After our daytime exploration of Tainan we return to the hotel and rest for a few hours and wait for the sun to set down before we set out to explore again. It is now cooler and we plan to walk to Shennong Street, a famous relatively older shopping street. We hope to buy some souvenirs and maybe some dinner if we can, we are quite full still from breakfast though. On the way we stop to explore any interesting sight and that mostly means small temples by the roadside, each of them are different and fun to visit.
We are a bit surprised that there are few people on the streets even though it is early evening and we would have expected the streets to be full of people escaping work and enjoying the cooler temperatures. However there is not a lot to do, most shops seem to be closed, a bit surprising really.
The fish market is also closed but that is not that surprising, they are typically open early in the morning when the fishermen bring the catch in. And then we arrive at Shennong Street which is announced by huge colorful lanterns, maybe here the area is more lively?
And yes, it is here where it seems most people congregate. Or at least most people in downtown, there are even a few stores and restaurants open. The street itself is nice but not that different from other small streets we have walked earlier in the day.
There are also a few more famous temples here starting with Jinhua Temple in the middle of Shennong. It is one the smaller side, at least what can be visited by us but interesting as all Buddhist temples are to us.
What is different from the other ones here is the exhibit that shows the history of the temple. Or so we assume, we cannot read the newspaper clippings. But we can enjoy the carvings, especially those of tigers and dragons with the dragons doing weird things with water spouting from their mouth.
At the end of Shennong is another famous temple, Yaowang Temple dedicated to the God of Medicine or Healing. As we approach it it just closes its doors so we can explore only from outside, we thought it will be open one more hour but I guess we had the wrong information.
So we go around it from the outside, and find one open side temple and a very open and popular restaurant right beneath the temple. We have another restaurant circled in for today but otherwise we would have stopped here as it seems the food is good given the many locals eating in.
As we return on Shennong Street we expect the traffic to be higher, it is after all the middle of evening. But if anything most people are gone, maybe it is more of a daytime attraction? Wonder where people go in the evening, or is that not something traditionally done in Taiwan?
On the way back we make a small detour towards our chosen restaurant the Zai Fa Hao Hundred-Year Dumplings. It is more of a hole in the wall restaurant with the seating area outside in the street but it is good enough to have earned multiple entries into the Michelin guide.
By now we are experts on how to order in this type of restaurants. Get the order sheet, translate via Google, enter our order and give it at the kiosk. Of course we have to order the Dumplings, it is named after them after all. And also soup and both of them are really good and the dumpling especially is different from anything else we have eaten in Taiwan otherwise. So a worthy stop before returning to the hotel for our last night in Tainan. Tomorrow morning it is time to go into the mountains to escape the heat for a few days after finishing our exploration of Tainan.
