Since our Maldives and Tokyo trip with some of my cousins, we’ve been trying to find an excuse every year to travel together as a group. This year, there was no better reason than my 40th birthday ofcourse, so off we went to Tainan for 3 days.
Kids in toll this time, we had to travel a little differently than before. The youngest of the kids was my niece, Maddison, at just 2 years old. We decided that we would skip the sightseeing, the shopping, the wandering, and just focus on the eating this time. 🙂
My cousin Prascilla has always been the master planner for our group travels, and as always, she did a terrific job with all the research, planning, and logistics! Traveling with her always feels easy peasy to us, but having planned a ton of family/group travel myself, I know just how hard her job is and can totally appreciate everything she did ahead of time to ensure our trip goes as smoothly as possible.
For those of us in the Bay Area, we flew to Hong Kong first and stayed for few days before flying out to Tainan with the rest of the group. The flight from Hong Kong to Tainan was just a little over an hour, so totally manageable for the kids.
Upon arrival, we went straight to our hotel, Silks Place, and settled in with the kiddos first. Shortly after, our arranged transportation arrived and lo and behold…..this was what greeted our group of 10 outside our hotel:
“Holy Moly” the kids exclaimed, partly bewildered, partly excited. Even Prascilla, who arranged the transportation, was in shock, because she had asked to book a van for our group. We later found out that Prascilla’s friend in Tainan, who booked the transportation for us, decided to book us a big tour bus since the cost difference was minimal, and it would be more comfortable for everyone.
Our first order of business was, ofcourse, to eat. Prascilla had a comprehensive list ready and gave the instructions to our driver. First stop was a small, local Taiwanese place famous for their savory rice pudding. After that, we hit a number of other places in the area for more yummy food including our favorite CHEESE TART!
That evening, we went to the local night market and tried to hit up as many food stalls as our stomachs could possibly take in. Our favorite was the stinky tofu fries!
The next few days pretty much mirrored that first day. Our tour bus would take us all over town to eat, eat, and then eat some more. In between meals we did make an effort to try to walk off some of those consumed calories, but whenever our tour guide offered to take us sightseeing, we still politely declined. 🙂
My poor niece, Brianne, got very sick on the first night, so she had to stay cooped up in the hotel room for the remainder of the trip. My sis and I ended up taking her to the ER on the second day because her temperature just wouldn’t drop, even after meds. Fortunately, her fever finally subsided a bit on the day that she went home, but we were all bummed that Mimi and Brianne missed most of our outings on this trip.
Before we left Tainan, my dear sis and cousins surprised me with a lovely birthday cake!
