch soldiers, but was betrayed by traitors and committed suicide by throwing himself into the ocean. It is said that when he died there was howling wind and torrential rain, the sky darkened, and his body stood on the sea and floated to the beach at the current site of the Sicao Dazhong Temple.The shrine was established in the 39th Year of the Kangxi Reign in Qing Dynasty (1699), praising his outstanding military service and honoring him as the Marshal of the Sea, beginning the temple's 200 years as the belief center of Sicao, Annan District.
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