Cycling Trip to Taiwan: Day Five

After the 185 kilometers we cycled on Day Four, both Joe and I (and our butts!) were pretty beat. We could have kept cycling the next day, but we thought it would be a better idea to rest up. Besides, most of the Taiwan that I knew was what I had seen was from my bicycle seat, so I was looking forward to walking around and experiencing things at a much slower pace. We picked a good place to rest: Taitung. The city was fairly big, and, though not exactly awash with sights, had enough going on to keep us entertained. To get into town, we decided to catch a bus. (The hostel we stayed at was about 2 or 3 kilometers from the train station, and more like 5 kilometers from downtown.) As we expected, riding the bus in Taiwan wasn't going to be as easy or nice as riding the bus in Japan. For one, the bus came late, but not by much. For two, the bus was a bit old. For three, the graffiti artists had been at work on the inside. Nevertheless, the ride was short, cheap (20 NT), and painless.











In case you didn't know, baseball is pretty popular in Taiwan. Still, I was surprised to see a pretty big stadium just down the street from the train station, along with a much smaller stadium next door. An international junior-high-school tournament was going on.











When this truck passed us with its blaring loudspeakers, we quickly learned that election time near. I guess this is how politicians try to get out the vote all over Asia, since I've experienced the same thing even in little ol' Gokase.











Here is one of several road-side stalls that we came across, this particular one being a "beauty salon." It looks like the customer on the right is getting some hair removed from her face, with the lady on the left doing what apparently is known as "threading." That was a first for me.











These coconuts were a first for me, too. The only kind I had seen before I saw these was the round, brown, furry kind. Two days later, I finally tried one. Talk about refreshing!












Besides the helmet-less toddlers/children, another common scooter-related sighting is drivers wearing fashionable masks. In Japan, almost every mask you see is a boring white. Not in Taiwan.













To be fair, not all parents are nuts! Well, not totally nuts, anyway!














Here's yet another example of the aboriginal art that is common in this part of Taiwan. We saw this piece on the grounds of the former Taitung train station.











No trip to any foreign country would be complete without a stop at a grocery store. Point made: Heart, anyone?











Here's some durian. I'm not sure if I've ever had it or not.











I'm not sure what this stuff is. What about you?











After walking around town for several hours, we decided to take a bus to an onsen that was only about 30 minutes away. Finding out about the bus was the easy part. Actually finding the bus was the hard part. We first went to the wrong bus station. The people there tried to tell us that there was no bus and that we should take a taxi. Yeah, right. We studied our map a little more and decided to keep searching. Sure enough, after only about five minutes, we found the right bus station, practically around the corner from the other one. Those (purposefully?) misinformed Taiwanese were back at it again.











We met some nice people on the bus who made sure we got off the bus at the right stop (even though the driver almost didn't stop for us!), but we didn't immediately see the onsen. Our first concern was to eat, however, so we plopped ourselves down in a nearly deserted parking lot behind some sort of fairly big souvenir shop that looked kind of out of place and began to eat the food that we had purchased at the grocery store. Just as we finished "lunch," along came this lady, walking past us on the way to the only car in the lot. She was carrying a bag of food that she had apparently just purchased. The next thing we knew, she was offering us her food. Naturally, we thought to ourselves, "What the heck? Do we look like a couple of bums?" I guess we weren't convincing enough when we told her, "No, thanks," so she gave it to us, anyway. A lot of good that did us. Just look at the picture and you'll see why she gave us the food. We suspect someone gave it to her and she was just paying it forward.











At least Joe had some fun with the food.

Our trip to the onsen was kind of a waste. It was more of a recreational swimming place, and, since neither of us had brought along a bathing suit, we couldn't go in. Oh, well. On top of that, the next bus back wasn't for about an hour and a half. So what did we do? Wait around? Nope. We decided to hitch it back to Taitung. Lucky for us, we only had to wait (as we walked down the road) about 5 minutes before someone stopped to pick us up! The young couple took us all the way to the train station, just as we had requested, and even went out of their way to play a Michael Jackson CD, just for us. That was a nice gesture, playing American music for their American guests. The problem was, the CD had a total of three songs on it, and they kept playing over and over and over. That was a crazy ride!


At the train station, we ran into William, a Belgian guy who lived relatively close to Taipei and was cycling around Taiwan in the opposite direction. We hung out with him for at least an hour while he waited for his train (I know, I know, I said he was cycling around the country...), trading stories as well as advice about what the roads we had covered were like. One interesting tip he gave us was that you can't trust the train station personnel when it came to information regarding taking bikes on trains. According to him, it's much better to ask at a Giant store (Giant is the name of the main Taiwanese bicycle manufacturer). What is that I keep mentioning about the Taiwanese and misinformation?