Day 2: Hsinchu to Taichung

Time: 11:59pm

Location: Taichung

Weather: 16C, overcast

Day 2 finally shows some good weather that almost felt too hot at times, and once again I was met with the warmest Taiwanese hospitality. I left Hsinchu around 8:45am, again taking a while getting out of the city, and then found myself being directed onto Highway 61 by the Bike around Taiwan sign. I had thought that you couldn't bike on Highway 61, but it turns out that it separates the slow (bikes and small scooters) and fast (cars and motorcycles) moving vehicles into two roads and even has a designated bike lane. Soon i found myself along the latter stretches of the Hsinchu 17km Coastline Bikeway, and couldn't pass up the opportunity to walk down to ocean. It's not the prettiest beach but the way the sand shifted with the wind was pretty cool. The many windmills showed that Hsinchu, known as Windy City, definitely lived up to its name. 

Continuing along 61, I met a family out doing their weekend bike ride and started chatting with the mother who is actually Singaporean but lived in Taiwan for over 20 years. They are such a joyful, active family, bike riding almost every weekend and also doing lots of running races. Afterwards they invited me for lunch at a restaurant in Houlong, a fishing port, where I had an amazing seafood sandwich. 

Afterwards I parted with them as they  turned back on the highway, and continued on until Dajia which housed the most famous Mazu Temple in Taiwan. Every spring there is a 7 day pilgrimage marching from here to other temples and thousands of people usually follow along.

 As with most temples in Taiwan, there were lots of food vendors gathered around selling the local delicacies and I got some of Taichung's famous pastries. Dajia apparently is known for its taro as there was everything made from it from cakes to buns to tapioca desserts. It was starting to get dark so I hopped back on my bike for the last 20km to my host's place Longjing, a rural suburb of Taichung. We went out to the town of Shalu for dinner and then had interesting discussions about everything from Taiwanese politics (big presidential election today resulting in a historic moment for Taiwan) to economics to of course long distance biking until almost midnight.