Thursday September 24, 2009 1:30 p.m.

Moogo Drinks – Tainan

I just ordered a milk tea and I’m waiting with great anticipation for it to arrive. I had planned to get an iced coffee or something at this place called George’s Fine Coffees. I went by the place half a dozen times my first day in Tainan. I thought it would be a great place to sit in air-conditioned comfort and relax. Perhaps it is a great place to sit and relax, but I won’t find out this afternoon. The place was closed. That tends to happen to me a lot.

This place, Moogo, is the first place I went in Tainan right after I checked in to my hotel. I have to laugh now because at that time I saw two people drinking something that looked good. One drink was white and the other was purple. I asked the waiter what they were drinking and he said it was milk tea. I ordered the same thing, but I made a big point out of wanting what the man was drinking – the white drink. I didn’t want the purple drink, because I figured it was flavored with something. Well, today I ordered another milk tea, and it came in a purple glass! So the woman and man were drinking the same thing. It was the glass that was purple, not the drink.

These sorts of misunderstandings happen all the time. I just had a very prolonged one at the train station. I had to change my train tickets as I mentioned. I had to cancel the ticket I’d already purchased for the train from Taitung to Taipei. And I needed to buy a new ticket from Tainan to Taipei. Plus I had to find out about shipping my bicycle to Taipei.

Canceling my ticket and getting the new one was actually pretty easy, but since I’d booked my new ticket online it got a bit complicated. I gave the ticket clerk my booking code, thinking that was enough. He seemed not to understand what I had given him, and since he didn’t speak English, he couldn’t explain to me what he needed. It took a while, but I finally figured out he just needed my passport number. I gave him that and everything was fine.

Then I went to the baggage area, which was much more confusing. I caused the problem by showing up on my bicycle even though I didn’t want to ship it until Saturday. They assumed I wanted to ship the bike today. And that led to major confusion. I don’t think I would have ever sorted through it all except that a young fellow who came in with a big parcel to ship spoke English and he translated for me. Then it all became very simple. There are four trains a day out of Tainan that can carry bicycles. I happened to book a seat on one of the trains that handles bikes. It leaves at 9:32 on Saturday morning. I just have to show up with my bike around 9:00, hand it over, and that is that. The bike will show up in Taipei on my train. It couldn’t possibly be easier or more convenient.

There isn’t much more to report on my little journey. I spent a quiet afternoon and evening in Chiahsien. I had one nice encounter with a man and a woman that happened to be sitting nearby in the 7-11. They were freelance journalists and they were in the area to report on how one of the local towns was dealing with the aftermath of the typhoon. The man spoke no English, but the woman spoke enough for us to have a nice chat. She was very pretty, so at first I assumed she was a TV reporter. But she said that she worked for magazines. She was born in Taipei, but then she married a man from Khaosiung. She moved there with him and has since found it difficult to find a job. That is why she is freelancing. Her English was good enough to tell me that much, but I couldn’t find out much more.

My only other human encounter was with a horde of rowdy and rude elementary school children. They can get pretty wild here, and when this group spotted a foreigner, they decided to have some fun with him. It started out as good-natured teasing and I played along with them to provide some entertainment. But it quickly got out of hand and I had to get angry with them to get them to leave me alone. The ringleader came running past me just before they left and shouted that he was going to “kill” me.

I walked around the town for a while with my little digital camera. I walked mainly along the river and ended up at the spot where the bridge had washed away. I climbed down into the riverbed and took a few pictures of that up close. The town was preparing for some kind of festival on the weekend. Big tents were going up all over the place. It’s not an unusual occurrence. One sees these celebrations all over the place, and I never know what they are about. Even when I ask what they are about, I rarely understand the answer or remember the answer. I just accept them as part of the scenery now.

The last bit of minor excitement came at the end of the evening when I came back from having dinner. I decided to check on my bike, and it was lucky that I did, because I had a flat tire. I took the rear wheel off the bike and took it up to my room to fix it in air-conditioned comfort. I was very lucky to have made it to Chiahsien. Fixing a flat in the heat at the side of the road would not have been nearly as pleasant. It might even have been difficult because the leak was an extremely tiny pinhole. I had to submerge the tube in the sink many times before I finally found the telltale little bubbles coming from the puncture. Without a source of water like that, I don’t think I would have been able to find it. The repair was very simple and I was done in a short time. The patch held and I took the wheel down and put it back on the bike. I was a bit worried that the patch would let go during the night, but in the morning, the tire was still pumped up and ready to go.

I was on the road by 7 this morning without much effort. I’m just naturally going to bed earlier and getting up earlier with each day. I was pretty disappointed to be cycling back into Tainan instead of heading deeper in the mountains, but there was nothing I could do about it. The first part of the ride was enjoyable, as I was still out in the mountains. But after 30 kilometers I started to get back into the urban environment surrounding Tainan. The roads got wider and wider and the traffic increased. It didn’t feel very good after the wild, open spaces of the mountains. I wished I was still out there.

The heat also seemed to increase as the altitude decreased. By the time I was in Tainan proper, I was roasting. I decided to go back to the Ta Lee Hotel. It was nice enough and I didn’t think that it was worth it to go searching for another hotel.

I was in a strange mood this morning as I rode along. Now that I wasn’t going deeper into the mountains, I wasn’t as excited about cycling. I looked around at the towns that I was passing through, and I reflected on how ugly they were. Taiwan offers some nice mountain scenery and some interesting sections in the big cities, but no one can argue that the average town in Taiwan is anything but really, really ugly. I have had thoughts about doing a lot of traveling in Taiwan over the next year (or however long I stay), but this morning, I had a bit of a “why bother” feeling. The heat is almost unbearable, and the towns and villages are butt-ugly. I had the feeling that I’d already seen what Taiwan had to offer.

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