An Electric Huan Dao, Part 2
Taiwan Cycling Adventure, Planning and What To Expect
This is Part 2 of a three part series about cycle touring around Taiwan. Part 1 covers our Karmic Koben e-bikes. Part 3 is about our day-by-day stats.
Cycling around Taiwan is a spectacular way to see the whole island and intimately experience all it has to offer. I was lucky enough to ride the tour in November 2017 with my wife and a family friend (our de facto guide) and I wanted to offer a resource for other considering this adventure. I detailed our Karmic Koben electric bikes in another post, which convinced my wife never to tour on an analog bike again!
THE BASICS
We ended up riding about 650 miles in 8 days to circumnavigate the island, starting and ending in Taipei. This is on the speedier side as tourism resources often mentioned to allot 10–12 days. The electric bikes probably helped with that. The flip side is that we probably didn’t enjoy the scenery or maximize the experiences we could have had. We still got the cool certificate to commemorate the occasion though! More on this later.
BUDGET
First off: Cash. It’s king. We only used a credit card once at Watson’s, a drug store. Most of the hotels didn’t accept them. Restaurants and convenience stores didn’t either. There are other local payment systems, but cash was easiest for us.
We didn’t seek out luxury on our tour. Our hotels cost between NT$1000–1500 per night and most required a passport to check in. This got us basic accommodations and some provided breakfast as well. Food’s pretty cheap all around the island and we averaged spending NT$500–800 per day for us, mostly dining at convenience stores and supermarkets detailed below.
PLANNING A ROUTE
The big question: Clockwise or counter-clockwise? There is no wrong way to ride around Taiwan. Most of the tourist material recommends going counter-clockwise (south down the west coast, north up the east coast) as the west is a little bit flatter so you can build up endurance. Also, going up the east coast puts you right on the water so you don’t have to cross the street to get a good view of the ocean. However, we ended up going clockwise, powering through a couple of the hardest days early while we were still fresh. And there were plenty of places to stop to take in the breathtaking views along the east coast as well.
For the most part, we took a pretty direct route. For the southern half of the eastern side, we took highway 9 inland instead of highway 11 on the coast. There were more towns and we stopped to visit our tour guide’s friends and family. On the west side, we leaned toward staying farther inland to avoid congested city traffic (which comes with plenty of stoplights). We used the Tourism Bureau’s Cycling Route 1 as a general guide, but weren’t afraid to take our own deviations.
Another concern is that the highway between Su’ao and Hualien on the northeast coast has a dangerous reputation. It’s mostly two lanes, one in either direction, going along a cliffside, with nine tunnels cutting through the mountains. Most guidebooks suggest taking a train between the cities, but our guide said it was worth it to ride. Riding clockwise, we end up on the mountain-side (as opposed to the cliff-side), although there was a runoff ditch a couple feet deep running alongside the road. While there are a couple pinch points, the road is generally wide enough for a cyclist on the shoulder and two cars to pass each other without cutting it too close. A large majority of the drivers passed with plenty of room. The tunnels aren’t as bad as they are made out to be either. While there’s certainly less room, the warnings of loud noise (for which earplugs were recommended) and shockwaves from trucks entering never really materialized for us. It helped that construction backed up traffic into a couple tunnels, but it was no more harrowing than my commutes in Boston or Las Vegas. Plus, the best views are going to be from this stretch of road (see above), so I’d definitely recommend riding it. The video below was our ride through the northernmost tunnel riding from north to south, sped up at 2x. It’s one of the longest of the bunch too.
In terms of terrain, the biggest mountain passes are from Taipei to Yilan county, the aforementioned Su’ao to Hualien highway, and crossing over highway 9 between the east and west sides. In riding clockwise from Taipei, we covered all of this in the first four days of riding. The northwest region from Taichung to Taipei provided some hills too, perhaps because we ventured inland, but the hills felt more distributed although our total elevation gain was similar to the first day. Or maybe the guide book was right and we did build up endurance so it just felt easier.
Logistically, we took things day by day. We’d hit the road between 8–9am, make whatever stops we needed for food, restrooms, or sights, and find a hotel in whatever town we ended up in between 4–5pm. Other than one short 40 mile day, it was plenty of time to go 60–100 miles each day. After getting a place to stay, we’d charge our batteries, literally and figuratively, shower, wash our clothes, get dinner, and go to bed between 9–10pm. Some hotels allowed us to take our bikes inside our room, other times we had to leave them in the lobby, but we never left our bikes outside.
TRACKING YOUR RIDE
Did I mention you can get a certificate for riding around the island? You need to register with the Cycling Lifestyle Foundation and download the i-Tracing app to your phone so it can track your progress. I was fortunate enough to have native Chinese speakers navigate me through the process. It ended up costing NT$600 (~US$20 at the time).
For more detailed distance and elevation tracking, we utilized Strava. I generally rode with only the i-Tracing and Strava apps open on my Nexus 5X phone and would still have a decent amount of battery left at the end of the day. However, I did bring a power bank to alleviate any battery life anxiety. The bonus of riding an e-bike was that we had a USB port to tap in to the bike’s battery if we were really in a pinch. Taiwan uses the same outlets as the USA. Most of the outlets only had two prongs though, so if you have a device that has the ground plug, you may need an adapter for that.
We used LINE to communicate with our family in Taiwan during our ride. For the rest of the world, we uploaded photos and ride videos to Facebook. Our friends and family loved our Relive videos, which makes movies of your Strava ride overlaid on satellite maps. Getting a SIM card with unlimited data was enormously helpful too, even if all of the hotels had WiFi.
THINGS TO PACK
We’re not ultra-minimalists, but we didn’t want our equipment bogging down our panniers either. The spare batteries and chargers on our e-bikes would be enough. Obviously, there’s bike-related tools and accessories in case you run into misfortune in between towns. We packed a pump, spare tubes, patch kits, tire levers, and a basic multitool. We also brought bike locks too, but we never ended up using them. We carried lights as well in case we got caught out at night, but don’t forget spare batteries!
We certainly overpacked on clothing, but it was interesting to see how little we needed to make it through the trip. My wife basically went with one kit (jersey, capris, and socks) while I went with two. We packed our hi-vis jackets for a little more warmth, even if it wasn’t completely waterproof, along with arm warmers and sun sleeves. We each had one set of street clothes and one set of sleep clothes which was more than enough for the evenings. I even managed to go underwear-less for the whole trip.
We rinsed and wrung out our clothes every night, hanging them up all over the hotel room. In the cheaper hotels, we only had two sets of towels and they were pretty small with extremely low thread count. I can’t say everything was completely dry by the next morning, but you won’t notice the dampness once you start riding again anyways. The only thing I didn’t compromise on was socks. Always dry socks to start the day, but I still managed to only rotate through two pairs.
Our guide rode with sneakers, which I initially thought he did just because we were on e-bikes. Then I saw some other cyclists on analog bikes wearing sandals. My wife and I opted for recessed cleat cycling shoes that we could (somewhat comfortably) walk around in. It kept us from lugging around a second pair of footwear and we never had to go too far on foot.
We packed a couple maps and tour books as well. The map turned out to be the most useful in planning our route and we pulled it out a few times each day. Tour books are great if you want to do more touristy activities, but we didn’t let that dictate our pace. In the towns, Google Maps was extremely useful, especially when searching for hotels, restaurants, convenience stores, and supermarkets. The information was accurate and up to date and the GPS guided us around town perfectly.
GENERAL RIDING IN TAIWAN
Unlike many island nations, Taiwan traffic stays on the right, so at least that much will be familiar to Americans. One of the nicest features of Taiwan is that many roads have a dedicated scooter lane on the right. It’s easy enough to stay in half of this and still leave room for scooters to pass without themselves having to go into the middle of the road. Also, at stoplights, there’s a scooter box in front of the cars where two-wheeled vehicles, including bikes, can maneuver to the front of the line. Our guide was pretty aggressive getting all the way to the front, but that left us behind sometimes as our bikes were a bit wider carrying more gear. Lastly, these boxes are used for making two-point left turns, so scooters and bikes go straight across a lane of traffic and maneuver into the box to their right to go across the rest of the intersection. This minimizes the need to ride in traffic lanes and is significantly safer than trying a left turn in cross traffic.
The ubiquity of scooters make car drivers generally very aware of bicyclists and other road users. However, there is no 3-foot passing rule and cars will try to carve out a gap to get through slow moving lines of traffic. It’s nothing really egregious and don’t mistake their aggressive driving for road rage or “trying to run you over,” but you do have to stay alert and anticipate certain maneuvers like cars making a right turn through a stream of scooters.
The buses, on the other hand, cut it much closer. You should definitely try to recognize bus stops, either by signs, shelters, or markings on the road, and be very aware if there are any around you. They will squeeze by and you will have to stop or swerve out into traffic if you want to maintain momentum. If few people are at the stop, the bus will pull out again quickly since most of the payments are electronic and paid on the way out. Stopping and waiting is advised if you don’t want to get caught in a game of leapfrog where you and the bus keep passing each other and they have to cut you off at every stop.
Street signage is very good as well. The Cycling Routes are marked with long, vertical rectangular brown signs to keep you on course. The main highways have distance signs every one-tenth of a kilometer so you can track and plan your progress. And the city names are spelled out in English and Chinese characters.
FOOD
Our main source of nutrition came from the 7–11’s and Family Mart’s that lined our route. They’re stocked with hot foods, heat and serve meals, beverages, and a limited selection of fresh fruit. The prepared meals are great as they’ll microwave it for you so you can have a hot meal in minutes. While teas and fruit juices are plentiful, there are limited selections when it comes to sports specific drinks. Pocari Sweat and a sports drink looking bottle marked “Bicycle” were the only choices. Additionally, the only other supplements I could find were an Energy gel packet and one with amino acids. My wife didn’t try them, but she still thought they were gross.
There are also a number of fruit stands along the roadways for a quick sugar infusion. They are often stocked with seasonal, locally grown fruits. If you’re in the southeast, be sure to try to the sugar apple or custard apple (sakya or shi jia) which doesn’t travel well, so it’s difficult to find good ones in other regions of the island.
For dinner, we would wander the streets often getting dumplings, noodles, and other local delicacies at the local restaurants and night markets. We’d also hit up convenience stores or supermarkets for snacks and frozen desserts to satisfy my sweet tooth (and alcohol for my wife). If the hotel didn’t serve breakfast, we’d buy some bread as well for the next morning just so we didn’t have to wake up any earlier than we needed.
WEATHER
We did the tour in November and the temperatures were still pretty warm. In the north, we encountered drizzling rain. In the south, it was relatively hot and sunny enough to sear a sunglasses and helmet strap tan to my face (see the sugar apple pic above; my wife thought this was gross too). On the west side, heading north, we encountered a stiff head wind which limited our distance.
Obviously, the weather’s going to vary depending on when you go. In the summer, there is sweltering heat and oppressive humidity. My first visit to Taiwan was in June and I joke that when I stepped off the plane, I drowned. We used Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau website and app to know what conditions to prepare for.
FOR NEXT TIME
Seeing Taiwan by bike provides an amazing perspective of the island. Your effort is greatly rewarded by the scenery, food, and people you meet along the way. It would have been nice to have more time to take some alternate routes such as through Taroko National Park or Sun Moon Lake, but that will just leave us a reason to return. As someone who enjoys nature and likes to ride open roads, I would probably stick as far inland as I could on the west side or just ride up and down the east coast.
Having electric bikes was great since we didn’t train at all before our tour. It allowed my wife and I to keep separate intensity levels but still stick together. If pacing is a question, e-bikes are definitely worth your consideration. Like I said at the beginning, my wife won’t even think of doing another tour, Taiwan or otherwise, without electric assist.
