The next morning, we woke up to realize that we were surrounded my humongous mountains. It was breathtaking. We were about halfway down the mountainside, with a view of the river below. We packed up, and of course they had a breakfast buffet ready for us. We paid his uncle, but the 3 marine guys were nowhere to be seen. We had made plans to hike with them in the morning but I reckon they were pretty hungover. So we headed out, but by this point my bike was spewing black smoke something fierce and we needed to get to a mechanic. We found a gas station and they rang up a mechanic for us, who showed up with tools not 10 minutes later. He changed my oil for like 10 bucks and we took off into the mountains again.
We got a wee bit lost and ended up loosing an hour or two, but we would have never spotted this giant suspension bridge had we not. So high up there. Safety isn’t a huge concern for the Taiwanese. This was clear while walking on this narrow suspension bridge a few hundred feet up and families of 3 whipped by us on their scooter (that’s 1 scooter for all 3) and expected us to jump up out of the way against the ropes. Anyway, we had a good long day of riding.
We stopped in a small place for lunch...decided to try the ‘stinky tofu’ I’d been hearing about. Apparently this particular place sucked at it because it was so gross I almost vomed. For months I had been occasionally smelling this horrible odor that is a mix of vinegar and rotting animals, as I’d walk through town. That’s stinky tofu. Some places make it taste good though, so I’m told.
Just before sunset, we cleared this really long tunnel. There was ice in the tunnel, if your wondering how cold it was up there. Upon coming out the other side, we found tons of bikes and cars pulled over, and immediately knew why. The sun was just setting over a ‘sea of clouds’, as they call it. We were above the clouds, where you could see the mountain peaks poking out. It looked just like a field of snow. Totally worth the trip up there.
The ride was spectacular for a bit longer, then the sun set. I have been cold in my day, but never this cold. We had to stop regularly to jog and thaw out the extremities, and we were already wearing all of the clothes we had. I even had a pillow case over my face. It was getting tough to drive with numb hands, and it was dark, foggy, and rainy/snowy. Jeff had the good idea to let a car pass up and follow it so it would light up the way, and eventually we saw the lights of a small town and headed down to it. Turned out to be a small aboriginal village called Lidao. The very first place we went into happened to contain a Chinese speaking Canadian English teacher who was keen to help us find a homestay. We downed a big meal and hit the hay.
Back on the road the next day, we were again dumbfounded by the amazing views everywhere around us. That tunnel the night before had been the highest point of the highway, and we were now descending and exiting the mountains. Everything was green and the road was very curvy. This equals a very fun ride. It took forever because we kept stopping for pictures. So, we finally came out of the mountains, and decided to speed it up a little. Kyle and Jeff zoomed by, and I kept up for a bit, but all along my bike had been coughing smoke. The oil light wasn’t on this time, so we thought maybe it was still burning excess oil, but low and behold, my bike started doing the sound Jeff said it would do if the engine seized, then it stopped. Mike’s scooter, RIP. Couldn’t even kick start it. The tricky thing with this was that your not supposed to leave Tainan with these bikes, or at least the foreigners aren’t because they can’t be trusted, and now we were on the other side of the country and the bike was dead. We went to a place that looked like a mechanic shop, mimed it out, and she lead us to a bike mechanic. This family was so nice. The old mechanic drove his truck out to our bike, loaded it up, and brought it back for us. He took one look at it and made a face that said “this is gonna cost you”. He said it needed a new engine lol. The cheapest way would be to bring it back to the rental company, and he wanted to call them himself, but we couldn’t do that because we weren’t supposed to have it way out there. His daughter then came out, who spoke English fluently, and brought us and the bike to a shipping company that could bring it back to Tainan for us for $40 USD.
After this was sorted out and we loaded everything from my bike onto Jeff's and Kyle’s, she took us to a Taiwanese bento-box type place, and then invited us back for coffee and snacks with her family. Such nice people. When we left, they bagged up all the oranges and bananas that were on the table and gave them to us as a goodbye gift! We got the girl’s number and she would later help us even more with the bike situation.
We drove down the coast, and I was now on camera duty on the back of Jeff’s bike. Not the most comfy way to ride, but better than the bus. This was the sunniest day of the trip so far. Jeff had never seen the ocean before, so when we saw it approaching in the distance, it was a big moment him. We rolled up the pants and walked out on the beach to challenge the massive waves coming in.
The rest of that day we went in and out of some smaller mountains, and ended up back in Kenting, where I had been on my first trip around Taiwan. That first night we got sloshed and played drinking games with some other Canadians we’d met. Kyle told this Taiwanese guy in a band that he and I were famous Canadian musicians, and halfway through their set they called us up on stage to do Hotel California. Neither of us knew that song, so we played another one, but Kyle forgot the words and I was drunk on the drums. Pretty funny when the guys in the band kicked us off the stage. We finished that night with a fire on the beach, and did the same thing the following night, with beer and few other people we had met. It was raining most of the daytime while we were there, but we got to do some good hiking in the lush green hills and through some gorges, and cruised around town a bit.
We made it back to Tainan in record time so that I could pick up the bike we shipped and get it back to the rental company before they charged us for an extra day. I made it to the address they gave, but no bike! The next few days were spent getting Chinese speaking people to call that address, other people to call the shipping company, even called the truck drive. The shipper said the receiver had the bike, the receiver said the company was still shipping it, and the truck drive said he never heard of this bike. So for a while we thought the bike had disappeared and I'd owe them a scooter. Eventually, the girl that had helped us before called me up to say that it had been brought to a different address! I drove there, surely enough found the bike, and walked it back to the rental company. It was 3 or 4 days late by this point, but given that I missed out on 2 days that I had already paid for, at especially expensive ‘holiday rates’, I wasn’t keen on paying for these extra days. When I explained that it broke down on me ‘across town’ and I hadn’t had a chance to walk it over until now, they just grumpily took it back. Because of the amount they had overcharged us throughout all the scooter rentals we'd made there up to this point, purely because we are foreign and don't know any better (so I was told by my Taiwanese friends who pay 1/4 the price for the same bike), and the fact that the bike was faulty to begin with, I didn't feel very bad for them. The girl who works at this place is also maybe the devil herself. The things she would grunt out in our faces every time we were there seemed even meaner because we couldn’t understand them. She would say these things as she closely examined our passports, which we had to provide as collateral when we took the bikes. We headed home and that was it.
Another highlight is when Kyle and I played at The Armory, the best bar in Tainan. They asked us to play on Chinese New Year, which was awesome because its a pretty big party night. That went really well, so they had us play again on my last night in town. We were called The Mockumentary, and we rotated on vocals, guitar and shaker. It was the first time I'd ever done lead vocals for most of a night. They were super good to us....payed us well, free beer, and provided the whole sound system. And the owner come up to do some traditional Taiwanese songs as well. Lots of fun.
And one more fun thing...I had had an urge to play drums for while, so I rented a jam space for a session and wailed on the kit for a while. The owner of the place was there and we got to talking over a saki bottle that never seemed to end. Really cool taiwanese punk guy, who had a band called Mr. Dirty. He invited me to go back that night to jam with them on bass, and I did. It was quite awesome, considering I had never played with such a dirty grungy punk band before, let alone a taiwanese one (mind you, the 3rd guy was canadian also). If I had been sticking around longer, I could have played at Spring Scream with them, which is a huge music festival in Kenting, but I was long gone by then. I'll always have the jam though.
That's Taiwan pretty condensed. There's lots more to say, but I had stopped keeping a journal by this point and am having trouble remembering everything. It'll come back to me though, and I might do an update if its anything important. Otherwise, the next posting should bring you up to speed to where I am in Australia.
Cheers, Mike
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