Good day to all from World Map Pin community, hope all of you are doing fine this lovely weekend. I am really sorry that this is super overdue to continue and finishing up on the sharing of my Taiwan trip. Work was overwhelming throughout the year till right now I have a little more breathing space and can continue writing about the trip. But nevertheless, I am thankful to be back to share on this amazing Taiwan trip that I had with my wife because this is such a great trip. The cover in the photo is taken at Zhongshe Flower Garden which we visited during the trip and will be covered in more detail in the post today. So let's get started.
Background
This Taiwan trip is a week long trip that I planned with my wife and we went to quite a number of less travelled locations. The trip include many places that most people going to Taiwan will not include in their itinerary and that is why I would want to share it with the community on these amazing places that my wife and I explored.
Join us as we explore the various less mainstream locations in Taiwan.
Here are the links to the previous post on this series of exploring Amazing Taiwan:
Part 1 Fort Zeelandia - @vaynard86/exploring-amazing-taiwan-part-1-fort-zeelandia-tainan
Part 2 Anping Treehouse and Da Dong Night Market - @vaynard86/exploring-amazing-taiwan-part-2-anping-tree-house-anping-old-street-and-da-dong-night-market-tainan
Part 3 Murals, Snail Alley and Hayashi Department Store - @vaynard86/exploring-amazing-taiwan-part-3-street-murals-snail-alley-and-hayashi-department-store
Part 4 Beimen District with Beimen Crystal Church and Jingzaijiao Salt Fields - @vaynard86/exploring-amazing-taiwan-part-4-exploring-beimen-district
Part 5 Taichung Train Station, Miyahara and Feng Chia Night Market - @vaynard86/exploring-amazing-taiwan-part-5-leaving-tainan-for-taichung
Zhongshe Flower Garden
To get to Zhongshe Flower Garden, all you need to do is to take a local train from Taichung Station to Tai'an Station. And from Tai'an Station, you can choose to walk (about 20 mins) if the weather is not too hot or take a taxi (5 mins).
While the translation calls this place a flower garden, the meaning in Chinese is actually sea of flowers because there are so many flowers that can be found here in my big amounts.
One special tip from me, if you are coming over in the morning, do skip your breakfast and do a brunch at the BBQ area.
The reason is that the price of the entrance ticket here is 120NT, but if you eat the BBQ buffet here for 380 NT, you do not need to pay extra to enter the garden. So take 2 meals together for 380 NT and see flowers for free.
So for me and my wife, we definitely went for the BBQ and it was a feast. Loads of meat available and they also provided a pot of soup for us to cook some vegetables to counter the greasiness of the meat. All in all, this meal was well worth it and we enjoy it thoroughly.
After having our food, it is time to wander into the world of flowers that await us in the garden. Many variety of flowers are on display which are all blooming well. And to make it less boring, there were structures that bring out the beauty of the flowers. And below, I will let the flowers do the talking.
The garden is huge and had so many variety of flowers on display. It is not overly crowded but we really enjoyed the experience here.
Rainbow Village
After departing from Zhongshe Flower Garden, we headed back towards Taichung City to visit a special place called the Rainbow Village. This is a unique place that speaks of the dedication of a former soldier whom fled to Taiwan whom had transformed his military village into a vibrant art space with his unique artwork to prevent this village from being demolished by the wrecking ball. He made every wall and surface available in the military village into a beautiful mural and art piece. To fend off the land developers, this soldier self learnt painting and created a miracle to reverse the decision from the land developers to keep this place. And this soldier is commonly known as Rainbow Grandpa and from what we understood, before his passing, he would interact with tourist when they visited Rainbow Village.
There is a special vibe to the way Rainbow Grandpa paint and it is really uniquely his style. However, there was a tragedy that struck this place in 2022 as vandalism and a couple of murals have been defaced. At 98 year old, Rainbow Grandpa was not able to repaint those murals. But thankfully, the municipal invited schools and local artist to contribute and give the defaced murals a new look.
This place is free of charge for entry and I personally think that by visiting and seeing how Rainbow Grandpa's will to keep his place and how the community come together to restore the defaced murals displaying strong community spirit against those vandals. It is a place that showed community spirits and solidarity against bullies. A worthy place to drop by, understand its history and look at beautiful murals.
Before we wrapped up the day, we spotted a cute cat themed cafe just across the road from Rainbow Village and decided to pay it a visit since we were also tired from a whole day of sightseeing. Nice place to chill and relax where we had a nice cup of coffee with a slice of cheese cake before we head back towards city central to get our dinner.
Closing
An awesome day out in the sea of flowers where we saw so many beautiful flowers blooming so nicely. The weather was great too as it was not too hot elevating the experience of the visit. We also got to visit Rainbow Village to learn about its history and the spirit of solidarity against land developers and vandalism displayed by Rainbow Grandpa and the municipal. A very nice day as we wrap up a full day of sightseeing in Taichung.
Thank you for walking along with me to explore the places I shared today and see you around in the community. See you in my next post on Exploring Taiwan in World Map Pin!
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