Bike Trip Part 3 (Day 2)

We slept that night for 4 hours waking up early the next morning around 5:30 am. To ride! The sun and heat didn't really give me the option to sleep longer.

We rode for hours and hours, just peddling none stop except for the occasional 7-11 stop. At one point we didn't see a civilized town for a long time. Our water bottles got low as our skin boiled in the heat. Eventually, we stopped and asked these kind elderly people sitting on their porch for water. We ended up sitting there for 1-2 hours, being served tea, hot water and watermelon. Jake fell asleep while I stumbled over my Chinese trying to get directions. Before we left they gave us a little ice cream, fruit and hot tea to go.

These photos aren't of abandoned buildings but of actually people's homes. This is a very normal site to see houses and buildings in the country or city to be so full of junk even in some store fronts.

Fellow Bicycle-lists

We rode mostly near the west coast. Some villages had piles of clams lined up all through the town.

All day we rode using the Sun as our compass. But as it faded we continued to ride. As it became dark we ran into another young gentlemen on a bicycle. He rode past us, an hour later to be we passed by as he walked his bike along the road. The next time we saw him he caught back up to us. He began speaking English to us. We then rode along the road with him too the city of Puzi. 

 After looking at Jacob's bike he decided we needed to take Jake's bike to a bike shop. His uncle happened to own one. As they worked on our bikes more and more people began to show up. It was about 9pm, and we realized all these people came to see the Americans. Before we left there was about 15 people or more that showed to see us. They took our picture and sent us off without a bill.

After riding into Tainan we needed a little help knowing how to get to the train station. I knew if we got there we could find a hotel. After asking a 7-11 employee, one of the costumers offered to help and drive his car as we followed by bikes to get us to the road we needed.

At night everything in Taiwan looks pretty sketchy even though its not. So it is really hard to judge the unsafe areas verses the safe. We saw a sign for this hotel across the street from what seemed to be a big party area. After walking down the dark ally (picture above), and being greeted rudely by the employee of the hotel, we really didn't know what to expect. The hotel turned out to be nice and clean but very small.

We rode 150km that day to arrive in Tainan (台南) totaling about 200km for the trip.