November 21st

November 21, 2021

Vietnamese lunch

Debbie says there's a cold front coming. Not that you'd know it. The sun is out and I put on a pair of shorts and a short-sleeved top for our ride into town. She says tomorrow will be quite chilly.

It's 10:00 when we leave home and decide to cycle to the nearby river and follow its path towards town. We'll have coffees again.

The 14-floor apartment building under construction at the back of ours is looking like its nearing completion, with most of the scaffolding having recently been taken down and metal balcony railings getting fitted. It's been a seven-days-a-week schedule for months and hopefully the noise will now be less of an issue because it's not easy doing online classes when there's a racket going on just outside.

It's a wonderful blue sky and I'm dubious about the imminent cold front.

We pause at a red light and it's a good job I'm wearing shorts and a summer shirt as it feels hot, with no breeze and the temp' being something like 28 °C. That's just a guess.

The unit next to local woodworker's workshop has a few chairs outside and I snap one against its blue metal shutter, then ride to catch up with Debbie.

After just a few minutes we cross a junction and make our way to the river and I notice a Hi-Life store on a corner where we make a sharp right that's obviously been there for years and I marvel how it's never registered with me before. My mind ponders if it might have some cans of Lithuanian IPA in stock. We can check on the way home.

For about five more minutes we follow the riverside lane and get to the ring road but instead of riding along it like we usually do, I lead Debbie straight across and we cycle down a lane that's also quiet, one which will take us to the near side of town, close to the train station.

There's a chance of spotting chairs outside houses on these side streets, with the majority of the buildings around here likely dating back 60-odd years, which is quite old for Taiwan. They're mostly town houses with no front gardens.

At a T-junction is a typical house with a small front yard area and on it's rendered wall is a wooden postbox. Most houses have proprietary plastic ones, but this specimen was made by someone decades ago and is painted a deep red. It's a bit damaged. Many years ago I found a green one dumped along a country road and took it home. It's mounted on a wall on our balcony.

We ride slowly along and I'm not too sure where we'll end up, but it's not important as we can't really get to lost around here. We'll either end up in town or back at the ring road.

We come out onto a wide road and while Debbie knows where we are it takes a minute for me to get my bearings. We round a bend then I see the rail lines. I rarely come this way and the last time was something like 10 or 15 years ago.

As we ride closer to the back of the station I spot a chair in a front porch that has terrazzo tiles. The original sliding doors are painted traditional turquoise that's faded slightly. Most homeowners have replaced them with aluminum doors. The house looks neglected and a sheet of thin plywood has No Parking written on it Chinese.

We go along the road and make a left to ride under the rail tracks and ride down a street with market stalls. The foreign workers haven't arrived yet. Many are likely in the nearby Catholic church.

After pedalling along one of the main city roads towards the river for a few minutes, we stop to get lattes from a 7-Eleven knowing the river is now only about 200 metres away.

The plan is to drink the lattes in the shade somewhere along the bank, where it's peaceful, and mine goes in my bottle cage and Debbie puts hers in a pannier pocket. She used to have a bottle cage, but her loose pants would catch on it as she rode to work, so it got removed. She didn't need it.

The riverside bike path has benches here and there and we stop after a few minutes and ride down a short ramp where there's a temple the size of a domestic kitchen. A few elderly men have set up a table and chairs outside and are playing a board game and it feels like we're intruding, so we opt to go back up and sit on a bench under a tree, right on the edge of the path.

The lattes taste a bit weird. They're cheap for a reason.

A few people cruise by on U-bikes.

There are no garbage bins around, so I push the two empty cups into my bottle cage and off we go.

A bench on the river bank beside a small temple

We decide to do a loop - riding down as far as the bike path currently goes, then coming back on the other bank.

It's become cloudy.

Where we turn around the path has now got a ramp down under the bridge, but it's blocked off. There's also a ramp on the other side - blocked off. It'll be nice to explore the extended path and that should be possible quite soon as it looks finished, with a fresh tarmac surface. It's probably just needs to be officially inspected.

We end up back where we got to the river and ride past the same 7-Eleven and a minute or two later stop at a shop that sells cheap stuff. I want to buy a couple of plastic CD cases. Debbie wants some super glue.

It's a very long shop that has racks stocked with all sorts of stuff, from screwdrivers to car accessories. We spend a few minutes looking around, but can't find any CD cases. A clerk says they don't have any. I'd have bet that they'd have them. Debbie spends a buck on a tube of glue.

We try a bigger shop near the train station, but it seems like CDs are a thing of the past.

The second-hand shop at the back of the train station sells used CDs, so we go there and they are only equivalent of 30 US cents each. I buy five. The discs will get thrown away. One is about insurance and another is a business English one.

Along the same street as the second-hand shop are a few places to eat. Many are run by people from Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. We go to a Vietnamese one as the couple of Indonesian places are full and have have noodles. On weekends, young foreign workers congregate in these restaurants and enjoy some shopping.

There's a mix of languages among the others sat here, or serving: Chinese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese. It's possible there's a family connection among them and quite a few men in Taiwan marry women from other Asian countries. A lot of Taiwanese women don't want to get married - at least not to someone they consider mediocre.

The noodles are OK.

Beside the small river riding back towards home

We get to the small river and flow a narrow elevated path, then go down some lanes and side streets we rode along earlier, back past a temple I took a photo of and stop to take another as it's now bathed in bright sunshine. The roof is ornate.

My last shot is of two chairs outside a house. They are being used as a clothes line.

I completely forget to check out the Hi-Life for IPA. Taking a shower is on my mind as well as teaching online at 2:00.

Today's ride: 9 km (6 miles)
Total: 888 km (551 miles)

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