Midoo in Taiwan

This trip did not begin in the style of finding-yourself, Eat Pray Love kind of stories. I learned of the opportunity through my parents’ coworkers, applied, got the chance, and did it. I signed up for the trip in the summer, almost bailed on it by the end of summer. I grew giddy about it during the semester, completely forgot about it for a good while, then remembered about the trip, three weeks before we depart, and had legit anxiety attacks. For a long while I felt like I was headed for certain doom, but decided that feeling sucked, so I aggressively told everybody how happy I was to go, and convinced myself that hell, I am happy. School is steady and scheduled, so here, throw a spanner into the works and mix things up a little.

As the trip began, I could feel myself enter “An issue has occurred, resolve issue with the best of your sensibilities” mode, which I only enter in times of great panic and need. Because day one, they tell us we’re climbing a mountain. Holy crap? I’ve never biked, much less climbed a mountain biking. Whywhywhywhywhy Midori why do you get yourself into these sorts of situations.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it a million times again: the only thing that truly kept me going was the people. I have zero passion for biking (well okay, after this trip, I have maybe four-point-seven passion for biking), but I love the people I went with to death. Kind faces and smiles and amazing integrity all around, it’s really quite heart-warming. Not only the bikers, but the locals! What a boost in spirit you get when some older fella hollers for you to GO GO GO! TAIWAN NUMBER ONE!

This trip has really given me a whole new heart to love Taiwan with. I was born and raised here, but immigrated to the States when I was young. I’ve been back to Taipei since, you know, to visit relatives and to shop and eat and stuff. But never before have I see Taiwan on this scale, for such a duration of time. Never before have I had to engage with the motions and landscapes and weathers and temperatures of Taiwan so viscerally. And I gotta say, it’s intense, but I love every moment of it. I have to stop myself from swearing right now because I think only cusswords can express how deeply I love Taiwan thanks to this trip.

And really, it’s the little details that I’ve forgotten! Like, the little sign in the window of the tailor shop, saying “we sew student numbers!” Taiwan schools require uniforms, and each student gets their name and number (and class?) sewn on a patch. Or— the ladies selling tiny dangling bunches of fragrant flowers on the highways. Or the 7-11 and FamilyMart employees greeting you with discount info as you enter the store. Or keeping your receipts because you can enter them in a government-sponsored raffle and earn money.

Aaaaah, just thinking back on everything now makes me tear up. My most sincere and heartfelt gratitude to everyone who made this happen. And you know what? You can do this trip too! Check out the website, ask for information, and this too can happen for you.

There and back again, as the wise folks say. The end of it all.

(Sign: To Taipei)

Sun shines, it’s a beautiful day. It’s funny, ‘cause this is when you stop worrying about the biking at all, you know? Day one, it was such a process, a feat of the mind and body both, and now we’re here at the end, it’s just a ton of thinking. Who do I get notes for missed lectures from, I missed a lot of work, oh my god I don’t wanna go back to reality, I have finals coming up why did I do this I’m going back to certain doom. But no! No regrets. #noregrets. nO REGRETS.

There’s no room for regret in a place like this. Not to default to every cliché self-help book, but this was seriously a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity, and stepping out, following my dreams (or something) is really rejuvenating. Especially at this point in my life (hahah, baby!me, a whole nineteen years old), suffering the symptoms of sophomore slump— how lucky was I to get to escape for two weeks like this? I entered a different world! People from all over, the trip was a fantastical intersection of so many lives, and everybody was so entirely lovely that it all coalesced into something really quite precious. Not to get sappy or anything, but I’m remembering back now and really treasuring these memories, you know?

Wise words from our car-scribe Frank. And let me just continue to reminisce, how often do you get to look at a familiar city with fresh eyes? I have half a mind to bike San Francisco, relearn this city through blood sweat and tears again (but, hahah, no thanks). I look at SF now, a city I absolutely adore, and have such a hard time enjoying it with the same wonder and excitement as I got to see Taiwan with. I keep trying to put it into words, but I haven’t quite managed. But I’ll succeed, just you wait. In the mean time, photos shall have to suffice:

PROUDEST DAY OF MY LIFE, YOU KNOW WHY.

I broke to the front of the line.

I went so hard yo. And it rained all day, to celebrate! One really exciting moment: we were speeding along a mountain, and there was a huge steep dip. I ride it like crazy, only to hear screams of warning behind me. From where they were looking, I sped right into the path of an oncoming car from the left. But I was smooth af, no worries, I saw this coming (I mean, I was speeding into a street), so no one got hurt.

(Except Jules, who apparently braked so hard behind me that his bike messed up lmfao.)

I stopped next to a truck at one point and took a picture of the inside ‘cause it was a mess (in a cool way).

Seafood for lunch!

Jules: Wow your cuisine has a lot of seafood. Midori: Um maybe because we’re an island?

Came to an estuary, where we went to PUBLIC RESTROOM NO. 22

(No toilet paper— if you ever visit Taiwan, just a word of warning, you’re expected to BYOTP. And do a lot of squatting, which fortunately our extreme bike regimen has kindly prepared us for.)

The estuary was open for clam-fishing and all sorts of things. A ton of herons and cool birds. Found a puppy, took a picture, found the puppy’s owner, disappointedly returned pup.

Time to get TMI. Fun fact: long-distance riding involves padded pants, which aren’t meant to be worn with underwear because they chafe. Which means, when you get your period (as you inevitably do, because what’s life without some agony and challenges), you gotta use a tampon! Another fun fact: convenience stores don’t sell tampons with applicators! YET ANOTHER FUN FACT: those things hurt like a mother******. I tried, I honestly did, but dear god the pain.

So! Another half day in the car it is.

We visited this Xiluo Bridge, which was once the second longest bridge in the world? Which, if you think about it, is kind of a funny honor, because even when it was a bridge of note back in its haydays, it still wasn’t the longest. I mean, I obviously don’t know how to construct a bridge, so respect, but still.

We ate lunch at this old-style street!

The whole thing is kept in the style of market streets back in the days, so everything is accessible by feet, it’s open vendors, and the styles of ware were also cool and old! Like grains:

Hand-crafted sandals:

Western-style clockwork!

Visited an old train station/sugar factory in the afternoon (the trains were used to transport the sugar). The grudge aesthetic is so real— some kpop group should go film an MV there, if they haven’t already. I’ll post the pictures in a clump later. Frank treated us to these ice cream sandwich snacks famous locally, which are basically crystal-ly and crunchy vanilla ice between Ritz crackers. It was lovely.

Also! To prove that my artsy hippie avant garde soul is not only a product of San Francisco, but also a result of my original country, here is a billboard we passed:

Local Taiwan flavors!

(Top down, Left right)

I have embarrassingly little in my travel journal for this day— one page, that literally reads “I’M GOING TO RIDE. I RODE, 125KM. YES.”

City-riding today! Which is exciting, because your chances of dying go up exponentially, hahah! So many cars, so many scooters, so many pedestrians and OTHER BIKES. We ride for 125km, which is ridiculous, but I’m going to tell you something: I rode the whole thing, and was feeling DAMN. GOOD. by the end. Hell yeah.

The colorful city death trap. God I love cities in Taiwan, they’re so vibrant and kind of ridiculous because there are half a million signs all in different colors so everything stands out so nothing stands out. You want to discover things? You gotta slow down yourself.

Bust stop! That’s cute.

Murder vehicle! Less cute. These things will run you over and yell at you for getting in their way later.

Even though it’s a city, Kaohsiung is still hopelessly entwined with nature. You can see moss growing on everything, cement cracking, vines twining around steel poles. And no one minds, really! There’s no aggressive maintenance of a pristine human facade here.

I like the little statues of Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Mercy/Compassion, on the street corners. A bit tragic, because it probably means someone has died in a car accident there, but now there is a statue to protect the people (and, if you want a more practical effect, people don’t drive over the broad sidewalk with this in the way).

We arrived hella late in the evening. You think biking through the city is murder? Well, it is, but biking through the city AT NIGHT is against the Geneva Convention. But we survived!

Day Five: from the car.

(Top to Bottom, Left to Right:)

Today’s elevation is shaped like a cardiogram, possibly of a very unhealthy heart. Three small-ish peaks, all mostly of the same height, and if they were designated the standard height 1, then the afternoon peak would be like 700. No just kidding, probably around 3.5, which is still ridiculous, considering the first three peaks were already coastal ranges.

Gorgeous, gorgeous view. Yeah, sure I used a filter, but only to really get the colors back into the photo. Salty ocean air and open sky and deadly cliffs, gotta love it.

...Except for the construction on the SINGLE-LANE paths. An unavoidable evil, I suppose. I swear to god I nearly got brained at least four different times by at least three different sorts of vehicles. All part of the experience!

Also, I drank Red Bull during break for the first time. IT IS DELICIOUS?? NOBODY TOLD ME??? Yay drugs, I had a good time.

Ate lunch on a mountain, table was once against piled high with food. I was once again too anti-hipster to take photos of my food, so I don’t have that to show. I do have the view across the driving lanes though! They were filling in the ocean, which is, wow. Humanity, man— we do some crazy things in defiance of nature.

Everything around was rusty and broken and cool, as per usual dystopian-style.

Afternoon climb! I’ll be perfectly honest, I didn’t do it. Why? Because I ded. But as a result I didn’t die on the climb and got to take some pictures of the rest site at the top of the mountain. Yes, I am a fraud.

(Text: Comfortable ride up [this death mountain], I wanna circle the island ten times.)

(Me: OTL.)

There was a black dog with three paws at the top of this mountain. And a baby kitten! Ridiculous creature, kept screaming at the top of its lungs.

Okay so I was shameless enough to bike down the mountain. There really is no feeling quite like skidding endlessly downhill for solid hours. I just sort of wish you didn’t have to climb that mountain first. We biked (skidded; soared; zoomed; zipped) through a bunch of aborigine towns. Heard a PSA over an elementary school’s loudspeakers to the whole town about saving water (they had just come out of a drought). Stopped by a marsh, covered in grasses. The view:

Like, whaaaaaaaaaaaaat. Well done nature, serious A+ work.

Hotel we ended up at is around the bend at the very tip of the island, craggy rocks everywhere tucked right against the edge of the ocean. It had an amazing disparity between its put-together parts (classic swag hotel) and its construction parts (metal death trap concrete steel rust murder tetanus).

**My lovely relatives who happened to live in the area took me and Jules out to Kenting tonight! Aaaah real cool food stuffs, clubs, it was such a chill evening!

(yes I’m awful at this updating thing shhhhhh I have an hour before dinner let’s go)

Slept in a mountain cabin with lots of bugs, and guitar party via Jules happened. Interesting digs, where our U.S. cohort discovered the fantastic clothes-drying spinner for the first time. Thank you physics, the lord and savior of our dirty smelly sweaty clothes.

First day I sat in the car, ‘cause my knee pain got horrible. Rode for one section of a 120 km stretch, then hopped back on that bike. In hindsight, perhaps this was a bad idea.

(Talked to the mechanic who always drives the van in the back. Super chill dude, I shouted at him about the U.S. education system sucking balls, and he told me why the Taiwanese education system is going down the drain too. It was a bonding experience.)

VIEW WAS INSANE.

We picnic’d out by this lake. Famous bento, ate with another group that was going counterclockwise around the island.

Saw a ton of farmland, stretches of planting. Specifically, this one fruit called the Shijia— buddha head fruit? Wanna try it.

One stop today was a gas station— lowkey was also probably a sketchy brothel. The karaoke in the back offered private rooms, as the owner was very eager to let us know.

So I skipped a day, my bad. The physical exhaustion is real though, cut me some slack (she says as she cuts herself too many slacks).

This was an early-morning day, 5:30 wake-up call in order to catch a train to Hualien. The path that we would’ve had to bike if we hadn’t taken a train was treacherous and the hunting grounds of angry truckers, so we took the safe way. It was a rather blessed day; we walked for ~20 minutes to get to the station, and the second everyone got under the station awning, it began to pour like crazy.

Train ride was two hours long— local Cizi people boarded en masse at one point and we chatted. Good people, gave me pamphlets, the usual.

Scenery is astounding. I keep saying this but it’s seriously post-apocalyptic looking, in the way where humans have all died out and nature is patiently chewing everything down to its organic parts again. I love seeing the birds nest in exposed iron infrastructure, the wild dogs coming in and out of moss-slathered shacks. On the train we passed a Catholic cemetery— bike ride later, there were a ton of family alters, some Catholic, some Buddhist, in little pockets at the feet of hills.

The ride was a lot of fun! Heard some Formosan Magpies, but didn’t manage to catch sight of them. Saw some Taiwan Sibia:

Also some black bird with white circles on the underside of its wings— dunno what that is yet, stay tuned.

A ton of cropland this part of the island— rice patties forever, and all the grains are yellow. There’s a ton of plantain and banana and papaya trees! Also saw a bunch of chickens, and a front yard with like, five bunnies just chillin’!

Crossed a lot of bridges, all crossing powder blue rivers— it looked like the same river, I was scared at one point that we were just winding back and forth.