The National Museum
After the Presidential Palace our tour took us to the National Museum where they have two shiploads of treasures removed from Peking for ‘safe keeping’ by the fleeing Nationalists when they set up here in 1949 after losing the mainland to Mao and the Communists. They also ‘saved’ China’s gold reserves.
Posterity will no doubt see it as the greatest art theft and gold heist in History. Photographs were not permitted.
By now it was lunchtime. Our tour involved visiting the town of Tamsui at the mouth of the Tamsui River.
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Note that a few of these photos - and obviously the ones with me in them - were taken by Clint, our guide
This was one of the sights of the early Dutch East India Company trading colony. Other early traders included the British who introduced tea and camphor, sugar and bananas - still important agricultural exports but unfortunately for us ‘packages’ more time was allocated to wandering down the tourist shopping street and sampling the street fare for lunch than for visiting such ancient points of interest.