We leave Taiwan tomorrow. Sigh. Part of me is very sad about this and the other part is excited to get back on the road, but that part is so much smaller. Different than any other place we’ve been, Taiwan is more like a second home. This is obviously true for Chien-hui, but even for me this feels true. Over the past five weeks we’ve reintegrated with her family, which has been special. We’ve also reintegrated with the culture and we’re moving at the speed of life here now. Every place you go when you travel full time requires you to adjust to its pace and once you do its unnatural to adjust again to some other place. Ironically, this is exactly why you slow travel.

This past week was the best week we’ve had since we’ve been here. The reason I say this is that we’ve spent almost all of it with family. We started last weekend off with a three-day trip to the south of Taiwan to the city of Tainan. We traveled by high-speed rail with Chien-hui’s brother and sister-in-law and stayed in a hotel in the middle of the city. More on that in just a bit.

Once we returned, we met with Chien-hui’s cousin’s fiancé, Jovian, for coffee and lunch one afternoon. He wanted to give me a bottle of wine as a gift (turns out to be an amazing bottle of wine from the Ardèche, France, from one of his wine distributor friends). Jovian is a brilliant young man in his early thirties originally from Indonesia but who has lived in Taiwan for nearly half his life already. He speaks perfect American English and perfect Mandarin, neither of which are his native language. He taught himself both in the time he’s been here. Jovian works for an American startup in New York that makes memes. I know, who would think that these can make you a living, but it’s remarkable how it all works (and hilarious). Jovian is also some kind of self-taught aficionado on American culture. He and I swapped favorite records, comedians, movies, and other Americanisms. You’d swear he grew up in LA. I am so impressed by this kid who is half my age. I really hope he and Rosa, Chien-hui’s cousin, come visit us someday. Finally, we met with Chien-hui’s family for dinner at a top tier restaurant one evening and then at Din Tai Fung for lunch yesterday. This week has been a lot of great food, but better still was the laughter around the table and the sharing of stories. I’m really going to miss that, and them, and I’m sure Chien-hui is privately hurting knowing we are getting back on a plane tomorrow night.

It’s even better here with many more menu options

We did a practice run on packing. Okay, we’ve done our part for the Taiwanese economy since we’ve been here. So much so that we had to buy the largest suitcase they make to bring our treasures back. This photo shows the tea, coffee, beauty products, pineapple cakes, cookies, various bags, small antique wall hooks, and our newly acquired painting. It does not show all the wine and whisky that is also coming back with us.

As I mentioned we went to Tainan last weekend and I loved it. The journey started like most do in Taiwan by getting on the subway which took us two short stops to the Taipei main station, the true heart of the city. This is where the subway, the local trains, and the high-speed rail (HSR) all converge into one multilevel super-station. It’s also a shopping mall (Of course it is, it’s Taiwan!) You get off one form of rail and go either up or down the escalator to the next type. It’s one of the most impressive feats of engineering I’ve seen, and it made me embarrassed a little for the USA since I know we have the brainpower and the budget for such a feat but lack the will power to get out of our cars. You are left asking yourself, “Why don’t we have something like this?”

Once on the HSR we were dashing south at 185 miles per hour. Here’s me with my face pressed against the window like a child, smiling, as we slithered silently down the tracks, the outside world a blur. Of all the forms of transportation, ships and boats are my favorite. But THEN comes high speed trains. Then cars. And dead-ass-last, are planes. Scooters fit in there someplace, but I diverge. The Taiwanese countryside whizzing past, a beautiful green mélange of large square pools of water with their rice beginning to show above the surfaces, bananas, cabbages, pineapples, and other fruits and greens. Mixed in between these are industrial factories of various types, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, bicycles. I recognized a brand-new Taiwan Semiconductor facility. Then there were the red and orange jewel-toned temples that dotted the landscape and the mountains. The occasional Taiwanese cemetery with their small family plots at random, unorganized angles looking like miniature temples themselves. There was even a baseball field. These rural landscapes are only interrupted by the huge cities we passed through on our way south, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung. It was easy to see everything that makes Taiwan’s powerhouse economy in one hour and a half journey.

Once we arrived in Tainan City, I could feel the pace slacken. It was warmer. There were less people. For me it was like a slipping on a well-worn pair of jeans, they just fit right, and I’d say Tainan had that effect on me over the three days we were there. Everyone was friendly, the Uber drivers were chatty and so proud of their city telling us all the places we needed to go eat or visit. Out on the streets people moved slower and in a more relaxed pace. Chien-hui’s brother was frustrated by this as he is from Taipei where things move quickly. I loved it. I am old.

Tainan is known for its fruit and for its breakfast of fresh beef soup. After we got off the train, we had time to kill before we could check in to the hotel, so we stopped for some fruit. Every kind of Taiwanese tropical fruit, many I had never tried before like jujube, dragon fruit, wax apples, and Taiwanese guava. The woman who prepared our fruit bowls told us that the pineapple was not as sweet as usual because it was out of season. When the bowl was delivered to our streetside tables with plastic stools, I forked a piece of pineapple and expected something fibrous. My head just about exploded from the intensity of the sweetness. Out of season? Oh my God. The best pineapple of my life.

Breakfast one morning was beef broth with fresh cut beef that cooks in the broth, kind of like Vietnamese Phở. Again, we sat on the sidewalk on plastic stools while the soup steamed away in a cauldron five feet away. The stock was clear and deeply flavored of beef and onions. The fresh cut beef, apparently the cow was just slaughtered, was delicious. Breakfast of champions, ready to face the day.

Beautiful packaging design at Hayashi Department Store in Tainan

We went to the oldest department store in Taiwan which was a great experience. It had the first elevator ever put into a building in this country. Each of the five floors were converted into a place that sold modern things, tea, clothing, jewelry, perfume, bags, food. All were the highest quality with amazingly designed packaging. But it was also part museum, which I thought was so clever. What a great way to save an old building and ailing store and convert it into a thriving tourist attraction with high sales of beautiful things. Tainan was the capital of Taiwan for centuries, and it has a strong Japanese influence from when it was a Japanese possession (1895–1945). You could feel this influence everywhere we went in the architecture, the parks, and the food.

We also had the best sushi I’ve ever had one night at a place called KimHo, a small place with maybe eight seats on the second floor of an old building with a 22.5-degree staircase. It felt like a private chef was cooking just for the four of us. I’m not sure I can write about the texture of the fish coming out of this place and do it justice, but the word that continues to stay lodged in my mind is creamy. The chef told me that because he opened his place in Tainan, which is a lot cheaper than Taipei would have been, he can spend more money on quality ingredients. We had a wagyu beef sushi course that was ridiculous. My favorite of the evening was a salmon belly donburi with a cured egg yolk confit.

Salmon belly donburi from KimHo in Tainan

The highlight of our time in Tainan was a visit to the Chimei Museum, a private museum established in 1992 by the wealthy owner of the Chi Mei Corporation, who was from Tainan. The museum's collection is divided into five categories: Fine arts; Musical instruments; Natural history and fossils; Arms and armor; Antiquities and artifacts. The building was custom created for the holdings and designed in neo classical style. The surrounding park with acres of trails, lakes, bridges, trees, flowers, and bushes has speakers hidden in the foliage that gently plays classical music. I’ve never experienced anything like it. What a gift to the people of this fine city. The museum itself has the largest collection of violins in the world and there we saw instruments going back to the 1500s, including prized Stradivarians.

We capped the trip off by sharing a bottle of Premier Cru Burgundy at a tiny French place called L’Escargot. And yes, we did actually have escargot to go with. I suppose this was fitting as we prepare to head back to France.

But Taipei has my heart. The rush of the city. The endless faces. It’s clockwork precision. The irrational mix of cuteness, high fashion, modernity, and old traditions. The high quality nature of everything they do from basic street food, to Eslite book stores, to Taipei 101, to its transportation systems. Everything is first rate. The people here are incredibly patient and kind. They are so friendly and good natured, and I was never once made to feel I didn’t belong here. I am going to miss it and I will be planning my return almost immediately upon departure.

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