Tainan to Taitung

The sun came out!!! We've just spent a couple nights in Tainan (the old capital, a chill vibe) and Taitung (east coast, where we depart on our cycle trip). There's been some cool stuff along the way that I’ll tell you about.

Banyan tree lore

The nature in Tainan was soooo gorg. I'm particularly mad into the Banyan trees - they're everywhere. They feel like they contain some truly ancient forest wisdom - they have wild root systems and super droopy drapey aerial roots that give mystic magic energy.

Tainan is the home of the original capital of Taiwan, so there was a load of historical sights to mooch about, but the trees and plants were my favourite bit of all the forts and buildings - they've grown everywhere and made it feel like another planet.

Taiwanese lore say that the Banyan tree wood is terrible for any useful job like building or burning, so they get left to grow. That means they get big and leafy, and end up being useful for shade - it basically teaches that everyone is good for something. Wholesome I guess?

Cool shit that Taiwanese people love

I love when people are really into a particular thing that I have never cared about before and Taiwan has so much of that.

1. Baseball
   • If you're not already a Team Taiwan ultra, get to know. We were in Tainan for the WBC (world baseball classic) and spent our last night in a bar with diehard Team Taiwan fans commiserating getting knocked out. They shared their dinner with us, said George looked 18 years old, and taught us the Team Taiwan dance (it slaps, check it out).

2. Capybaras
   • So much capybara themed merch everywhere. I didn't even know capybaras were distinguishable from other small brown animals but now I can identify a capybara item a mile off. I'm so locked in that I got a capybara pop socket for my kindle after I snapped my old one on the plane over. Sorry to Liv for once being offended that she said I gave capybara vibes, in hindsight a compliment.

3. Claw machines
   • I thought these were big in Japan but I can’t describe the quantity of claws at every street corner. There’s claw machine alleyways open 24h everywhere you look, and they’re never accompanied by other arcade games. Taiwan is a country of purists I guess. My favourite part has been the wild and wacky shit that goes in some of them - a 9 pack of toilet roll, a tub of laundry detergent, a carton of milk (UHT I hope), or many capybaras (ofc).

The bike ride that nearly ended it all

So if you know only one thing about me, you'll know that I'm one of London's most locked in Forest bike riders. I've done over 2700 miles in the saddle. So I was going into our multi day Tour de France moment with perhaps a little too much confidence.

We found ourselves with an extra day in Taitung because our Green Island trip got cancelled due to unfavorable sea conditions caused by the northeast monsoon (kinda swag when they put it like that). We figured we'd get our eye in and rent a bike for the day to scoot about Taitung.

What followed was maybe the most demoralising cycle of my life. We rented the rustiest crustiest bikes from some geezers who were deffo taking the piss out of us. Then cycled into the most insane headwind I have ever witnessed and were moving basically backwards. I felt like all the London cyclists must feel when I skrrrrt past them on my way to work. Collecting thoughts and prayers for my upcoming 60k 750m elevation day tomorrow (maybe the bike quality improvement will add 10km/hr to my average speed????).

This ride was offset by a wild meal at the end in an industrial fishing port. Freshest sashimi I have probably ever eaten, it slapped. The journey home was significantly chiller after consuming various sea creatures, some beer, and having the wind behind us.

What else did we eat?

This feels necessary because we've been racking them up. A few notable items:

1. Melon shaved ice
   • This has been on my list the entire trip but I’ve been saving it because it wasn’t gonna hit in rainy Taipei. Omg this was genuinely so good, it was the perfect mega light cold refreshing airy fresh vibe. I think it’s ice mixed with condensed milk, gonna dream about this one for a while.

2. Sugar cane juice

   • I told George we needed to try this, he said isn't it just sugary water. He wasn’t wrong. I imagine it's like crack for bumble bees. It has a subtle tasty flavour though and it grew on me.

3. Pork rice breakfast 2.0: egg mode

   • We just keep coming back for more of this, but it turns out the real meta was getting it with a runny yolk egg on top. Genuinely wildly good, and the egg really overrode my qualms about it not feeling breakfasty.

4. Salt and pepper everything

   • About 1 in 3 things we've eaten have been salt and pep flavoured (as in spice bag or chips from the chinese, not table salt and black pepper). Omelette, squid, chicken, they’re slapping it on. The wild thing is you'll get a plate with a mound of seasoning on the side to make salt and pepper stuff more salt and peppery.

5. Chicken butt

   • This wasn't necessarily planned, but we realised our skewer was chicken butt mid way through eating and translating a menu. No regrets, was juicy.

See you on the other side

Tomorrow we start our intrepid cycling battle against wind and flat tires - I’ll report back when I make it to the other side. In the meantime, we’ve been carb loading on pints while listening to some geezers sing karaoke in various establishments. I’ll leave you with the answers to a couple FAQs from you guys.

FAQs

1. If you're wondering why every city we've been to starts with Tai, me too. It turns out it's originally from an indigenous name, Tayouan for the Tainan capital area which got picked up by Dutch settlers in the 1600s and became the name for the entire island.
2. For the many people that asked if I rated the compression socks from episode 1: they didn't do much for me - I wasn’t mad at them though, they were just socks. Not to be insufferable but I think it was because my feet were too tiny and small to be compressed by them :-)