Southern Taiwan and little liuchu island biking trip - Day 1

Apr 5

Planned to get up at 6, alarm changed to 6:30, got up at 7, went out 7:30, and after much procrastination, I've finally packed up my bike and am on the train to Taipei at 8:18. As every years' tumb dusting day, it's a nice cloudy day with slight drops of rain. A look around sure shows a different beat of life today. As this is the begining of a 4 day major holiday, I expected to see lots of people, yet the streets in Keelung are quite clear, and the train station nearly empty. I'd normally see all these places packed on a normal weak day's rush hour. Maybe most of the south going crowd already when last night.

I'm on a 4 day trip to the south and little liuchu island(小琉球). As I am trying to stay put with being single, I set out on my first biking trip on my own, to get a taste of the freedom and loneliness of traveling solo. A twist to this much anticipated holiday though, I've got about 3 research papers in my backpack, and about 15 more, with over 50 pages, in my memory card waiting for me to study during the holiday.

I reserved a bus seat for 9:30 from Taipei to Tainan (國光客運), yet the bus arrived at 9:45. There were slight traffic jams, yet just slightly, which is bearable. The bus stopped at the bus company's own bus terminal in Taichung for a lunch brake. The terminal is half terminal, half highway rest stop, with a simple make shift conviniant store and some food stands. Passangers have 10 minutes to fetch up lunch and use the bathroom, then everyone comes back on the bus and we start off again. 3 movies were shown on the bus, yet I didn't pay much attention to the movies. In one of them, a guy was dating a secret lover behind his wife, and the lover was forcing him to devorce with his wife. Under high pressure, the bastard murdered his lover and his wife had a new baby. I didn't know what happened in the end as the Anime (Honey & Clover, in fact...) loaded in my PDA was much more interesting. Another movie had a guy with an inuit girl trying to surive after their plane crashed in the middle of nowhere. I ran out of interest when the girl died. Well, after much sleep, some movies and read a paper, the bus finally arrived in Tainan at 2:10 pm. The time it took was quite nice, considering the fact that today is the first day of a national 4 day holiday.

Went to Grandpa's in Tainan before setting off south. Grandpa stuffed me with a copious load of food and I hit the road at 2:45 pm, with a stuffed belly.

The road to Kaoshong was shorter then I expected, about 60 km. The view wasn't estonishing, yet it's typical of this part of Taiwan. As always, there were roadside "betel nut girls" (檳榔西施), selling betel nuts in glass walled stands, wearing bikinis. And many of them have a weird combination of nice bodies with ugily faces. I saw one today who has this face that just looks like my most hated old Chinese teacher from high school, YUCK!

Just entering Kaoshong, there was this bridge, with a curved down hill when you get off the bridge. Right when I was picking up speed and cutting into the down hill ramp, a normal "slow" sign came into sight. Yet, under it, was a black sign with shinning yellow letter of the most common Budda prayer (阿彌陀佛). Damn, those remind me of prayers for the dead. In the shock of reading that sign, I nearly lost control, yet got back in control in a split second. That sign could cause accidents by scaring the ass off drivers, man!

Kaoshong is the southern end and a major train maintainence station of the newly built Taiwan high speed rail, and am I happy to see those beautiful trains.


Went to see my uncle here in Kaoshung, and went to a buffet with steak for dinner (貴族世家). Quite an interesting day.