Day #10 - Tainan to Meishan

TL/DR: Maybe in the future I'll do something different in my route planning.

So the western side of Taiwan is heavily populated. It's almost nonstop city in some parts. Kinda like what New York City to Atlanta have turned into. There are times in life (sometimes because of OCD) where I won't learn something until I do it. The goal for this trip was to ride around the island similarly to what we did in Iceland. It makes sense for me to do this circular type of route on smaller islands and then for bigger countries I like to cut a swath through it (see my route for Japan and the USA). 

Knowing what we know now I would have been satisified to stop in Kaohsiung - at least it would have been north to south. But I wouldn't have known that before until actually doing it. The reason why is city riding. It's just not fun like it used to be. Either that or it's just really bad here because the stoplights are timed and I think all the loud scooters that ride next to us get my nerves going. Even though we run most stoplights safely and I'd rather ride next to scooters than cars, we just got bored of riding through the city. Plus I can't listen to my audiobooks as frequently as before. Ironically, Tokyo - the largest metroplex city in the world - was much easier to bike through than these smaller Taiwanese metroplexes. 

But I digress. Our Warmshowers host, Mark Tovell, in Tainan knows almost every biking route in Taiwan. He has literally written a book on it that will be published at the end of the month. He gave us some good recommendations for where to go from Tainan. 

We biked 94.15 km (58.27 miles) today!

Lily Rose usually only fusses at night when it's dark, we're at the end of our riding, and she's hungry. It's like the Perfect Storm. Rated R.  

Look at that Mage Guild on the left. Not to mention that neat statue in the middle under the roof.

Nice bike paths to the rescue!

Look at all those birds in the field. What are they doing?

We stopped to rest at a park. I loved watching Lily Rose examine the grass and leaves in her slow, methodological way then quickly put it in her mouth.

She's my bean pie 💕

A lot of people (myself included) don't know that pineapples grow like this. The fruit grows from a stem from that plant and it just hangs out.

Feeding the bean time!

Changing the diaper time!

Riding into Meishan was neat. A touristy town in the mountains.

We're going to camp in this park tonight.

That mountain behind Holly was very looming. I'd like to hike it when we come back.

There's even a suspension bridge way up there.

All these palm trees remind me of Paraguay.

Vietnamese food tonight!

Lily Rose just sleeps wherever she wants. 😅

In the middle of the night, Meatsticks ran out of the tent with my shoes in hand chasing away some dogs that kept barking and making a nuisance.