Last night John, Heidi and I went to the Raohe Night Market. Think a street packed with vendors crossed with State Fair activities and food, with a healthy dose of fortune tellers. Pay extra and a bird will pick out your fortune!
Heidi and John introduced me to a number of Taiwanese foods. Food for this trip will be tricky, not only because I care a lot about what’s in the food. I have a strong bias against street food. Part of that is probably getting sick when I was in Bulgaria. Part is probably having a father who’s a health director. And of course having no idea what’s in it.
And part is that Taiwan is generally grungy. Many of the restaurants are just little holes in the wall. And with my language limitations, it’s hard for me to tell what anything is in the first place!
It took a while to find a place for tonight. The first place I found was only $18, until I realized it was only for 3 hours. John pointed out that in Taiwan a lot of children live with their parents for an extended period of time after they’re grown up. So there’s a thriving business of places where young couples can meet. They’re also apparently really good places for cyclists to stay, because they come with a garage to store the bicycle.
John and I cycled out fairly early this morning. He led me to Songshan Station – the official start of Taiwan’s National Cycle Route 1 which circumnavigates the island. John cycled with me to the outskirts of Taipei. John and Heidi have been great hosts. I’ll see John again on hopefully the 24th; Heidi will have left for a trip to the US!
The route is well marked, but twice on the way out of town I got completely befuddled. Both times the route intersected a confluence of major highways. But otherwise a majority of the time I was on dedicated bicycle path.
There are bathrooms everywhere, either fixed structures or porta johns. But not quite what you might expect.
By the time I reached kilometer 35 I realized I had probably bitten off more than I could chew. I realized last night I made the same mistake I made on the first day in Sweden, using the navigation to determine the distance instead of the actual GPX track. So I already knew the 80 km plan was going to be more like 90 km (99 km all told at the end of the day). I slowed down a bit (some voluntary, some not) which helped to extend my overall range.
Then I hit the climbs, 7% or more, that I’m currently not in shape for. There was a lot of stopping and resting. I hadn’t realized how much climbing I was doing until I reached the highest point. The last 25 km was a moderately swift down. Surrounded by rice paddies.
Blustery day! Winds of 25 to 30 mph. Fortunately most of the time it was at my back. Sometimes gusts so strong that I felt like someone shoved me from behind. Periodically I struggled to avoid being blown off path.
Scooters (we would probably call them mopeds) dominate the traffic. They’re everywhere. but conversely the drivers are used to them being everywhere and while the latter part of my day was on shared road I never felt concerned for my safety.
The west coast of Taiwan (the first part of my counterclockwise circle) is built up, and I expect the next few days are going to be mostly city. Then there’s a climb around the southern point. The East Coast’s character is mountainous but more remote. The plan is I have a few days to get used to the bike before I get to the climbing part.
At the tail end of the day I ran across a street festival.
I reached Hsinchu, the first checkpoint for the typical 10-day ride about Taiwan (that I have 17 days to accomplish). I’m staying in a very inexpensive Airbnb. It’s clearly being run covertly inside of an apartment building; the host told me not to talk to her on the way in, and I’ve been instructed not to talk to the building manager.
I’m not sure what the plan is for tomorrow, except not going as far as today!