SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2015
I am super excited to write this post, because this day was a lot of fun! Hope you enjoy reading it!
Where is our Bus?
After eating breakfast, Tracy and I found directions to get to Rainbow Village. On the map, it’s a bit west of Taichung City. We were told to take bus #27 and get off at one of the university stops. The interesting thing is, Taichung has a very extensive bus system and they have many bus stops right in front of the train station. Using our brains and a map, we were able to figure out where the bus stop was and conveniently caught the 10:40am bus.
Rainbow Village
About 50 minutes later, we got off and walked 5 minutes down the street. We arrived at this village that was painted all over in beautiful colors. Tracy and I proceeded to have a small photo shoot next to these painted walls.
The story behind Rainbow Village is that it used to be a military dependents’ village. In the early 1990s, Taiwan government began an aggressive program demolishing abandoned or decaying villages and replacing them with new high rise apartment buildings. Well, Mr. Huang is a war veteran who has been living in the village for over 60 years. One day, Taichung government decided it was time for his village to be torn down.
Mr. Huang, who is now also known as Rainbow Grandfather, protested in a very unique way. Rather than fight the government, he started to paint. As a self-taught artist, he painted colorful murals all over his home. He used very bright colors and painted very random and imaginative figures, including plants, animals, and monsters. The village is right next to Ling-Tung University and when the students saw what he was doing, pictures of his progress went viral.
The mayor’s inbox was filled with complaints about demolishing his village and the plans to tear it down were halted. He still lives there now with his family.
It’s currently a big tourist attraction and there’s also a street performer in an iron man mask who sometimes plays guitar. Tracy and I stood in line and took pictures with us as well as taking fun photos with us as well. The poses were all his idea. The grandfather and the street performer don’t ask for anything in return.
Hungry!
We get on bus #30 and make our way back to Taichung city and we’re HUNGRY! It’s 2pm when the bus finally drops us off. We walk across the street to this big shopping building. The signs outside indicate that there’s a restaurant on the 3rd floor. We get the entrance and it says, Southeast Asian Market. It felt like we went to Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia all at the same time. The building was a little worn, but that’s okay. We went to the 3rd floor and I asked a guy, where we can eat? He looked at me and said, “What do you want to eat? There’s no Taiwanese food here.” I said, “Anything. Vietnamese food is fine too.” He told me to keep walking straight.
We walked straight and we were greeted with loud music. Did I say music? I mean Karoke. We passed restaurant after restaurants and each of them had karoke. It was like they were battling to see whose karoke could be heard the loudest. As we kept walking down, we saw that there were shops selling authentic Filipino food and Indonesian food, most of which I did not recognize. We also bumped into a group of American guys who were out on a bachelor party. (We had met one of them previously at our hotel.) They recommended that we go to the roof top and to check out an abandoned bowling alley.
We decided to eat at one of the Vietnamese place. I got cold noodles, Tracy got pho, and we shared an ordered of fried spring rolls. The restaurant owner was very nice. He spoke a little English and took a liking to Tracy. His name is Rolly Wang. (I’m not joking.)
The entire meal came out to 140 NTD per person and we thought the food was better than the 600NTD dinner we spent the night before for Mexican food.
Exploring Little Southeast Asia
After lunch, we took their recommendation and went to the top floor. We found the roof top and there was a decent view of the city. But we couldn’t find the bowling alley. So, we took the elevator down to the first floor. However, a lady got on along the way and got off at the 3rd floor. What are the chances? We spot the same group of guys on the third floor! We proceeded to get off the elevator and tell them we couldn’t find the bowling alley. They then invited us to go dancing with them. Why not, right?! They took us to see the bowling alley and we proceeded to the 7th floor, where there were clubs.
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| Abandoned and torn down bowling alley |
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| Roof top view |
Party Goin’ Up on a Sunday
If you read clubs, that’s right. It was a legit dancing club on a Sunday at 3pm. And IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! omg! This was better than the clubs I’ve been to in the Taipei 101 area. I LOVED the music they played. It wasn’t EDM or techno, it was songs that I could jump up and down to and sing along. They played One Direction’s What Makes You Beautiful, and Grease’s You Better Shape Up. I was also surprised to see that there were a decent amount of people there. It wasn’t crowded, but it was busy. They just played music that was really fun to dance to.
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| Us at the club, photo bomb from Ian. |
At about 3:30pm, they had a scheduled police raid. Before we even went into the club, we were told that there was going to be a police raid. Now, you know there’s some money exchanging hands, if the police raid is “scheduled.” Lol. Anyways, at 3:20pm, they warned the club that the police were coming in 10 minutes to check ARC cards. I kid you not, half the club emptied out. So the guys, Tracy, and I continued to have our own little dance party on the dance floor. At 3:30pm, they turned on the lights and shut the music. Everyone proceeded to line up on the dance floor. AND THEN, 20 police officers walk in telling everyone to take out their ARC cards. Like what?! We take our ARC cards out and they scan it, and we were told to go outside to wait. After they were done, they left the club and we were ushered back into the club. Below is a clip of the police officers exiting the club. How many police officers can you count? But, the raid did go quickly and smoothly, and the police seemed nice.
After telling my co-workers this story, I learned that Sunday afternoons is the only time they have. A lot of these southeast Asian workers have to get up early on Monday morning so they party Sunday afternoon so they can go to bed early. Probably as early as 7pm? I don’t know, but my co-workers told me they don’t have good hours and sunday is often their only day off. Who knew there was an entire population of Asian illegals living in Taiwan?
That was a video of us lining up. We left the club around 4pm and took a taxi to Paochueh Temple. It’s about a 30 minute walk, but to catch the light before the sun set, we thought it best to take a taxi. From Taichung train station, the ride cost 150 NTD.
Paochueh Temple
What is cool about Paochueh Temple is that it has a huge golden Buddha. It was a nice walk around the site and I got to take a picture with an elephant!
After that, we walked back to the train station and caught the next train back home.
