Taiwan, 30.09.2019 – 07.10.2019
It’s Chinese Golden Week again and this year we spend the seven holidays in Taiwan. On our first day we landed in Taipei and were surprised by a taifun – most of the shops were closed, rain came at us from all sides and the wind destroyed our borrowed umbrella. Still we went to the train station and collected our train tickets for the next day, but discovered that train service is suspended when a taifun hits the railways too hard. Hoping that the next day the storm would have moved further north, we collected our tickets at the counter using the pdf document we received after booking online. We went to the English language version of the the Taiwanese railway service to book both our train ticket from Taipei to Hualien as well as the return ticket from Taitung 200km farther south down the east coast. You can do this easily a few days prior to your trip and even add a warm lunch if you desire. The friendly railway worker at the counter had no problems finding our reservation and printed our two sets of tickets for the next day. Luckily, the taifun did move on and despite a slightly overcast sky we made it to the train station and onto our train with ease.
The below video accompanies us during the train trip from Taipei to Hualien and during our first evening testing the bikes and discovering the beaches around Hualien. Prior to our travels, we rented two GIANT bicycles on their Facebook page and picked them up directly at the GIANT store near the Hualien train station. Since we didn’t have to pay directly during online reservation, we paid the 3000 Taiwan Dollars upon receiving the bikes, and they came including two saddle bags each, front and back lamps, a pump and speedometer, as well as basic equipment to fix the bike in case it had a problem (which it didn’t during all of our four days traveling).
rice is the new bread 