Fili’s world

And I thought walking around carrying an Asian baby gets attention. You want real attention? try walking around Tainan with a religious Israeli couple, that should get the Taiwanese really curious. “What’s that thing on his head?” they ask me, once they realize that I’m the only one with basic Chinese in our small group. Try and explain to a local Taiwanese chewing a betelnut in some Tainan temple what a Kippa (Yamaka) is.

We did the simple Lonely Planet Tainan temples walking tour and I think they had a good time. After hearing so much bitching from some of the foreign students about just everything they see in Tainan it was extremely refreshing to hear that they were completely impressed with everything we saw and everything we did, and that’s coming from a couple who’ve been doing research touring all over the world, recently doing a long one in Japan. Just like showing around Jerusalem to visitors, it was a humbling exciting experience to see Tainan through an Israeli tourist eyes.

We started off in Confucius temple and continued to the impressive well-hidden southern gate.

After buying some drinks we walked further to Wufei temple…

and Koxinga’s shrine.

We headed down the narrow Taiwanese streets to meet some of the old local Tainanese temples, and when we all became tired we looked for a place to sit down and eat the food they brought with them. Mind you, religious Israelis can’t enjoy any of the Taiwanese food that’s not strictly a 100% vegetarian, so they premade some basic food and carried it around till lunch time. We sat down next to a nice looking building with a tourist center and a balcony, only to find out that it’s the Tainan meeting hall constructed by the Japanese 80-90 years ago and currently displaying an international art show, with - surprisingly enough - 2 Israeli artists.

Another interesting thing about showing temples to religious Israelis is that some of those, like the ones I was showing around, believe that they can not enter the temples as those represent the wrong Gods. So, when we visit a temple, I would go inside and have a look while they would admire it or read about it from the outside.

After all those small temples, we ended up at the obligatory Chikan Towers. It was nice to find out that I can get it for free showing my Tainan address on my ARC.

We wrapped things up at the excellent ultra-vegetarian Vonny’s.

It was a very interesting experience for me, showing tourists around Tainan. Should anybody feel like dropping by sometime, Fili Taiwan Tours will be glad to accommodate. I even have a spare room standing by…