A jaunt along the coast of southern Chiayi and northern Tainan

That same quick jaunt will also reveal that this isn't one of Taiwan's more scenically appealing areas: the mirror-like pools everywhere are intriguing at first, but it doesn't take long to grow tired of the monotonous landscape. There are however several good reasons to come to this pancake-flat part of the island.

The area boasts several of Taiwan's best temples, there's excellent seafood and fish meals to be enjoyed at Budai (布袋) Tourist Fish Market on the coast southwest of Chiayi City (not all the countless pools hereabouts are used for evaporating salt), and there's the Black Faced Spoonbill Reserve at Chigu (七股) just north of Tainan City, a thoroughly ordinary and rather bleak stretch of coast which just happens to attract a large proportion of the world's few remaining Black Faced Spoonbills, which spend winter here.

Chigu is famous not only for endangered birds however, but also for salt. The small, nondescript village is surrounded by huge shallow pools, used either for rearing fish or for evaporating salt. Most of Taiwan's salt industry is now automated, but in a couple of spots around Chigu, salt extraction is still done the old way. Chigu's most famous salt-related 'attraction' is the salt mountain.

Apparently the twenty meter-high mound, which contains about 50,000 tons of salt is worth a staggering NT$120 million, but was abandoned here when processing salt this way became uneconomical.

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