Photos taken by Tashi Sherpa (Middlebury College), Student Correspondent for CET Taiwan, Spring 2023
The majority of the weekends I have been in Taiwan, my friends and I have been going on one-night/day trips. Here is a collection of the places we have been to and what we did!
March 17th – 18th: Tainan
AJ, Jackie, Min, and I made our way down to Tainan right after our field trip to the ICDF with our global health class on a Friday. It took us around 4 hours to get to the Tainan bus stop from the Taipei Main Station bus stop. After the long drive, we were starving, so we went to the night market in Tainan!
The next day we went to the Chimei Museum, which was incredible. My favorite part of the museum was definitely the musical instrument collection. Then we grabbed some lunch and headed to the first Confucius Temple in Taiwan. After visiting the temple, we decided to browse the old street before heading back to Taipei.
March 24th- 26th: Datong District, Shihlin District, Ximen
This weekend we had a makeup day class for the long break that we would have the following weekend. Many of our classes for CLD (Chinese Language Division) had a scavenger hunt field day around Datong District, one of the first areas to be known as Taipei City. The area had many traditional medicine markets, tea shops, and temples. It was really cool to see this side of Taipei.
I went to FUFU cat café in Ximen, which was recommended by my friend Jackie and the cats here are the cutest!!
On Sunday, Olivia, my housemate Colm, and I visited the National Palace Museum. The museum was absolutely incredible. My favorite sections of the museum were the ceramics and jade sections. Seeing Himalayan art there was nice since it made me think of home.
March 31st- April 1st: Yilan
Semi-house trip to Yilan, my housemates Olivia, Julian, Colm, and our local roommate Nana planned to head to Yilan after class to stay the night and go to Waipao Beach and Lanyang Museum the next day. Once we got to Yilan, we all headed to the closest night market, Dongmen Night Market. The scallion pancakes with eggs and the peanut ice cream roll was my personal favorite.
April 2nd: Tamsui
My friends Kemal, Sam, Olivia, and I went to Yuan-Dao Guanyin Temple in Tamsui. This was a very special weekend since April 5th is Tomb Sweeping Day, so they had a special Guanyin collection in the lower level of The Thousand Hand Thousand Eye Guanyin Bodhisattva Establishment that is still under construction.
April 3rd: Jiufen, Houtong Cat Village, Shifen
We headed to Jiufen, which looks like it is straight out of Spirited Away. We grabbed tea at A-Mei Teahouse and then got soup dumplings for lunch. Afterward, we headed to Houtong Cat Village and checked out some of the coal museums and, of course, the cats! Taiwan has made me like cats. Finally, we headed to Shifen to check out the old street and Shifen Falls. However, we could not see the falls because we got there a bit late.
April 4th: Yanming Shan
Olivia and I made our way to Zhuzihu in Yangmingshan to check out the Calla Lilies. Then we went to Ba Yan Natural Hot Springs. It was a very relaxing Tuesday.
