Monday, 15th January
Over the next two weeks i’ll be cycling around Taiwan, following the coast of the island counter-clockwise in a loop which will begin and end in Taipei, something like 600 miles in total.
I’ve spent the last two days travelling here and acclimatising in Taipei. The journey was smooth and felt strangely quick. Almost as if a switch has been flicked suddenly you find yourself on the other side of the world and everything is different.
I took a wander around on my first night. The city reminds me of Tokyo or Seoul, but then these are the only reference points I have and it feels unfair to be holding Taipei up to them already. It’s busy but not crowded, modern but not metropoliptic.
The drive from the airport was on a winding highway past green, jungly hillsides. From the plane I saw snow topped mountains. There are marble canyons and long golden beaches. For a small place it has a lot to offer, yet it seems somewhat off the map. I’m not quite sure what the bike ride has in store – what the exact rhythm of the place will be but since Taiwan has recently developed a reputation as a cycling destination, and since my bike frame and half of the parts attached to it originated somewhere here, i’m hoping for good things.
I spent the first morning assembling my bike in the bright, concrete courtyard of the hostel – a brutalist looking building in the Datong District. Somewhere along it’s journey here the cardboard box it was contained in had received a number of new holes. But the contents were undamaged and came together quickly. By the end I was drenched in sweat. It wasn’t exactly hot by Taiwanese standards, but it was new for me to experience this kind of heat so early in a year. I walked around in shorts and got funny looks.
I went out to search for spare inner tubes, camping gas, and a few snacks in advance of my departure tomorrow. The streets of Taipei were either fast and colourful with multiple lanes of traffic and hordes of scooters, or slow, narrow, and shaded, but both types were filled with life – countless repair shops to keep the scooters running or small shops steaming and frying food and serving it directly out on to the pavements.
Later in the day I took the MRT to Taipei 101 – a super tall building which was, in 2004, the tallest in the world. And up to 2016 the lift was the fastest in the world travelling 84 floors in just 37 seconds. I reached the top late in the afternoon and stayed until just after sunset.
The view below made all the traffic and food and everything else seem entirely planned – everything was neatly gridded out and well proportioned. I made my way to the roof, and poked my camera through the high slatted metal fence which had the orange flint of the sun along its edge.
Inside, below the observation deck was the tuned mass wind damper – a four million dollar, 660-tonne golden ball which enabled the structure to withstand strong winds and earthquakes. It even had it’s own mascots – the damper babies – created by the makers of Hello Kitty. It jogged a memory of listening to a 99pi podcast about it, somewhere across America in 2016.
After the sun went down I descended to the lower levels of the building and the food court. Here I found a branch of Din Tai Fung. I waited for 30 minutes and during that time ticked a small slip of paper with what I wanted to eat and handed this to the cashier. This meant that soon after I sat down all my food arrived, with precision and care. I ate pork buns, Taiwanese cabbage, their house salad, 10 xiao long bao, pork and noodles and a large beer. it was too much food but I told myself I’d need it for the road ahead.
It was starting to creep up on me – through the fog of my jetlag and aching full belly, the fact i’d be leaving tomorrow. It’s easy to panic in moments like these, about the uncertainties and if you have everything you need. The reality is the route is fairly well determined and if Taiwan’s convenience store culture is like Japan’s, i’ll never be more than about 20 miles from pretty much anything I could ever need or desire.
What i’m less sure of is a) my fitness and b) the kind of mindset for a challenge like this, but I’m hoping both of those things will develop as I go.
I look at some accommodation options in Hsincu were I should find myself tomorrow evening if all goes to plan. The plan, as always, is to leave as early as I can – hopefully soon after 8am – before the traffic and the heat becomes difficult. There’s just a short distance between me and a riverside cycle track which should carry me safely away from civilisation.
I’m hoping things will be reminiscent of Korea – safe and easy cycling, surroundings which are unfamiliar and intriguing, but not isolating. But, really, I have no idea, and I guess that’s the point.