Getting some bearings

On my second full day in Taipiei I woke up a 5am! I was ready this time with my key to escape the house, so I put on exercise clothes, snuck out, and used my maps to get to a YouBike 2.0 station. YouBike is a country-wide bike rental station. For most people, their rental is linked to the EasyCard, a payment system for transit and some major stores like convenience stores. I don't have a local phone number on my esim card, so I linked my credit to allow for purchases on YouBike's system for 5 days. The total cost of this entire 3 hour advenure was 1.65 USD!

Fit check!

I got on the bike and started to pedal towards the riverside nature park and walking area that cuts through the city and divides Taipei City and New Taipei City (developed later and a different administrative district. It feels to me like a Minneapolis/St. Paul distinction). I got to ride the bike along with the morning commute of cars, buses, a zillion scooters, and some other bikes.

A few observations:

-I was told not to drive in Taiwan because it is chaotic and people are disorderly. I honestly do not see that, though I do know that my observations are limited to a small part of Taipei. Yes, there is a lot going on, but everyone is very orderly and clear. People stop and start slowly, no one is weaving in and out of lines. This is possible because...

-There is really clear infrastructure. There are zones in each street for cars, a designated bike/scooter lane, and clearly marked crosswalks. There is a special box for scooters to gather in front of the cars for the red light wait, and a specific area for left turns. Every intersection with a light has a countdown timer for the pedestrian access and for the red light.

-There is space for pedestrians. Almost all of the buildings that line the street have an "arcade style" over the sidewalk outside the first floor. This means that there is a protected, covered area for pedestrians and commerce, a place to park scooters and bikes and then stone pillars and curbs between that and the actual street. With that said, pedestrians do walk in the road and bikes&scooters do go on the sidewalk (kind of insanely, I will comment), but there is space for both to be safe. Additionally, many busy intersections will have a period in their light cycle that is for all pedestrians to cross at all the paths of the intersection- including diagonals! I saw this in videos of Japan and I LOVE it here. A really good way to get a lot of people moved through the intersection quickly and it feels very safe because there is no motorized vehicle movement at all.

-It's got space for cars but it is not car centric. There is very little on-street parking which I love because I find it very ugly and disruptive to city life. There are specific parking areas under apartment buildings and under overpass roads. I love this

Anyway, I was out there loving life but then realilized that the road that I was on was going to turn into an highway and I would not be able to access the park. I did some left turns through a neighborhood (adorable, cozy) and then made it onto the paths of the park! I had a great time for a kilometer or two and then became so frustrated by the poor gearing of the bike and rattley chain that I decided to go back to a different YouBike station and swap out the bikes. This invovled me carrying the bike up a flight of stairs and then riding down the sidewalk of a large bridge...but I made it! I turned in the bike (after flipping the adjustable seat backwards, the signal that the bike is not to be used and needs a tune up) and then hit up a 7-11 for some food. I was so hungry and thirsty at that point.

7-11 is of special excitement to me because at my workplace is across the street from a 7-11 and we are constantly discussing what is sold there and rating the products. So, I was thinking of my dear Staycie and Alex as I went into the 7-11 in this random neighborhood and got breakfast: a steamed Japanese sweet potato, a hard-boiled "tea egg" (soaked in a sweet and salty broth), an onigiri rice ball, and a yogurt drink. I sat in a little park that was populated by many old people and their mobility aids and/or companions leading them around the park. To my left was a small temple with two men cleaning it up and setting up some chairs and incense. There was a lot of construction noise from a building across the street, but overall it was very peaceful and scenic.

I loved the potato, rice, ball and yogurt, but the tea egg was similar to the century egg in texture and I did not love it. I think I like eggs less cooked overall.

After my snack I got back on a better YouBike and used another bridge + stair set to access the path again. I got down the stairs to a grove of Banyan trees sheltering a bunch of ladies doing aerobic dancing. It was adorable, they had a whole little fitness camp set up there.

I was able to ride much faster and easily now, and enjoyed a good distance of wetlands, groves of trees, and riverside in the BRIGHT and HOT sun! It was such a good ride and I could feel my body adjusting to being in the new time zone. I kept having the feeling as the sun was coming up that it was actually dusk and that it would be night time soon, but as this ride was happening I started to have my hopeful, positive feelings that I associate with morning. That was a great sensation.

After a bathrooom stop (displaying the three gender lol), I crossed back under the highway to my now-familiar Youth Park. It was pretty empty but people were enjoying the tennis, basketball, and squash courts, some of the playgrounds, and just walking around.

There was a playround with no one on it and a TRAMPOLINE!! I just could not justify not enjoying that:

I also climbed on the play structure and went down a large slide. I'm in a phase of life where I'm happy to let my inner child be happy.

Further into the park, I spotted a bunch of exercise equiptment and a lot of people doing calesthetics and stretching on them. I also briefly joined in on a qi gont-style class happening near the water area we had gone to the night before.

If you know me, you know I love physical culture and seeing adults (as well as kids) be able to move freely and stay active outside of perscribed "exercise" and this made me so happy to see and participate in! It also reminded me how out of shape/weak I am lol. In the short term, I am going to deal with this by staying active AS WELL AS eating a lot of snacks!

At that point in the day, I was exhausted so I returned the bike to a docking station (they are EVERYWHERE), sat on a bench and finished my yogurt drink and just watched street life for a little bit- it was around 930am at that point. I accidentally dropped the mask that I had sitting on my lap and a street-cleaer came by with a giant pair of metal tongs (like 18inches long, not sure what your defintion of Giant is) and grabbed the mask, trash from a packet of ciggarettes and a fallen leaf from under me and gave me a dirty look.

Later on that day, SJ and I ventured to COSTCO! I had done some research and had the hopes that they would sell me cheap contacts, and SJ had been wanting an excuse to get a membership for cheap groceries and supplements. Before we went in we had a pre-shopping fuel refill of onigiri, hot chips, and soda. SJ did an amazing job negotiatiing the membership conversation but at the Optical counter we found they didn't have the brand I had in my perscription and weren't able to give me an eye exam at that time. We still had a good time, got them a bunch of groceries and some Hello Kitty branded food storage containers. At the check out in the food court I spotted pistachio soft serve which is one of my favorite foods on earth so we got that as a victory snack and then headed home in a taxi. I took my most morose nap of the trip so far and when I woke up SJ had made a delicious dinner of purple rice, a sauteed green vegetable purchased at costco and a stir fry of pumpkin, mushrooms, and cashews. And they bought me a Taiwan Beer which is brewed primarily with rice and barley and therefor has very little wheat!

We went out after eating and met up with some of the dog groups at a different park, this one on the grounds of an old sugar cane processing plant. One of the dog owners, a bright lady with a shirt saying "Make America Goth Again" recommended some location spots for me to go to while I am here, and also shared that she had the hookup for free ice cream at a local place. SJ thought intially that this was a famous old dessert spot, but it turned out to be a 7-11 around the corner. Dogs can go into convenience stores here! the ice cream was nice. Then I passed out again.

The third day, we set our alarms early (haha! I woke up at 3:30am!) to go to Elephant Mountain. This is a small mountain/large hill in the West side of the city that was not urbanized and instead is a hiking area. It actually connects to several other trails that go along the wooded mountainsides around Taipei, but getting to the first peak was enough for us. We'd called a dog-friendly Uber which is amazingly a thin here and brought Thols who had a great time and was not as out of breath as we were once we got to the top. We had started early to avoid the heat and humidity that grows as the day goes on and I was so grateful! And the views were great.

Getting down was a bit of a challenge because we had to keep the dog on a leash but he moved more quickly than either of us could manage to keep up with. So, one of us would go down a set of stairs first and wait at a landing point, then the person at the top would release the dog who would trit-trot down, with his leash tucked into his collar.

The dog is already a total stare-magnet here (and everywhere) but this did get a lot of comments.

At the bottom of the hill, we walked through the high-end residentail neighborhood and eventually found breakfast. I had been looking forward to eating the egg crepe dish that is a classic and it was SO good. I haven't had one since and need to corrrect that ASAP. Tomorrow sounds good.

We were near the Taipei 101 skyscraper, so we walked past that and through some financial and shopping areas. We also walked past Taipei City Hall and a memorial to Sun Yat Sen, who was an important figure in the foundation of Taiwan as a country, though he did not spend a great portion of his life here. This is a podcast I listened to later that day to get me oriented because I was out there taking pictures and making comments about the architecture and I had basically no idea who he actually was.

I also started this video but ran out of data. It is very informative about the history of Taipei

By city hall, there were people lining up in the extremely bright and hot sun to do a parade or procession of some type, using typical costumes to celebrate one of the Taoist-Confucian gods. I couldn't get a good view of it, and we were getting hot, so we walked through a small market area that sold fish, fruits (we got passion fruits and plums) and tchokes (I got a guasha tool that I now see I was overpriced and very commonplace in markets) and called our second Dog Friendly Uber.

We went home, showered and ate passion fruit + yogurt (also a top food for me) and I got ready to go to the hot springs resport of Beitou! That deserves its own post.