Gongguan to Bitan and Danshui- 從公館騎到碧灘, 牽手逛淡水

Sat. I spent the night over at Brian's.  We'd been planning to either go biking around Fulong or hit up Wulai the next morning, but the weather, as it always does, had different plans for us.  Taipei itself seemed stable, so I suggested we rent bikes at Gongguan (where Taipei U is), and ride along the river.  I'd been there the night previous and had been walking alongside the river before a text from Brian cancelled my evening stroll.  Seemed like a good place to get away from the city, without even having to leave the city!  That's the kind of place Taipei is.  Once you explore it thoroughly
and get away from the mess and noise of downtown, you gain an appreciation for how beautiful Taipei really is.  I knew Taiwan wasn't called Formosa for nothing, but you don't necessarily have to go down to Hualien, or to Jade Mountain to realize this...there's gorgeous scenery right here in the North.

That jersey on the left, that's the one Brian wanted to get.  Hahaha.  What a queer.

At the bike rental place, we were surprised to see a bohemian market seemingly sprung from nothing.  The market grew organically as college-age people came carting in suitcases full of hand-made goods.  These consisted of technicolor jerseys, tie-dyed tanktops, beaded necklaces and bracelets, hand-baked goods, and other artsy shit for hippies and hipsters alike.

As we walked around Brian called out to someone.  I looked up, and there was Charlene, one of Brian's language partners.  She was helping her friend Plus (yes, you read that correctly) run her stall of handmade bracelets.  We shot the shit with them while all the other vendors looked on jealously, even the male ones.  Especially the male ones.  After I bought a bracelet from her for about $6 (I can see why she makes some decent cash from this), I tried my hand at hawking their wares, which only attracted more staring.  My Great Wall of China approach of spewing random loud bullshit only succeeded in scaring away any potential buyers.  I deduced this was not China and decided to shut up.

Charlene on the left, Plus on the right.

Plus's wares on display.  Her facebook page is www.facebook.com/readyforlife if you want to find out more.

It was then decided that we would bike to Wulai, without any idea of how to get there or how long it would take us.  Inquiring about our route to the old man pumping our wheels resulted in his incredulous stare.  He reminded us what time the rental shop closed and assured us we would never make it back in time.  Oh, old man, how you've underestimated us.  I almost wanted to laugh in his face and promise him a picture of us soaking in the hot springs.  Like the boners of Greek fertility statues, our middle fingers would be raised triumphantly, a display of youthful virility.  SUCK THAT OLD MAN!  DIDN'T THINK WE'D MAKE IT, HUH?

Edit: We never made it.

But I'd never do anything assholish like that.  So we thanked him and left, travelling, unbeknownst to us, in the opposite direction.  Noticing the layout of the land, I remarked that we were probably heading in the wrong direction.  We confirmed this with a heavily-tanned man jogging nearby.  That was when the fateful decision was made.  Or rather, made for us.


"The coin never lies," Brian said, pulling out a $1 NT coin.  Heads, we go back towards Wulai, tails we continue on.

He flipped the coin and we turned our bikes around.  The coin, we left for posterity.

Mandatory shitty self-timed picture.

Everything we passed by was fresh to our eyes.  This was an area neither of us had really visited.  Multiple stops later and we realized that Wulai was probably a distant possibility.  HEY, I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING.  We could've totally made it to Wulai if we hadn't stopped multiple times.  NUH-UH!  FUCK YOU, we totally could've.

Among the sights we saw was Treasure Hill, what looked to be a public art space, but with a village feel to it.  It looked like something you might see from a Studio Ghibli movie (kind of seeing a pattern here).  We passed on going up the steps, as our bikes had no locks, and strictly speaking, this had become a reconnaissance mission anyway.  A group came down the path from above as we took photos, one person holding a couchsurfers flag.  Three white guys, men with expressions of slight puzzlement mixed with resignation, were amongst them.  Europeans?

A bunch of random lanterns...what other crazy artsy shit awaits at Treasure Hill?

Hopefully better things than that ugly girl on the left.

We passed multiple softball games, a miniature dog park, public tennis courts, and multiple other amenities for foreigners missing home.  So if you're whining about not being able to do (insert here) in Taiwan, maybe you should try the area around Gongguan.  Actually, I'm pretty sure the area where you live has it too and you're not looking hard enough.  Unless you live in Xizhi.

Some of these teams were pretty damn good.  With luck, I'll be trying my hand at softball in the middle of this month.

Desperate times call for rocking out.

Our path led across a narrow bridge and through a small neighborhood, before winding upwards alongside the freeway and under an overpass.  We were now biking under the full scrutiny of the sun and life felt glorious.  The bike path swung up to the left side of the river through some basketball courts and along a wooden catwalk, before sloping gradually down towards Bitan and its suspension bridge.

Bitan and the outskirts of Xindian ahead.

The Bitan Suspension Bridge ahead

Bitan, 碧潭, literally means 'emerald pool', although I don't know if the breathtaking scenery has anything to do with the etymology of the word; many place names in Taiwan, even up north in Taipei are translated phonetically from the aboriginal Atayal language, and thus carry no meaning.

Is it possible to look like a Greek god AND an intrepid explorer?  I should bottle my own scent and market it. 

As you can see from the pictures, the river really was this dark cyan color, even more amazing perhaps because we were still in the middle of Taipei.  Places like this exist in the US, of course, but they're usually found well away from the city.  The dichotomy between rural and urban is very sharp in most of the contiguous United States, something I'm beginning to realize is not the case in Taipei.

We walked our bikes past some sort of life guard competition.  Teams would be graded based on their time, method of rescue, etc.  I knew all this because of the loud speakers set every 20 meters apart.  Near the end of the explanation of the event the man declared, "don't let any tears fall into the river!" (別讓溪水變成淚水)  I cringed at this pun, then chuckled.

Past the event our path dead-ended...at least alongside the river.  We backtracked and decided to cross the suspension bridge.  We'd been playing it by ear the whole time anyway, why stop?  Maybe the path continued on the other side...

The path led to hiking trails, but as far as we knew, we couldn't bike any further towards Wulai.  Ravenous as we were, we bought some Taiwanese hot dogs wrapped in makeshift rice buns.  Like rice molded into the shape of actual hot dog buns.  It was about this time it started to rain.  Generously.  Not a moment before the sun had beat down upon us, and now the rain was increasing every passing second.

We started to bike up towards the hiking trails, rain still falling, but with distances clearly marked, it was an impossibility to make it to any trailhead with time left to hike.  Faced with this certainty, we turned our bikes around and sped back.

Random bust of Chiang Kai-Shek out in the middle of nowhere.

Gotta love the bridges in Taiwan.

One odd thing I've noticed about Taiwan.  For how humid it is, it seems pretty easy to dry up after the rain stops.  I've always expected to be standing around with my clothes sticking to me in a mixture of rain and ass juices, but that's never the case.

Dropping off the bikes and paying our tab, $110NT for more than three hours of biking, we hit up Charlene and Plus again.  They were still hard at work selling bracelets.  I asked them what they wanted to do after they packed up shop and Charlene was quick to respond.

Charlene: "We're going to a Korean restaurant, neither of us had lunch."
Me: "Why didn't one of you watch the stall while the other got food."
Charlene: "We were too lazy."

Ah.  Serves you right then.  Charlene suggested we go to Danshui...as she always does.  She's always recommending that place.  Danshui was just about as far from us on the MRT as you can get, but we had time.

A good forty minutes and one picturesque ride later we arrived at Danshui.  The red line exits the tunnel shortly after leaving Main, and you enjoy a good view of the surrounding land the whole ride thereafter.  Our timing was almost perfect, as the sun was slowly setting below the ocean far out beyond the wharf.

Other people had the same idea as us, apparently.

I have no idea what that mountain is, but you can be damn sure I'm going to climb it before my year is done.

Goodnight, Sun.

Brian and I enjoyed a romantic stroll as the light faded into the west.  With the onset of night, we both admitted how fucking exhausted we were from all this biking and walking around.  Calling it, we both got back on the MRT and parted ways at Beitou.  I wasn't about to break routine and skip a dip at Millennium Hot Spring.  What a way to end the day.

Anyone ever played Katawa Shoujo before thinking of Emi right now?