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Da’An - The Beach

After quite a bit of time traveling around the insides of Taiwan we felt it was time to see the ocean! Luckily, Taiwan has plenty of ocean all around it. The nearest 'decent' beach from Taichung (台中) is Da'An (大安). The plan we had set out was to go to a fish market nearby and have a bite to eat for lunch, then to go hang out and 'Skim board' at the beach. A large group of Taiwanese & foreigners arranged it all over a website called couch surfing. So we met up early that morning, (all the carpools had already been arranged) and set off for the fish market!

The fish market had all kinds of types of fish and foods I had never seen before in my life. We also got a type of 'sugar cane' drink that was not very sweet and generally didn't taste very good to me. It was sold everywhere so I think Taiwanese people like it. The different types of fish that we tried were awesome but it takes some guts to eat some of this stuff based off of looks alone. Some people went to a restaurant and ordered quite a few different items, that looked to be the best idea. The fish market was pretty big and pretty filling so everyone had a good time.

This beach was definitely like no beach I'd ever seen before. The tide left about a 1 kilometer gap between the front of the beach and where the ocean actually was. During the evening the ocean quickly crept up about 1 kilometer. That was incredible to me. The beach itself was not that great. A lot of trash about and....windmills. I've never seen electricity generating windmills at a beach before. Many people went a head and skim boarded but I opted out being that I had no swimsuit to wear. It looked like more pain than fun to be honest. The night came pretty quickly since winter is coming near and we left the beach at about 6 for home. Everyone slept quite peacefully on the ride home.