Taiwan Trip - Day 1 (20/07/2013)

Here we go for our two-week trip around the island of Taiwan! 環島旅行 (“huan dao luxing” – literally, “island round-trip”) as the locals commonly call it. After a good night sleep, we packed early in the morning, had a quick breakfast and made our goodbyes to Louis’ flatmates. His local flatmate studied our planned itinerary and seemed to praise it, which comforted us in our choices. And comfort we were desperately seeking! As we got our bikes the evening before, we were feeling much unconfident. These were no large bikes (150cc) but it was our first shot at handling both gears and clutch. We had some experience with bikes in South-East Asia but still needed much effort and training the evening before to get used to them – at least feel capable of surviving Taipei streets. That we did.

Louis getting ready for the big show!

There was actually a tremendous gap between the night before and the next morning in our confidence level. Handling more or less the mechanics, we headed south-east of New Taipei: Showtime! Though Taiwanese probably are one of the nicest people on Earth, they looked much less nice once upon their scooters. Gee! Getting out of the city was a real struggle as traffic was dense and finding our bearings took us approximately two hours. We stopped several times trying to figure out our way, in a hellish atmosphere filled with fumes, honks, lights, weird driving rules (more on that later) and an obviously crazily hot temperature.

Paper lantern at Pingxi

We finally managed to get on the road we wanted (quite by chance) and headed towards Pingxi (平溪). Note that we were avoiding freeways, only driving upon ‘national roads’ limited to 40 or 60 km/h as this was the maximum speed our old bikes could endure (which is already more than enough to feel the speed, trust us!). Pingxi is about 60 kms east of Taipei and is famous for its paper lantern festival taking place in February (more precisely during the first month of the lunar calendar) every year. We actually stopped at Jingtong station (菁桐站), which is the last stop of an old and small (now touristy) rail line. The old street was packed with Asian and local tourists, especially when the small train arrived. We bought some delicious dumplings and crusty chicken chunks and took some rest. A couple of lanterns were ignited and flew before our eyes. Though really close to Taipei, we already felt like adventurers escaping the urban, packed, relentless world!

Wishes at Pingxi

We hit the road again, still heading east. We wanted to stop at the Sandiaoling waterfall (三貂嶺瀑布) but missed the trail. We didn’t have much time though so we continued, enjoying the road that was already – and unexpectedly – scenic and hilly. It also seemed like a bunch of temples were along the road as we noticed many ostentatious entrance portals. In the end of the afternoon, we reached our final destination for the day: Fulong beach (福隆海水浴場) on the northeast coast, which is kind of a local Saint-Tropez. The seaside resort was packed with youngsters and families as there was the most famous rock music festival of the island taking place during the week-end (it had been delayed for one week due to the Sulik typhoon that hit the coast). Quite worried about not finding a place to sleep, we went to the information centre where a Chinese/English mash conversation with the receptionist got us the attention of a Mainland Chinese tourist who helped us and accompanied us to the campsite we spotted along the road upon arrival. Luckily they had spots left at only NTD650 for two people (about €17), including a tent.

Fulong Rock Festival

After having refreshed and put up the tent on our wooden platform, we headed to the festival set on the strip of sand that is Fulong beach. We were offered condoms at the entrance bridge and realised these were finger condoms (so-called “findoms”): that tells quite a lot about local youngsters’ early sex habits. Ingenious Taiwanese being ingenious, they had set up a night market before the stage made of food, beer and gadgets stalls. The bands performing were young indie/rock Taiwanese bands (the Taiwanese scene is actually much flourishing, the Chinese rock scene being almost exclusively Taiwanese) and the cheap beer helped us feel the ambiance quickly. Ingenious Taiwanese still being ingenious, the spectators had dug rabbit holes into the sand that allowed them to comfortably enjoy the show. After mimicking them for a while, we reached the front of the stage to join the standing-up crowd in which the only decently “active” people were the few other foreigners. The show ended at 10pm (it had been going on since 2pm); we looked for the second stage as we had heard there was another one but never found it so we went back strolling through the campsite and ended up eating a cup of noodles in the common area. That makes the end of our first day; we then got back into our tent and its hard-wooden floor with no mattresses – we told the campsite receptionist we didn’t need them: that was a mistake…