Trip to Taichung
As a person who barely goes to Taichung and lives in Kaohsiung, I went there to visit my friend last week. But we didn’t just only meet up, there’s actually more hilarious things happened that day! The original purpose of this trip was not only to visit my friend, my first-year roommate, but also participate an event there. However, the event was canceled out of blue, when I was considering whether I should refund my train ticket, I was told by a classmate: “why not just simply have fun there regardless whether there’s an event or not”. At that moment, I decided to go to Taichung.
Fast forward to that day, I got off the train at 10:30. He went to pick me up with a motorcycle. We decided to head for the breakfast first, and then rent another motorcycle later. After riding through terrible traffic in the urban area, we finally arrived the restaurant. After filling up our stomach, we then walked to rent a motorcycle nearby. However, we didn’t rent a motorcycle successfully due to some circumstance. In this situation, we then left the motorcycle renting store and proceeded to ride his personal motorcycle to the mountain peak called “赤崁頂” on the route 136.
our breakfast
I was the rider, and my friend was on the passenger seat. On the way there, I felt his motorcycle wasn’t running smoothly. Every time I rolled up the throttle, I could feel the motorcycle jerking. And every time we ran over the not-so-well-paved road, we could feel the motorcycle bouncing. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the riding. When we entered the hilly section, there were a lot of other bikers appeared on the road. Since our motorcycle was too slow compared to other bikers, we could only ride on the side on the road to allow others to pass us. There were also some photographers along the way up to 赤崁頂, and they would take pictures of bikers when they leaned their bikes. The funny thing was that our motorcycle was too slow to lean, and I didn’t pick a good line when cornering, but anyways that was fun. We took some photos when we arrive 赤崁頂, and then decided to continue to go along the route 136 to Nantou. We also switched up the seats, means he would be the driver.
me and my friend on the route 136
quick pic w famous sign
Right after we started to hit the road again, my friend accidentally revved in front of crowds when he tried to switch the gear, and now everyone turned their head and stared at us. We waved hands and apologized right away so that they wouldn’t see us provocative. After some minutes, we crossed the boarder of Nantou. We pulled up one the side of the road and started to discuss where to go. We looked up in Google Map and found out there’s a waterfall near us, and we agreed that’s the next stop. Little did we know, that will turn this trip into a tragedy later.
The map showed us it would only take us couple minutes to get there, and as soon as we arrived there, we found out the road was a concrete-paved trail with slippery surface. What’s worse, the slope was steep as h*ll. But none of them stopped us, we planned to full throttle and rushed over the hill all at once. Well I can tell you that didn’t work. The motorcycle stalled, and we almost rolled back and almost fell. We hardly could move but still managed to pull the motorcycle back. It was just then, a motorcycle with two people on it came down from that slope. They saw us struggling and asked us where we were going. After they knew our destination was the waterfall, they told us it was the other road. Thanks to their advice, we walked down the motorcycle down from that slope and took a rest at the fork.
stuck in hilly trail
We didn’t get frightened by the fact we just almost fell 10 minutes ago and decided I would be the rider this time to take another route. Again, another steep slope, but I had confidence we could get over this hill. Unfortunately, that thing didn’t happen. As the rev continued to drop, the motorcycle became slower and slower till a point it stalled. The motorcycle started to roll back, and I was so panicked that I kept holding the clutch and the front brake. At this moment, my friend at the back seat told me to let go of the clutch, so I follow his instruction. The front wheel lifted up, and we lost the balance after releasing the clutch. We and the motorcycle fell on the ground, and what’s worse was that we smelled gasoline. Yes, the gasoline from the motorcycle tank. We hurried to lift the motorcycle up and checked if we got hurt. Fortunately, there were only some scratch on my friend and I was completely fine.
how steep it is!!
The next thing was to check the motorcycle. Even though we didn’t have some speed when we fell, but the break hose was destroyed due to the impact. Now both the front and back break disks were soaked in the oil, and thus the motorcycle didn’t have any break. We evaluated the situation and decided to walk to the near motorcycle repair shop and seek solutions. We left the motorcycle on the trail and walked around 20 minutes to the shop. The towing service was not affordable to us at all, we also asked some of the bikers for some tools since we thought it may be less expensive if we repair it on ourselves. They told us it won’t work, and we should get the tow car.
Without any choice, we headed back to the trail to take the key and helmets that were left on the motorcycle. We walked another 20 minutes to the motorcycle and tried to walk the motorcycle closer to the main road. We encountered 2 locals tried to help us, they tried to contact the local repair shop and offered us a ride to the bus stop. We can’t thank them enough!
locals lent the motorcycle to us
Crazy things seemed will end when we took the bus back, but it didn’t! When we were waiting for the bus, a van drove near, and the driver rolled down the window and yelled at us: “To Taichung train station, jump in”. While my friend and I were still confused, the driver hurried us to jump in again. Eventually, my friend, a stranger at the bus stop, and me hopped in the van. After some chatting with the driver, I actually found him interesting. I also chatted with the stranger at the bus stop, he turned out to be an international worker from Indonesia who has stayed in Taiwan for 6 years. I practiced my poor Bahasa (Indonesian) and shared my trip when I was in Jakarta and Bali in July with him.
me and friend in the van
river in Nantou
When we arrived the train station, we were so exhausted. Me and my friend had some ramen in the food court in the station. After that, we said goodbye to each other before I hopped on the train headed back to Chiayi. Overall, the trip was great and extraordinary to me. I know I sometimes need to have this kind of crazy experience to release my mental stress and get away from the miserable college life(?). Sincerely appreciate everyone involved in this trip, I had a great time there.
