I feared it might be a noisy night because my room didn’t have much sound insulation, but it was quiet overnight. I didn’t think my place offered breakfast. That was confirmed when I saw the owners returning home with their own takeout. But like pretty much everywhere, I had a kettle in my room, so brewed tea before packing up and heading to a nearby breakfast place. Once I figured out what was available, I had a dan bing (crepe/egg), taro cake, and milk tea, later supplemented by a banana from a fruit stand. The place was doing a very steady business in person and also by people calling ahead. Morning restaurants seem busier than the evening ones. Other people were getting noodles, bao, or even fries. And lots of dan bing were being sold.
I started right away with a fabulous up and down section of the route that was completely unnecessary. It added less than 200 m of climbing, had great views, and got me completely away from traffic (not that there was much) and out of the light headwind.
I headed up into the hills on a not-very-busy road. But on nice pavement.
I was routed onto this nice farm road for a while. No gravel here. I assume it’s made of concrete because the harvesters are track-mounted, so they’d rip up asphalt.
And I was on another rail trail for a while. This was a former station. I thought I was smart following it beyond the point I was supposed to turn off.
A nice young women at rice plant came out to calm down her barking dogs. She studied four years in Los Angeles. she told me that rice is harvested twice per year. They buy some of the rice from farmers, and farmers pay to have some rice processed for them that they sell themselves.
And another fruit I hadn’t seen yet in Taiwan - pomelos. The couple running this stand gave me a taste. So juicy! And they had a bucket of water so I could wash my hands afterwards. I bought one and stuffed it into my pannier.
As I approached Ruisui, I realized I hadn’t had a proper lunch. But the 7-Eleven was out of both onigiri and baked yams, so I had an ice cream bar instead. Same nutritional value, I think?
I dropped off my panniers at my nice accommodation and added a bit more biking to my day by going to see the Tropic of Cancer monument that I’d missed by not following cycle route #1. It wasn’t terribly exciting.
My busy dinner spot. They were doing a lot of business, both eat in and takeout. I finally googled the term ‘high CP value’ I’ve seen in restaurant reviews. I thought it was a mistranslation. But it’s not! It means high cost to performance ratio. Basically, a good deal.
After doing a load of laundry, I had dinner at a very busy street side restaurant. All the cooking is done in full view. Some other clients pointed at a dish I should try. Vinegary gingery garlicky noodles and who-knows-what.
Google translate just said ‘sausage’. There might have been intestines involved. But the texture wasn’t weird and it tasted great.
I know numbers matter here, and I’ve noticed that I’ve never had a 4 in any Wi-Fi passwords. But tonight’s host wins. The Wi-Fi password is ‘88888888’. 😂
As usual, I was ready to go to sleep early, but my building was a bit noisy with other guests showering and moving about. It quieted down and I was happy to have a more comfortable bed to sleep in tonight after my very enjoyable day.
