good morning Taiwan
Good morning Hualien!
actually... goodbye Hualien!
Two Wheel Cruise here!
we make videos about cycling and life in Japan
right now we're making videos about cycling Taiwan
we're here for two weeks cycling around the beautiful country
right now we're on day four of our cycling travel blog here in Taiwan
we've been spending the last few days here in Hualien
absolutely beautiful here and today
we're cycling down the Pacific coast on the east side
down to Taitung
I'm here with my wife, Thuong
she's back there
and there's two routes that you can take
highway 9 and highway 11
we're taking the more scenic highway 11 route
which goes right along the coastline
so let's enjoy some of the beautiful views
we're right about to crest this mountain here and we should be hitting the coastline really soon
let's go check it out
looks like they got an interesting water park
pretty cool
if this is your first time on the channel..
we rented these road bike from the Giant store in Hualien
you can return them at a different Giant store
so we will return these to the Giant store in Taitung
they're really solid road bikes with flat handlebars
they also have mountain bikes and e-bikes available
pannier bags as well
which have a waterproof bag to cover it
and this front top tube bag
lights
pretty much everything that you need
we came here with 2 suitcases
my wife came from Vietnam
she's Vietnamese
I came from Japan
we were worried what to do with our suitcases
while we were cycling
but we didn't know what to do with our suitcases
they have this system where you can ship your luggage via the train station
you just go to the train station you
drop off your luggage and you say which train station you want to send your luggage to
you get a receipt
and then you just go pick it up there
it was only about a hundred and fifty Taiwanese dollars
which is like less than five US dollars
amazing service
and now we're on nothing but our bikes
and our two pannier bags
we'll be without our luggage for about two or three days
that's perfect for us since we're doing this trip in 2 days
this unfortunately means I'm away from my laptop
which means I can't do any video editing
but we'll have a lot of good videos to come in the future once I get some time to edit
that's enough chitchat for now
enjoy the sights!
so whoever is in charge of all the weather applications here
is not doing a great job
because since we've come here
the weather forecast has been telling us that it's 100% rain every day
and the first two days it rained like a little bit
but it was just sort of cloudy the
whole day and didn't really rain at all
we were really worried for today's ride
because we weren't sure if it was going to be raining for our whole ride into Taitung
last night it was raining very very hard
we could hear it from our hotel bedroom
I could barely sleep because I was worried about the heavy rain
my wife hasn't ridden in the rain before..
and thankfully we woke up and it was
not quite sunny but it was at least dry and
just some clouds in the area so
right now again it seems like all the
main like sort of rain clouds hover
towards the mountains
and since we're closer to the seaside
we're a bit separated but we have been
getting sprinkled on a little bit
another thing today you'll notice we're
wearing our two-wheel crews cycling kits
which for the first two days we've been
cycling here we've just been using our
normal clothes which is not very
comfortable for riding long distances if
you're interested in these kits we are
placing another reorder in the next
month we'll have the link down below so
if you're interested you can get your
order in send me a message from our
contact form on our homepage we actually
had some people yell at us along the way
we're pretty sure they said Ohio which
means like hello but it could have been
Jo which means like gum bar they are
like do your best like what we're just
kind of like a cheering phrase that
we've been hearing but both of us heard
Ohio the only way they would have known
that that we are like from Japan or
anything is that they knew who we are
and they recognized these jerseys in
which case that would be pretty cool
they just said Jo so who knows it could
have been Jo
anyway Jo let's get going on with
today's ride
it is insanely windy right now starting
to approach our first tunnel doesn't
seem like it's too long 400 meters I
thought I thought I'm gonna turn on our
lights
safety first okay
nice shelter from the wind right now
this tunnels are nice and quiet when
there's no cars coming but when a car
comes or especially a bike insanely loud
be Jean these tunnels are never-ending
but kind of thankful right now because
it's actually raining a little bit from
the tunnel we just exited we've got
another one here this is our fourth
consecutive tunnel but we'll take the
shelter from the rain oh man it is so
windy
this one's a bit longer normally you
don't get too much wind from tunnels but
this one is really windy we got a strong
headwind going through this tunnel it's
really strange we just exited out of the
tunnel and before we enter it it was
super windy raining pretty hard now it's
raining a little bit just sprinkling but
really no winds now so pretty strange to
change of events but that was about a
kilometer long tunnel couldn't find the
cycling rest up but most of the cycling
rest up here seemed to be just sort of
police stations
we're continuing along and the road has
gotten a lot more difficult we're no
longer along the coast but we're sort of
zigzagging along since we're going
through kind of a more deep mountain
area and that means we're going through
some pretty big climbs toolings not
happy we're taking a quick little break
right now I'm gonna eat some snacks
refuel a bit rest her bum and then we'll
be back on the road so if you're not
used to climbing very much you should
definitely do the highway number 9 route
since that one is a bit more flat it's
more inland away from the mountains this
route is definitely hillier more zig
zaggy it takes a little bit longer but
more scenic in my opinion definitely you
get a bit more scenery we think going up
rather than going south like we're going
right now just because you're on the
right side of the road here in Taiwan
and so being on the right side of the
road going north you have the ocean
closer to you but we still had some good
views on our side of the road going
south another thing is the traffic it
seems like there's more traffic going
north as well but it's kind of equal in
other parts as well so it's hard to say
in any case there's a cycling lane
throughout most of the trip so even if
there's a lot of traffic there's really
no problem there anyway quick break now
brain is starting to come down taking
some shop there eating some Mexican bun
YC started thankfully my phone is
waterproof somebody so these are a
rental bags they're not waterproof
originally but they come with these
waterproof shells our bags that you can
wrap over them pretty nifty nice high
visibility as well doing is absolutely
hating this mountain range right now but
good character building we came across
this tourist spot there's a group of
people cycling and they kindly gave us a
couple snacks really nice people here
they're doing the opposite route of us
we're going down to Tai Chong from hua
Lian and they're going up to Hua Lian
they gave us a bunch of snacks really
nice it looks like there's a view spot
here so we're gonna check it out
the rain is easing up a little bit we
took a break there was a rest area with
the bathroom let's check out the view
lots of people up here there you go this
also looks really nice Gorge area over
here and also wow this is the bridge
that we just came across didn't even
notice there was this big of a drop
pretty nice looking good little rest
stop great to see lots of people out
cycling today all different kinds of
bikes here top road bikes mountain bikes
everything
so yes pretty nice break stop over here
time to get back on the road you go find
a nice scenic stopping point beautiful
view the mountain and cliff The
Forgotten hometown check it out
pretty cool alright back on the road
this rain has been pretty nasty we're
taking shelter in the tunnel right now
before we exit and we're gonna snack up
gonna switch to the GoPro now chest
mounts waterproof case try and get some
shots moving forward and stack up real
quick I mean old Idol doll
yeah is this is this is Jones first time
pushing a bike this heavy and climbing
this much I feel like we're gonna have a
lot of climbing at the end of today's
ride anyway gonna snack up real quick
get back on the road let's go
turns out that this ride is gonna be a
bit longer than we thought it would
I thought it would only be about 80 K
turns out it's gonna be more closer to
100 K these roads were a bit more
winding than I thought and lots more
climbing than I expected so it's taking
us a lot longer hopefully we'll still
get in before sunset just pulled the
camera out of the bag Chung went up
ahead while I was doing that so gonna
chase her up this climb real quick we
are in a bit of a hurry now Hey we're
cutting through the mountain pass right
now we're cutting from highway 11 to
highway 9 back to the main road since
that's where our hotel is for tonight
then we'll probably continue down that
road tomorrow which I think 2-1 will be
a lot happier cuz I'm pretty sure that
Road has less mountains and less hills
for the final stretch into Taitung
thankfully no more rain at least right
now but you can see it's probably gonna
rain again any second but enjoying the
break from the wind jacket it actually
got cold for a while so he stopped to
get some warm food and now we're getting
hot again just fountain looks like she's
taking off her jacket - all right let's
continue on with the mountains section
interesting little rest area temple
looking place up here hopefully about at
the peak right now have this mountain
pass going to be descending back into
the valley I think Tony's ready to kill
me
it's been a pretty brutal ride down to
Taitung lots of rain we made it back to
the main highway we passed through a
really beautiful park insanely beautiful
lots of trees and everything we really
wanted to explore it but it was just a
little bit Thai hen as we say in
Japanese just all the rain we're really
tired we're really hungry and we need to
find our hotel before it gets dark we
finally found a 7-eleven after riding
what seemed like forever my hands are
freezing going numb which is pretty
crazy considering we started this ride
really hot
anyway we stopped at 7-eleven here's
some of our snacks
we got a hot green tea matcha latte and
tongue is happy again gonna finish up
here real quick and hopefully I think
we're only a few kilometers away from
our hotel now so hopefully go find that
and check in and dry off take a shower
eat the rocky mas
so we just finished today's ride and
ended up with over 100 kilometers just
arrived at our hotel
too tired to really talk or do anything
we're gonna hop in the shower and pretty
much pass out cool hotel room though
we've got our bikes in here it was
really cheap about a thousand dollars a
Taiwanese dollars for a night so lots of
space we apparently get a breakfast
which we'll show you guys in tomorrow's video
part two riding all the way to Taitung from Hualien
that's it for today
Thuong is really tired
see you guys