Trip to QiShan

My Japanese fellow student and I made a trip to QiShan in southern Taiwan. When the Japanese controlled Taiwan, they developed a lot of agriculture for export to Japan. In QiShan the major crops were sugar cane and bananas and tobacco. These are still important crops, but now they are diversifying into coffee and tourism. They have many old buildings from the Japanese time still in use and that is their draw for tourism.

We are still in the New Year's Vacation and because so many Taiwanese are travelling back and forth to their hometowns, it is a bad time to be a tourist. Here we took the train from Tainan to Kaohsiung and the train was packed.

Although we had to stand all the way to Kaohsiung, my Japanese schoolmate said  it wasn't as bad as in Japan where they have "packers" who push the passengers into the trains so that no space is empty. On the bus from Kaohsiung to QiShan we had what I consider the best seats on the bus, looking out the front window.

But the view was obstructed by this big box with a Winnie-the-Pooh watching us the whole way. The box was a left over from the days of thick thick screen TV boxes. As buses age they are regulated to the less popular routes(like QiShan). The high speed buses from Tainan to Taipei have individual flat screens, one per seat. I'm told some buses have seats that are massage seats with electric motors providing a massage the whole way. I'm going to try them next time.
Our bus wasn't a tourist bus, but just the local transportation, most of the passengers had made this trip many times before and were sleeping now. Once in QiShan, we were disappointed because there was a street market on the road of old Japanese buildings, it was like a nightmarket only in the middle of the afternoon.

They still had some interesting things to see though, like sugar case squeezers.

This can't be a very health drink but it has a taste that is different than just plain sugar water, more like a grassy flavor. Coming back to Kaohsiung we could have just taken pictures of the old unused train station which comes from the Japanese time.

Luckily we got seats on the train back to Tainan. But my advice is: "Don't be a tourist during the Chinese New Year's, just stay home and take it easy".