Trip to JiaSian

From Kaohsiung, we took a day trip to JiaSian. Three years ago JiaSian was almost wiped out by flooding after typhoon rains hit Taiwan. But the town is coming back. On it's telephone directory it has a picture of the town before the rains hit:

And the same scene(one the backcover of the telephone directory) after the flooding, you can see that most of the vegetation was washed away:

But after many residents moved away, the town is now rebuilding(on higher ground) and attracting tourists with two draws: taro and fossils. Taro is a tropical plant with a starchy purple tuber. I think it is the same plant that Hawaiians use to make  poi. Here is the statue of the taro plant from the bus as we drove into JiaSian.

And here is how it is sold along the street, I think anything you can do with a potato, you can do with taro. (But taro ice cream is pretty good, while I don't think potato ice cream will make it.)

Besides the taro ice cream and pastries, they did have some exotic food, fried grasshoppers. After frying, almost everything tastes the same, so I really couldn't describe how fried grasshoppers is any different than fried shrimp or chicken.

Because JiaSian is up in the mountains, the local people are mostly aborigines and the missionaries have been hard at work up there. So every once in awhile we get the biblical signs.