Day 434: Taichung City

Jun 10 - Start out today by going to the Taichung National Theater. As mentioned before, Taichung was meant to be the capital city many years ago and ended up hosting some important buildings by virtue of that.

The district near the theater is a lot more upper class than by the train station where we are staying.

The Taichung National Theater building.

This is a popular place to visit, the main lobby is full of people milling around or on organized tours.

The basement has a children’s reading room, complete with tents. Odette read the few books that were written in English.

The roof of the building had a flower garden.

There was an exhibit on John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family in the theater. Though it was mostly about his positive contributions, there was acknowledgment of the negative propaganda of the time. A reminder of how little things have changed with regard to political distortion in the US.

From here, get a bus west to the coast. It is late afternoon but we go there on the chance that there will be a sunset over the ocean at Gaomei Wetlands. It takes over an hour to get there due to the large number of stops.

The wetlands are next to a line of wind turbines. Quite empty out here, but soon encounter many hundreds of Taiwanese enjoying the evening.

Probably the only sculpture of a mudskipper I’ve seen displayed.

The popular thing to do here is walk out to the end of a winding wooden pier and wade in the mud flats.

There are tons of crabs and mudskippers out here. The tide is going out quickly.

It is really crowded out here. There are signs up prohibiting people from walking in the mud flats, but the pier itself has a stairway leading right down into it. Odette and I take off our shoes and wade around.

Wind turbines in the background.

Barnacles.

Have to high-tail it back to the bus stop for the return trip, as 19:00 is the last chance back to Taichung City.

Taiwan (ROC)