On New Year's Day, Phil and I ventured up early and set off with pupil/friend Cecilia and her husband to Tainan, which is a city in the Southern half of Taiwan, and the centre of old cultural Taiwan.

We spent a very nice, long, and exhausting sunny day looking at Tao and Confusian temples and old navy forts that were used to protect Taiwan when it was ruled by the Portugese, in the 17th century I think. These two forts were actually a little inland as parts of Western Taiwan around Tainan have been reclaimed from the sea, Netherlands-style.

Cecilia really made the day special, as without her self-depreciating tour guide narrative, we'd just have been two confused blokes wandering around some old bits and pieces.

As is the custom here, we didn't pay for anything all day. We were taken to an almost Western style restaurant made completely out of driftwood (there's a chain of these places around the island), while the chain's founder was interviewed by a famous Taiwanese TV presenter near where we sat.

So, a shedload of tasty pork, beef, weak soup, rice, fish and all sorts. Followed by an afternoon of playing kid's shooting games in the market, more temples, then after hitting a huge CD shop and stocking up on British (yup!) magazines, we took Cecilia's son Pepe (sorry yes, he'd been with us since the morning as he lives with Cecilia's mum in Tainan), back home.

There Cecilia fed us all manner of further tasty nosh, literally until we couldn't stand up. I can't begin to describe it all, but there were 4 dishes and I finished the lot (followed by green tea, cookies, fruit and chocolate).

Since then, I've actually done a bit of exercise and also had a demo lesson yesterday with my most advanced class, which was none-too-amazing but still pretty interesting (in that it's now over!).

Gotta go, running out of net cafe cash!