This has been one of my wish list, we planned for the trip so much earlier (bought with zero fare air tickets). Intended to go with a handful of my close buddies. Plan then changed later, where the group went on with 2 hands full!
My 4th visit to this lovely place brought us with more adventurous self DIY local trip his time. Pre-trips homework was challenging, lots to plan, lots to read, lots to coordinate and communicate with the bicycle tour agent... all these been much taken care by my other half. Google's 'yellowman' had brought him virtually to the sites and routes a lot.
Internet broadband was a must for me. Learned my lesson from my last trip, although free Wifi wasn't that difficult to get. We both signed up for Taiwan Mobile's 台灣大哥大 package from the airport arrival terminal, right before entering the immigration gates. Deal was good, 1) unlimited broadband for 7 days, 2) immediate activation. After note remark, its superb especially when we were in suburb area throughout the bicycle trip, it's always close to 100Mb download speed! In case if you are on U Mobile subscription plan for more than 6 months, you are entitle to their free daily broadband of 1Mb, also with local carrier Taiwan Mobile. My friend was lucky!
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| Broadband service |
As usual, we took a bus from airport to downtown. Grab our next day ticket to next destinations for the next day at Taipei Main station. Our night stay is just nearby with underground walking distance. To be exact, it was opposite the bus station.
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| My lovely bear at Taipei mainstation |
- Operate by a very young couple, one of them is from Hong Kong
- Some rooms can be small, no windows, it was alright for a night stay
- We left out bigger luggage with them for the next 5 days, though their store room can be pretty narrow, yet they still accommodated the 10 of us
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| Add caption |
Foods :
1)
Ay-Chung Flour-Rice Noodle
- Since our hotel was walking distance, ~1km to XiMenDing (西門町), hunting for food wasn't a problem at all. In fact, there are some good shops around the hotel, serving good beef noodle. We passed by a local market and grabbed some local fruits, my ever favorite 蜜棗
- Ah Chung rice flour noodle (阿綜麵線 been
my partner someone's favorite, but not mine :( I prefer minced pork rice (滷肉飯) topped with egg, accompanied with O-chien (蛤煎) and fried radish cake.. so similar to our local food
- After dinner, we simply walked and shop around
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| simple dinner |
Journey :
1) Short bicycle trip at FuLong (福隆)
- We underestimated our expedition here, it was supposed to be a warm up ride before we started our 3D2N full biking journey from Taitung (台東) to Hualien (花蓮)
- The scenery and weather was just too good, our group spent too much time taking photos, in the end we couldn't finish our planned route of 20km around the place, including a scenic place called DongBeiJiao (東北角). Not to worry, I will be back!
- Main attraction was the cooling tunnel of 2km 舊草嶺隧道石城端（白雲飛處）
- We had simple bento lunch just in front of FuLong station
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| Bicycle rental outside FuLong station |
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| Biking tunnel |
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| FuLong Tourist i-building |
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| Bento set rice |
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| Bento shop, view from the station |
Journey :
2) Hooped on the 5 hours train from FuLong (福隆) to Taitung (台東)
- Though the journey was long, all of us enjoyed the comfortable train ride, especially on the super scenic view
- In fact, those view that we saw along the train ride, was our bicycle trip view too
- We took a train down south, and cycled up north. In fact, that was a slightly tiring ride as most of the time we ride against the north south wind :D
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| Our train tickets |
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| Little Olivia accompanied me too |
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| Met a reptile in our train cabin |
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| Scenic paddy field view |
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| Another wet paddy view |
Journey :
3) Here's our destiny in Taitung (台東), our engaged bicycle tour and rental shop
花蓮單車出租台東單車出租甲租乙還阿勝單車
- We were earlier skeptical about another bike touring shop outside of the branded brand's touring service. Once we stepped into this humble shop and the hospitality given by our guide, we all became satisfied customers
- Pick up and return of their bicycle can be at 2 different locations, we hired the guided car service, hence all our luggages were well taken care of
- Best part was, our guide could service puncture tire in seconds, buy us drinks, transport anyone and their bike if one can't make it through some steep route
- Upon picking up our bicycle (all ready tagged with our names, as they took our height and setup the closest fit size bicycle), our guide made us rode on the bike to our hotel, at least 10KM on a late evening
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| Bike touring shop |
Accommodation :
蘋果商務旅店 Apple Hotel
- Riders favorite hotel, the owner has a Bicycle Club to start with, they will ride in a group on a specific days
- Spacious and most important was clean
Journey :
4)
台東觀光夜市
5)
鐵花村 Tie Hua Music Village
- Upon checking in, it was closed to 8pm, it was time for dinner
- We walked about 1km that evening, headed to their night market for food
- My experience, nothing much of the night market, food was so-so. If one would like to have decent restaurant foods, they have good beef noodle house nearby
- On our way back, we dropped by a nicely lid full of lanterns park... view was awesomely lovely
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| Love the lanterns |
Journey :
6)
加路蘭遊憩區 Jialulan Recreation Area
- Our bicycle tour journeys started Day 1, all from Taitung, getting into several nice rest area long the beaches
- We stopped on an average every 10km for the start, our guide will usually stopped us at 7-11 or tourist rest area, almost all 7-11 mart has toilet. It was so convenient, plus we could refill our water or energy drinks anytime
- Our first and second rest area were super scenic, thanks to the blue skies with ~25C
- Dulan (都蘭) was a smaller township, where we stopped for a bread shop
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| Bread @ Dulan |
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| All kinds of bread |
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| JinJun 金樽 rest area |
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| JinJun 金樽 rest area |
- We stopped here for simple lunch
- It was a Pao shop with many kinds of famous Pao, meat balls and soybean drink
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| TongHe Pao |
Journey :
- Weather didn't do good after 3pm that day, upon checking in another tourist center, it rained
- We did a quick tour in which lasted only 30min
- The place would be very scenic if it didn't rain, there's a bridge to cross over to another smaller island opposite
Foods :
烏石鼻 Wushibi
- Dinner or meals are not inclusive in our bicycle tour package, no fear... as our guide will usually ask for our wish before planning our dinner
- Dinner will usually cost us only RM30/pax, served will close to 8-10 dishes of food
- 1st night's dinner was mainly seafood, since it's a fishing village. i.e. fresh sashimi, octopus, jelly fishes, etc... all were yummy!!
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| Wushibi Seafood Restaurant |
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| Wushibi Seafood Restaurant |
Accommodation :
宜人海灣
- Located at a small village called YiWan 宜灣
- Our homestay along the way was all booked by our bicycle tour agent. First night of our biking journey, was an apartment styled homestay. We took the highest floor. The entire building was managed for homestay purposes
- There was a nice common area in front, we had our foods and snacks that night, overlooking the beach
- I would say our breakfast the next morning was the highlight of all in the stay, we were all served with healthy Genki breakfast and home brewed coffee! Check out the picture, love it to the max!
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| Lighted up homestay |
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| Our room - wooden furniture |
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| Bread, ham, egg, steamed pumpkin, bean sproud, homecook soy milk |
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| Beautiful mug + home brewed coffee |
End of Day 1 expedition... tired, but was worth the effort with the beautiful scenic view.
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| Day 1 Biking TaiTung - YiWan |
