Going Native by Bicycle

Greetings from Yuli. Just a little blip on the map of Taiwan, a boringly normal little town, the kind that travellers seldom visit and there's actually no reason to do so. Yet these truly unremarkeable places are also interesting to visit. Just hopping from one tourist destination to another gives a rather limited view of a country.
I ended up on my bicycle trip South from Hualien, the closest city to Taroko gorge. Though returning my bicycle to the local branch of bicycle rental here in Yuli as planned ended up being a little tricky, since the office, which should have been opened until 8pm was already closed at 4pm. The helpfulness of the locals, rather bizarre translations via Google translate and a series of phone calls ended up with this story having a happy ending and the bike being returned.

I started off yesterday. The ride down from Hualien on local road 193 was glorious. Whereas the West coast of Taiwan is all cities and industry, the East Coast is largely undeveloped, some agriculture, fish farming, and miles and miles of roads rolling up and down woody hills and mountains. I stuck to the hills this time, as mountains are much too much work on a bicycle - at least the going up part. The first 50km road 193 had next to no traffic, just jungle and the occasional birds and monkeys and stray dogs. I think I was passed by 4 cars and 3 motorcycles the whole way. 

I also passed graves

papaya plantations (beastly fruit, one of my least favourite),

and pineapple fields.

When it started to get dark I hit a slightly bigger village, or just possibly it could be called a very small town, though I never learned its name. I asked the locals about any possible lodgins. Luckily the pantomime for sleeping is universal. The two ladies I asked were soon joined by four other locals, with a few extra people shouting comments from their gardens for good measure. A great pow-wow got under way. After much deliberation I was pointed down the road. One clever lady pantomimed the Catholic cross sign, from which I deduced a church was involved. However luckily some of the crowd decided to lead me by the hand (only around 60 meters as it turned out), since I'm not sure I would have recognized this particular house as a hostel, even though it was opposite a church. It looked just about identical to the surrounding ones and the sign was all Chinese to me.

Admittedly it's slightly stressful to have to attempt to communicate in pantomime and it does make a girl feel insufficient to have all of three words of Chinese to fall back on (thank you, hello, yes), at the same time at least this guarantees wonderful and colourful interactions with the locals.

Today I just rolled along the last 40km to Yuli, arriving in time for a nice lunch. They even have proper hotels here. I mean ones that I recognize as hotels all on my own. Low season is finally paying off. Outside of Taipei, the hotels are half empty - or totally empty like yesterday's hostel. I was the only guest in the whole building. 

So here I am in style, scribbling this and half-watching the Hobbit on hotel TV. For a bit of added atmosphere, the rubbish truck just passed my window playing Für Elise loud. The first time I heard a rubbish truck here, I thought it was an ice cream van. I don't think I would have liked their selection of flavours.