Exploring Amazing Taiwan Part 1 - Fort Zeelandia, Tainan

Good day to all from World Map Pin community and wishing all whom celebrate the Lunar New Year a blessed Lunar New Year. After a short break from post in the community, I am back again to share with you on my latest adventure in amazing Taiwan. This is year end trip that I had with my wife to round up the year of 2024 and to reward ourselves for the crazy and busy year we had for 2024. This series where I explore Taiwan will include places in Tainan, Taichung and Taipei that not many people go and mainly cover places that are less mainstream though there will still be some mainstream locations that I cannot avoid. And for today's cover photo, it will be the place the place of interest that I will be focusing on, Fort Zeelandia. I did add a little filter to showcase the old age of the place and give it a little rustic look.

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. In terms of the general direction of travel, we took a flight from Singapore to Taipei via Scoot, a budget airline which is a subsidiary of Singapore airlines. And because the only direct flight option we had was into Taipei, we actually chose to take a High Speed Rail all the way down to Tainan where we started our journey and travel back up north into Taichung and finally back to Taipei before heading back to Singapore.

Join us as we explore the various place in Taiwan and let's begin this amazing journey.

Getting To Tainan
Before I get into the main highlight of the location that I will be sharing today, I would like to spend a few moments to share how I got to Taiwan and how we transited down to Tainan from Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei.

In order to access the High Speed Rail (HSR) station which is a distance away from the airport, you will need to take the Taoyuan Airport MRT to the Taoyuan HSR station. From the arrival hall, take two left turns and go down a series of escalators till you see this entry point where you will enter into the Airport MRT region. From there, take the Airport MRT towards the HSR station. Quick tip, there is an express train from Airport to HSR so do take that instead of the regular trains which will stop at multiple stops. The below is the route to take, so if you are taking the express train, it will be from A12 through A13 and A14a, then direct towards A18 which is the HSR station.

Airport MRT is very well equipped, spacious an it comes with Wifi and even wireless phone charging capabilities.

Once you arrive at Taoyuan HSR station, if you've already pre booked your tickets, you can go to the counter to collect. I've managed to book tickets for me and my wife via Klook and we've also gotten reserved seat. After getting the tickets, time to head on down to the platform for the HSR ride down south which will take slightly above one and a half hours. Some important tip here, please keep your HSR ticket as it will come in handy later.

After the 1hr 40minute train ride, my wife and I finally arrived at Tainan, our first location of our journey. I think many people travel to Taiwan, Tainan will be a place that will be less visited because it is not as developed in terms of metro services like in Taipei or have great geographical terrains like in the eastern part of Taiwan. But I will change this perspective for you as I will share with you the beauty of Tainan as I explore. Upon arrival, me and my wife had growling stomach and what better way to start the day than to head over to 7 Eleven to grab some light breakfast and coffee.

To head to Tainan city, this is where the HSR ticket that we kept becomes useful. One can take the H31 bus to the city using the HSR ticket free of charge. This bus route also cut through many nice attractions that we can visit so good to take note of this particular bus and its route.

Upon reaching the city, we've headed to our hotel to deposit our luggage as it was not check in time. A nice and simple hotel with friendly staff await us and help us to navigate ourselves around. Next we headed for the place we want to go and the focus for today's post, Fort Zelandia.

Fort Zelandia
Surprisingly while not very established for within city metro, Tainan's bus network is actually really good and we had no issues getting to Fort Zeelandia. After a 20 minute bus ride from the hotel, we have arrived at Fort Zeelandia.

Entrance fees goes at 60NT, which is approximately S$2.50 and very affordable.

Fort Zeelandia is also known as Anping Old Fort was build by the Dutch when the western part of Taiwan was ruled by them. This place become an important location for trade due to its strategic location. This place was then conquered by Ming Dynasty's Koxinga. A place with mixed heritage with influence on from both the Dutch and Chinese/locals, it served as a stronghold for this location with it being the tallest building in that time.

There is also a part wall that went through the battles being preserved till today. These walls are special as the bricks are imported from Batavia. And this is the only part that remained which was from the Dutch era.

Next we will look at the Fort itself where it had many canons facing towards the sea to fend off external threats which can be closely monitored from the raised fort.

We also made a short walk up the Fort tower and we had a good view of Tainan city from it. And I also witness the strong structure of the fort tower internals that held it up strong against even the typhoons that Taiwan tend to face during monsoon season.

And there is also a small exhibition area beside the fort tower to showcase how the various colours were being made during that period with the natural produce in the area. And it is amazing how the natives back then is able to use simple things around us to make this place so beautiful and colourful.

And with this, I've come to the end of sharing of Fort Zeelandia. There is more to be shared in Tainan and I will continue sharing more in my next post. Tainan is a real treasure place which I've managed to discover alot more on its beauty and heritage.

Closing
This is just the start to my adventure in Taiwan and a snippet of what've visited. I have much more to share in subsequent posts and make sure you stay tuned to them. The place that I visit this time round is less mainstream but filled with various other elements like heritage, nature and civilian efforts.

Thank you for walking along with me to explore the place I shared today and see you around in the community and in my next post on Exploring Taiwan in World Map Pin!