Saturday September 19, 2009 9:00 a.m.

Train 1011 from Taipei to Tainan, Car 12 Seat 01

In typical fashion, I took what was supposed to be a relaxing few days lounging in hotels and taking pictures of historic sites and turned it into a six-day bike ride on one of Taiwan’s steepest and most dangerous roads.

It all started when I met some of my co-workers for lunch. During our lunch, I mentioned my plan to take the train to Tainan and then a bus to Kenting. I threw out the comment that I wished I could take my bicycle. This is an old lament of mine. I pictured myself arriving at the Tainan train station and then being stuck. How does one explore a new town without a bicycle? The interesting places are usually too far too walk to. And even so, I dislike walking. I’d heard it was possible to rent a bicycle, but I’d heard stories like that before, and they rarely turn out to be true. And if they are true, the bicycles are usually horribly old and almost unrideable, or they are all rented. Something always goes wrong.

Someone then piped up and said that it was possible for me to bring my bicycle. They said that they had even taken their motorcycle on a train. No one could tell me exactly how to do this, but I decided it was worth looking into, and after lunch I went to the train station to see what I could find out. At that time, I was thinking that I would just bring my bicycle along so that I could ride it around Tainan when I got there. Folding bicycles are all the rage here, and that would be ideal. However, I don’t have one, and I’d have to bring my big mountain bike that I use for touring.

In any event, I went to the train station and stood in line at a ticket window. The woman there did not speak much English, but she seemed to be telling me that I could bring a bicycle on the train. The catch was that I would have to put it inside a bag. That isn’t a huge problem. I actually have a bicycle bag that I bought a long time ago and never used. However, it isn’t easy to dismantle a bicycle and then put it in a bag. It complicates matters enormously. I also didn’t trust this woman, so I stood in another line and asked a second person. This is always a good idea when overseas. It’s standard procedure for me. This fellow checked my ticket and told me that I could take a bicycle on that train. This told me something that the woman hadn’t told me. There were only certain trains on which bicycles were allowed. By chance and chance only, I’d purchased a seat on a train that allowed bicycles. But, and this was a big but, my ticket was not for the bicycle car. These special bicycle trains have a dedicated bicycle car. This man changed my ticket to that car and he also told me that I would have to put my bicycle in a bag. I asked if there was an alternative to that, and he said that I could also send my bike as baggage, and that I would have to go to the baggage area to arrange that. He didn’t explain this very clearly, and I didn’t really understand it, but I set off in search of the baggage area.

The train station in Taipei is quite large and I wandered around for quite a while without finding the baggage area. Eventually, I found an information desk and some very helpful people there explained the whole bicycle thing to me again, and then gave me directions to the baggage area, which, confusingly enough, was in a separate building across the street from the train station.

To my surprise, I found the building very easily. The men there were not customer service types, and they didn’t speak English, but I understood what they were telling me. They were saying that I could ship my bicycle as baggage without having to dismantle it and put it in a bag or box, but not on my train. Only certain trains could handle checked baggage. I tried to change my ticket to a train that handled checked baggage, but all of those trains were sold out. I did some more investigating and learned that I could ride on my original train and check my bike onto a different train – one that arrived only an hour later.

This must all sound like a long and involved process, but, in fact, it was surprisingly easy. It was amazingly easy when you consider that I got all this information in a Chinese-speaking country. I was quite pleased with everything I had found out. I was thinking that I wasn’t doing all this groundwork for just this trip. What I was learning could be applied to many more trips. The first time you do something like this is always the hardest by far. After that, it’s just routine. I added to my knowledge by a lot when I got back to my apartment. I went to the train web site and I saw there that all the trains that can handle bicycles were listed as such. It would be a simple matter in the future to buy tickets for just those trains. The thing is that Taiwan as a country is currently promoting bicycle use. I don’t know why that would be, but it is so. When I first got here years ago and took my bike on 3- and 4-day trips, I was the only one out there. I rode my bike to work as well, and I was the only one I ever saw doing that. Two or three years later, there were bicycles everywhere. The government is building bike paths and making things easier for cyclists.

When I got back to my apartment, I started to think about taking the bicycle, and very quickly my plans started getting out of control – as they always do. I only wanted to bring my bicycle as a more convenient way of getting around Tainan and Kenting. But then I ran into problems when I thought about getting my bicycle from Tainan to Kenting. I didn’t know if I could put my bicycle on buses. Then I started thinking about just riding my bicycle from Tainan to Kenting. That seemed feasible. So I started to think about what kind of gear I’d need to bring to do some cycling in the countryside. Then I considered that the terrain from Tainan to Kenting wasn’t that interesting – just flat land that was mostly developed. So I made the final jump and I decided to make this trip a complete cycling trip. There are three highways that cross Taiwan from West to East. They are all scenic, and the southern cross-island highway is the most scenic of them all, and it leaves from Tainan. It seemed the perfect idea to ride my bike across the mountains on this highway.

The problem there is that I had no idea if I could then bring my bicycle on the trains on the east coast. So I had to go back to the train station to figure all that out. I learned that even though these trains weren’t listed, it was possible to send a bicycle as checked baggage. I made arrangements for that, bought a ticket for myself on a different train, and I had all my transportation figured out. Now came the hard part – packing.

The problem was that I had been preparing for hanging out in cities, not for six days of cycling through the mountains. And it was now 8:30 at night. So I suddenly had to shift gears and prepare all my cycling and camping gear without knowing too much about what I was getting myself into. For example, I have no idea if there will be places to stay in those mountains. I didn’t really want to bring my tent and sleeping bag and sleeping bag and all of that gear. However, after doing some reading and some thinking, I decided to bring it all just in case. At least it would give me the option. As I mentioned above, hotels in Taiwan can be expensive. Even if there are hotels on this mountain road, they might cost a lot more than I am willing to pay. I want to do a lot of trips like this, and I don’t want to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on hotels if I can help it.

In the end, packing wasn’t that difficult. I’ve gone on so many cycling trips that packing for them is almost second nature. I brought a lot of my gear from Canada, so there were few surprises when it came to getting it ready. It all fit together quite easily. It only took as long as it did because while I was in Canada, I bought a couple of other bags that I thought would be an improvement. I didn’t know quite how to fit them into my system.

I stayed up fairly late getting ready and then I got a few hours of pretty good sleep. When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t too sure I had made the right decision. This bike trip was suddenly seeming like an awful lot of work. Why work so hard and make things so stressful? Why not just do things the easy way for once and just take a train to Tainan, find a hotel, and relax and have a holiday? I knew, though, that once I was cycling, I’d be glad. I find that on a normal type of holiday, time hangs heavy on my hands. Cycling is always the better way to go.

Things went fairly smoothly this morning. My bags were all packed. I showered, had breakfast, and then carried my bike down to the street. Then I brought down all my pannier bags and my tent and my sleeping bag. In just a couple of minutes, I had everything on the bike. I’ve loaded up the bike so many times that I could practically do it in my sleep now. Then I rode my bike to the train station and went to the baggage claim area. A man there had me fill out a couple of small forms, pay NT$650, and that was it. He assured me that my bike would get to Tainan on the next train after mine. I’d only have to wait an hour or so.

I make it sound easy, but the one big wrinkle in all of this was the heat. By the time I’d loaded up my bike, I was already drenched in sweat. And when I got to the train station, I was soaked even more. It wasn’t very comfortable. The train station was surprisingly crowded for eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. The Taiwanese do a surprising amount of traveling in their own country. I wanted to get a cup of coffee and sit down and relax before my train left, but it wasn’t that easy. I could get a cup of coffee at a 7-11 as I like to do, but it was very crowded and it was so hot that it wasn’t very enjoyable. I did it anyway, and tried to eke some pleasure out of the experience. Then when it was time, I made my way to the platform to wait for my train. Having done that many times before, it was easy to do. I didn’t put my bike in a bag as I could have done, but they put me in the bicycle car anyway. And I’m glad they did because now I can see how it works. The bicycle car has about twenty seats in the front and then a separate open area at the back. It’s a huge area and you can just put your bicycle there. I thought there would be a tiny baggage compartment, but it is in fact half of the entire car. It doesn’t really matter how big your bicycle is – just as long as you can carry it into that area. That’s good to know for the future.

And here I am on my way to Tainan on the train. I plan to get a hotel for tonight and tomorrow night. I’ll spend tomorrow in Tainan exploring and then I’ll leave on my bicycle.

Tags: bike, South Cross-Island Highway Trip, Tainan, Taiwan, train