After a tasty dinner last night (a whole NTD $130), I returned to the hostel, and spent the rest of the evening talking with three other travelers, from France, the Netherlands (“Fem”) and Germany, all wandering from Asian country to Asian country.
This morning I took a relatively slow start out of Shuishe. I wandered across the street and picked up breakfast (another $70 NTD). Then I set forth to circumnavigate Sun Moon Lake. I had expected a dedicated flat bicycle path around the lake. All the pictures show that. I didn’t get that.
There were occasional sections of dedicated bicycle path, one of which was under construction about a kilometer in, and I had to retreat and climb a steep set of stairs to get back out. Mid-week the traffic was light.
The weather today was spectacular.
While I have mostly decided I don’t find the Taiwanese temples interesting, I stopped at the Wuhan Temple and wandered around for a while. I felt like this one had no sense of history. Then I found a plaque that showed that it had been built in 1999, replacing another after an earthquake.
Next I saw monkeys! I would have missed them but I passed two cyclists that asked if I had seen them. I looped back around a couple hundred meters to find them.
I made the mistake today of stopping at a Taiwanese police station. Each Taiwanese police station has a bicycle repair spot, and often display signs indicating a rest stop. I stopped today because the police station had the rest stop sign, and a shady place under a tree. I had hoped for a quiet chance to eat a quick lunch. As I entered the parking lot I tripped an infrared beam and heard the chime go off inside. Before I had my bicycle parked a police officer came bustling outside.
His first question was whether I needed any help. Then? He asked me all the usual questions (via Google Translate): where was I from, where have I started my trip, how far I cycled every day, where I was going next, etc. Then he asked if I had ever had any Taiwanese black tea. When I said no he invited me inside.He explained black tea in the region (here is famous for it), and prepared some, explaining along the way how to properly prepare it.
Then he started over and made green tea. He then apologized for not having any of the third kind of tea (“old tea”, stored for many years to let it season, but much more expensive). Along the way I got to see pictures of his child and the rest of his family. He talked about wanting to travel. I had my picture taken with him, then with another police officer, then with my bicycle.
He talked about his concerns for the bicycle safety signs being hard for people to understand as “SLOW”, because many of the cycling injuries here are caused by people losing control on steep descents. When I told him it had taken me a minute to figure out that they meant to slow down, he took a screenshot of my Google translate page for that, and then a screenshot of my having taken a picture of their sign. So he could use that as evidence in his campaign for new signs.
All in all I was there for almost an hour. I’ve never had such an enthusiastically friendly welcome. So much for a short stop!
Back at the hostel, while writing this up, Fem arrives, having finished her own ride around the lake. She’s from the Netherlands which is FLAT.
34 km. Having cycled the first leg of tomorrow while cycling around the lake, I will in fact have a bit of a climb, but it shouldn’t last long.
I ran across Fem again wandering about town later, so we had dinner together before heading back to the hostel.
After Fem wandered off to prepare for her departure tomorrow, I ran into Clint, another American. He’s renting a bicycle tomorrow to circumnavigate the lake, so I passed along what insights I gained today. I found out that he’s interested in bicycle touring, which gave us something to talk about for … a while.
I think half of the businesses in Shuishe are bicycle rental; finding a bicycle to rent here won’t ever be a problem.
The weather forecast for the next 10 days is rain free. I have roughly 90 km tomorrow DOWN to the hostel in Chiayi. Should be a quiet night; I have the hostel room to myself.