Tong’an

We set our sights on a series of caches in the Erchong Floodway today, which contains the longest bike track in Taiwan (20km), as well as 68 sports grounds (we saw 2 baseball fields and multiple basketball courts) . We caught the MRT to Sanchong Station in the hope a bike rental place would be open, despite the drizzling rain, to save us a lot of walking in the unimaginatively named New Taipei Metropolitan Park, aka Erchong Floodway.

As luck would have it, just across the road from the station Fun Bike was open. We rode the park for close to 3 hours, for a total of NTD$112 (AUD$5) and 10 caches. We were the only bikes we saw all day, so not sure if they even covered wages!

We caught the MRT back to our hotel, grabbing a pork, rice, cabbage and tofu bento box for lunch on the way.

Our afternoon walk was to the North Gate of the Taipei City Walls. Taipei was a walled city from 1884 to 1895, at which time the Japanese colonial rulers destroyed it when they redesigned the city. In 1945, when Taiwan was handed back to the Chinese, they rebuilt five of the gates. The North Gate is the only one done in the original design.

We finished the day with an evening walk to the Presidential Palace (you need to book 3 days in advance online to go inside) and 228 Peace Park (in memory of the massacre of Taiwanese citizens after handover), and tea in another shopping strip (spicy pork and spring onion pancake and mango milk).Read more