Tamshui Weekend

10-21-13

      The barbeque with Leona’s cousin’s family is out because her son can’t get a ticket back from college and her aunt’s boyfriend doesn’t want to come. Next Friday, Leona said twelve of her college friends and significant others will have a dinner we’ll join in Taichung.

      Leona made reservations at a hotel in Tam-shui for next Saturday night. I suggested she come up with me to Taipei Saturday and stay overnight before we head back to Taiwan University for the 2pm Wobbly meeting. I don’t want the meeting to be the only reason I’m heading north. Having fun with Leona is much better.

 

10-26-13

I am sitting in the lobby of the See Hotel in Tan-shui with Leona upstairs in the room. We have a nice view of the river and the mangrove and the land across the river where, Leona reminded me, a woman in a coffee shop killed two of her customers out of greed. When I'm finished with this I will go upstairs unless Leona comes down in the meantime. There is breakfast in the hotel which she'll probably want to have before we step out for the day. We now have five hours until the IWW meeting near Tai-Da University in Taipei. It takes under an hour to get there from here. We will probably leave here by twelve so we can have lunch at that Thai restaurant we like.
We got into town at 3pm yesterday and walked from the train station to the hotel. After a brief unromantic rest, we took a minibus to "Old" Street downtown. It was funny because the area where our hotel is like the Rivera with nothing but mangrove and water and mountain in front of the road and MRT train but once you get up the hill to the north a thousand feet away, it is typically shabby Taiwan with motorcycle repair shops and bing-lan stands, and tons of traffic. The "Old" street is kind of nice winding near the shore of the Tan-shui River with old shops and plenty of food and things to buy. We had dinner there at the city's oldest seafood restaurant; fresh steamed fish, shrimp, oh-ah (fried oyster) and an interesting cold vegetable that tasted a little like bamboo shoot. Leona said it was a seasonal plant that grew in stalks along the waterside. I have no idea what it is but it was good.