Sunday September 20, 2009 8:30 a.m.

Dining Room of the Ta Lee Hotel – Tainan, Taiwan

When I checked in yesterday, they said something about breakfast, but I didn’t really understand it. When I came down this morning, I was very surprised to find a very nice buffet breakfast laid out in a dining room. Had I known that all of this was down here, I would have come down earlier. They even have a little coffee machine that grinds the beans before it makes every individual cup. Most of the food is typically Chinese, including a rice soup called, I believe, congee. Congee is very common for breakfast here. However, there is also toast and things like that for those that prefer it. Myself, I’ve long been used to the Chinese style of breakfast. I often have the same things for breakfast that I have for lunch and dinner. I quite like it.

I don’t have much to report this morning. After my bubble-milk tea experience, I walked back to the hotel and then I never left my room until this morning. My plan was to go to sleep early so that I could get up early this morning while it was still cool. Unfortunately, all the caffeine and sugar in the bubble-milk tea kept me awake. So I didn’t get the early night I had hoped for.

I woke up fairly early this morning anyway, but I wasn’t in the mood to face the sun that was already beating on the earth out there. I just lay in bed and took my time. I would have come down earlier to have this coffee and breakfast, but I didn’t know it was here.

11:30 a.m.

Hanlin Tea Room – Tainan, Taiwan

After breakfast this morning, I pulled together all my maps and books and my cameras and threw it all into a pannier bag and took off on my bike. My plan, such as it was, was to ride my bike to the Anping Historical District. Apparently, the two main areas of interest in Tainan are the downtown core, where I’m staying, and this Anping district. The Anping district is close to the coast, about four or five kilometers away. There are some old temples there as well as the remains of a couple more Dutch forts. I wasn’t that interested in the temples or the forts, but I thought the ride out there might be interesting.

I seem to spend most of my life obsessing about luggage and this trip is no exception. While I was in Canada, I bought another pannier bag that I hoped would solve some of my problems. The main problem I’ve had in the past was carrying around a pannier bag when I’m off the bike. They are awkward bags. However, a company that makes excellent pannier bags has developed a new bag that converts into a knapsack. I bought one, hoping it would be the best of both worlds – a good pannier bag when on the bike and then a good knapsack. My experience with it has been mixed so far. The problem is that the bag was designed with urban commuters in mind. To that end, it has a special area on the front designed for a heavy u-lock and a bike helmet. I carry neither, so those features are useless to me. And the inclusion of those features means that the bag is not as user-friendly as it could be. It consists of one big compartment, and that compartment gets squished by the design of the bag. I don’t like it all. I want to carry my laptop, books, maps, a bike pump, bike tools, and my camera gear. I guess that is a tall order to include all in one bag, but that is what I need, and this bag doesn’t quite do it. I can never get at anything that I need, and I end up damaging all the books and maps. I don’t think it is going to work out for me.

As I rode away from the hotel, I noticed that my bike computer wasn’t working. The strap that held the magnet sensor in place had broken and the whole unit was hanging loose. I’m positive this damage occurred while the bike was inside the bike box and being shipped here by jet. It’s a funny thing that far more damage has been done to my bike over the years during shipping than while I was riding it. The bike was completely tuned up and running perfectly while I was in Sarnia. Now, after being shipped in a box, nothing is working right. All the gears and the brakes have been knocked out of alignment. I find it really difficult to get things working again after shipping the bike.

It was extremely hot this morning when I left, and it just kept getting hotter and hotter. That doesn’t bode well for the next six days of cycling, though it will certainly get cooler as I start to climb into the mountains. After my short ride this morning, though, I’m wondering if I might have bitten off more than I can chew. I’m not in very good shape. Just the ten or so kilometers I rode to Anping and back has gotten me quite sore – and that is with very little weight on the bike. Still, I don’t have that far to go in terms of total distance – only 200 kilometers. Divided over six days, that shouldn’t be too hard, especially when you consider that on one of those days, I’ll be coasting the entire way down out of the mountains and back to the coast before turning south to go to Taitung.

One interesting thing about Tainan is that it has a few canals. The route I followed to Anping took me almost the entire way alongside one of these canals. That made the ride somewhat interesting. I was surprised to see that the canals were full of fish – at least one species of fish. I could see hundreds of them swimming right at the top of the water. Lots of fishermen saw them, too, and were catching them in a rather unsportsmanlike way. They cast their baited line out into the water and then they used a long springy ladle of some kind to fling fish pellets in the water beside their line. The fish converged on the fish pellets to eat them (just like goldfish in a pond) and one of them invariably takes the baited hook instead of a pellet. It hardly seems like the fish have a sporting chance. They aren’t very large fish, either. So I don’t know what the point of catching them is. The fishermen were throwing them into buckets, so I assume they were taking them home to eat them.

The old Dutch fort in Anping was about what I expected. All that remained of the old fort was a section of wall. The rest was just a new building with a museum inside it. The grounds were nice, though, and it was pleasant enough, if hot, to walk around and snap a couple of pictures. These days I think my photography is suffering as I get confused about which camera to use. I have my little digital point-and-shoot and I have my big film camera. I use each of them in entirely different ways, and now I get all mixed up. I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore. I’ll have to simplify soon and get a digital SLR.

After I toured the fort, I rode around and looked at a couple of temples and other things. Then I decided I’d had enough. I like the downtown area around my hotel better. I found the canal and rode back downtown. My first stop was this tea house for another bubble-milk tea. It’s not that I find them so delicious. But they are cold and with the tapioca and milk constitute almost a meal. In hot weather like this I find it difficult to eat a full meal. I thought this bubble-milk tea might tide me over until it gets cooler this afternoon.

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