April 28th, 2019
The third day we pedaled from Taomi 桃米 to Sun Moon Lake 日月潭 and ended biking at Zhoushui station 濁水站 then got trains to Kaohsiung station. 高雄站.
We were exhausted by both cycling and riding trains with bicycle.
- 9:00 Started cycling from Taomi 桃米
- 11:00 Arrived at Sun Moon Lake 日月潭
- 14:55 Got Local Train 2716 at Zhoushui station 濁水站
- 15:15 Transferred to Chu-Kuang Express513 at Ershui station 二水站
- 18:15 Arrived at Kaohsiung station 高雄站
8:00 AM Breakfast at Taomil B&B.
The breakfast at the inn was marvelous!
9:00AM Started Cycling
We started to climb the long slope to the Sun Moon Lake.
The bike path around the lake was ranked as one of the CNN 10 best cycling routes in the world.
There was an only route which down to the lake, the traffic was Relatively heavy even on Monday and lots of sightseeing buses passes by. But we didn’t feel feet because I think bike ( both of motorbike and bicycle ) are recognized as a member of vehicles in Taiwan.
When I stopped at the red light, I watched a bus of Japanese visitors and their faces were tired and bored. As long as I ride on a bicycle, I never became bored because I can savor the smell, sound, and beautiful or curious sights at any moment on my bike.
The slope became gradually steeper.
On the final slope, the residents called us Ja-you (加油）which means “Keep going” in Chinese. (After that we sometimes were yelled by many people along the street).
11:00 AM Arrived Sun Moon Lake
We arrived at the north edge of the lake and started riding on the lakeside bike path un anti-clockwise to south.
Unfortunately, some part of the bike path was under repair and we had to escape twice and lost the sign of the next entrance of the bike path.
It was regrettable that we didn’t have time to play around the lake because we took more time to climb the slope than we had expected,
We went down the slope from the lake and rode against the wind.
13:30 Lunch at Zhoushui town 濁水
We stopped at Zhoushui town 濁水 and had a lunch at a local restaurant.
The staff spoke only Chinese, but luckily the customer needs to mark on menu to order there.
We could read the Chinese character not exactly but understood the menu roughly.
Ruthy requested vegetarian menu, so I ordered “不要肉，只要菜😅“ （No meat, just vegetable). A staff selected tofu and green leaf menu.
All dishes at the restaurant are very delicious and healthy ( not oily and salty) and costed only 450NT$ for 10 people. I envy Taiwanese can ate this kind of healthy and delicious food in daily life.
14:52 Boarding trains at Zhoushui station 濁水站
We gave up keep our riding to Linnei station 林内站 located 16km from the town, which was the original destination of our ride of the day. I had planed to get Local train 區間車 3227because it is assigned train to take non-packing bicycle (Only single bike)
But children looked so tired and we could not catch up the train scheduled, so we decided to get the train from Zhoushui station 濁水站.
One member wanted to push bikes and packed it on the platform, but a young female station attendant ordered us to pack all bikes out of the exit. (After our trip, we can push bikes bikes to the platform because some train allow non-packing bicycle. I think it is because all stations of Jiji Line don’t accept non-packing bicycle.)
We packed our bikes in bags and got the sub line (Jiji Line) 集集線 and transferred to trunk line at ershui 二水駅, got Chu-Kuang Express 莒光号 to Kaohsiung station 高雄站.
莒光号 doesn’t have reserved seat. In the train, a male vendor walking from cars to cars with pushing a cart to sell snack and drinks but no beer different from Japan.
18:14 Arrived at Kaohsiuang station. 高雄站
We walked to the hotel we stayed carrying our bikes because the next day we planed to get a train first.
Kaohsiung station. 高雄站 is now under reconstruction and we had to take a detour to the hotel.
We stayed at Kindness hotel Kaohsiung Main station front 康橋大飯店高雄站前館.
It was thankful that the hotel offered free late-night meal from 19:30.
We were so exhausted that ate the late-night meal. It had various menu, drinks and sweets, no beer or other alcohol.
If you want to find the train schedule of Taiwan Railway 台鐵, check the website.
Distance: 51.0 km
Elevation: + 508 / – 769 m
https://ridewithgps.com/trips/34096880
Pedal Japan 