christmas, travel to Tainan and a good looking corner

This will be the second last post in Taiwan. The end is coming near...

And it's been Christmas!

Little Lihong :D

Christmas-concert in Taipei :D

Unfortunately Jiaxiascha had been sick, so we couldn't go for paintball. Instead we had a small Christmas celebration at Ankers place with an authentic christmas tree and delicious snacks! And this year I received absolutely zero christmas gifts :D But thats fine, recently I feel that I really don't need any more stuff but rather want to get rid of things - "The things you own end up owning you"
And of course this also meant that I was saved from the hustle of buying gifts for other people ;-)

Christmas tree lazy-german-guys-style

some lovely Christmas-snacks lazy-german-guys-style

A last tribute to the food here - so aaaaawesoooome and cheap!

coconut noodles

something-something

And this weekend I have been to Tainan with Jiaxiascha, Taiwans oldest city, famous for its distinct culture and temples. 

The christmas-spirit in Tainan!

"good looking corner" (see next picture)

sweet potato snack

boat trip with lots of old people that seemed very excited about it

Additionally we had been hoping for better weather compared to Taipei as it's relatively far south. Sadly in terms of this we have been disappointed and it was still quite cold down there; at least no rain though -.- I'm really really looking forward to the next trips to Southeast Asia. I'm sick of feeling cold - right now I'm wearing 5 layers of cloth (Tshirt, 3! sweaters and a jacket). 

I guess that my surface/mass coeficient is just highly inefficient - I'm too tall and thin in relation to my surface!

For the way back I opted to take the slow train to spend less time in my cold room - seriously! -.-

what a useful construction!

And recently Anker discovered a cool app to make funny shortclips with. Here some impressions from our travel in Tainan

here a guy was so nice to take us to the next bus stop on the loading area of his car.

Our fancy hotel room! :D

And again, the Taiwanese we met have been incredibly friendly and helpful. We even got a free Taxi ride - the driver just didn't want any money from us! How awesome is that?!
And we had some success moments regarding our Chinese: We successfully managed to ask our hotel receptionist for help in reserving a room at the next city we were heading to :D yay! That would have been completely impossible a few weeks ago.

somethings missing
Superstitious Chinese think 4 and 9 bring bad luck

On the way back we made a stop at a famous mud hotspring place, that was quite pleasent. However from the term mud hot spring - one of 3 locations worldwide we had expected real thick mud and instead it turned out to be just a "normal" hotspring with dirty water. But still there are few things more enjoyable than a hotspring!

All in all, I didn't feel Tainan to be very special though. I found Taipei and Kaohsiung much more interesting. Nevertheless we had a pleasent time there including a bike tour and delicious nightmarket snacks of course.