Day 9: 19 May 2023, Friday
Woke up bright and early and went for breakfast at 6:30am, a simple meal of bread, scrambled eggs and sausage. After breakfast, we did our warm up and briefing before starting our ride at 7:30am, as per usual.
Today, we’ll be cycling 122km from Zhiben to Ruisui (瑞穗), a slightly longer distance than yesterday but with less elevation gain. The weather forecast showed that it will be sunny in the morning with a maximum temperature of 29 degrees C, and a high chance of rain in the afternoon.
We were delighted to see Yoshi back among our midst this morning. His left arm was fractured from the fall yesterday and it was encased in a sling. His left cheek and upper lip area were also bandaged. However, he was able to walk normally and was in good spirits. We were just so relieved that he was not more seriously injured. He won’t be cycling anymore of course, but he will sit in the Dabai support vehicle and cheer us along the way. Welcome back, Yoshi!
For some reason, I felt very sluggish at the start of today’s ride. Perhaps the toll of yesterday’s climbs and the accumulation of six days of cycling had finally caught up. Or perhaps my body was responding to my injuries and expending energy to try to heal my wounds. It took me about 40 minutes before I got into the groove and felt normal again.
We had our first break at 8:22am, at the 17km mark at Beinan Visitor Center (卑南遊客中心). There was a map of Beinan here and Jeffrey explained that we would be cycling through the East Rift Valley today, using Provincial Highway 9 and County Highway 193. The scenic valley stretches between Taitung and Hualien counties and it is known for its natural beauty, with green padi fields, rolling hills and majestic mountains. As we will be cycling through the valley, we will not have any coastal views today.
After a 20-minute break, we continued cycling for another 13km and stopped for a second break at 9:24am, at Tuo-Shen Ranch (脱線牧場) at Luye Township (鹿野), after a big downhill stretch. The ranch is owned by a Taiwanese comedian named Mr Tuo Xian and he operates a farm stay and restaurant here. Perhaps because of his name Tuo, he has an “obsession” with stripping completely naked (Tuo Guang Guang 脫光光)?
Anyway, the Giant team prepared for us a real treat here – we had cold, fresh cow and goat milk, to go along with butter biscuits, which made for a really delicious combo. They also had cold bottled coffee, which I added some fresh milk to make it into a latte. Super shiok to have iced milk coffee on this hot day!
Upon resuming our ride at 9:48am, we started climbing again and the blazing sun added to the challenge. However, we had nice scenery as we cycled past lush green padi fields and farmland nestled amid the valley mountains.
For our third break at 10:26am, we stopped at Ruihe Station (瑞和車站), a very small train station on the Taitung Line. We had covered 44.7km by then, about one-third of today’s distance. For this break, we had another cold treat of popsicles, which was very much appreciated.
Since the station is unmanned, the resident cat named Xiao Fei (小啡) was in charge. The Station Master certainly enjoyed being the centre of attention, strutting up and down as we ate our popsicles. Xiao Fei even had his own merchandise and postcards for sale. You can also buy treats to feed him.
We continued cycling at 10:48am before stopping for lunch at noon at Chishang (池上), at the 67.2km mark. We had our lunch by a lake called Da Po Chi (大坡池). This is a popular place for the locals to go boating and relax. The surrounding hills and greenery provided a scenic backdrop as we sat in the shade of the trees to enjoy our food. Lunch was a bento box comprising steamed rice and an assortment of side dishes. With almost every lunch and dinner being huge feasts so far, this simple meal was a welcome change.
Chishang is known as Taiwan’s Rice Town so is it famous for its rice. The bento box was made of thin wood, which gave the rice a distinctive flavour. I was surprised that we were even required to recycle the boxes, even though it has been used to hold food. Taiwan and other Asian countries like Japan and South Korea are much more advanced than Singapore when it comes to sorting trash and recycling.
For dessert, the Giant team had something different up their sleeves again as they provided sugarcane. The sticks of sugarcane were cut into small pieces and we had to chew them, like how our parents did when they were young before we had sugarcane juice machines. This was my first time chewing on sugarcane and I must say it was a lot of work for very little reward. Give me sugarcane juice anytime!
After a one-hour lunch break, we resumed cycling at 1:07pm, but we cycled for just 30 minutes before we stopped again at Dongli (東里), at the 79.5km mark. This break stop turned out to be a nice one as there was a large flower field with many animal sculptures made of rice straw. There were a couple of gorillas, an octopus, sea turtle, lobster and even a Yeti. The mountains in the background created a beautiful setting, made even more dramatic by the grey clouds hovering above. I wasn’t expecting to see anything like this so it was a pleasant surprise. We snapped as many pictures as we could and took our daily group photo here quickly before resuming our ride at 2:10pm.
Shortly after, the rain fell and we put on our rain jackets and ponchos. The rain was much heavier than yesterday, and it got quite cold as we tried maintain our pace as the terrain was flat. We rode in a tight, two-column formation to combat the headwind.
After one hour of riding, we took a last break at 3:08pm at Yuli Township (玉里), at the 104.2km mark. We were not far from our destination so we fuelled up on bananas and energy gels for the last lap. After a brief respite, the rained resumed. We pressed on and arrived at our hotel at Ruisui at 4:22pm. My Strava showed that we cycled 121.81km today, with an elevation gain of 743m. Because of the rain, we checked into our rooms hastily and didn’t have our usual cool down session.
Our accommodation here in Ruisui was called Hoya Spa Hotel (虎爺溫泉會館), a hot spring resort located at the foot of Hutou Mountain. The hotel has a few room types, including modern villas and a main building with standard rooms. The rooms we were assigned to were the older eco cabins, with several units in a row on the ground floor, facing a small pond. The room was decent but the furniture was a little dated. The attached bathroom had a large rectangular bath, which could be transformed into a mini hot spring pool, in the comfort of our own room.
After taking our showers, we had dinner at 6:00pm. We then went to check out the hotel’s facilities. Hoya’s hot spring is supposed to be quite good as the water is very rich in mineral content. However, this resulted in the water being murky green, which didn’t look very inviting. In any case, I couldn’t soak in the hot springs because of my injuries so I didn’t even consider going. I don’t think many of the others went as well.
It continued to rain for the rest of the night and the temperature was a chilly 22 degrees C. We tried to do our laundry but the rickety washing machine was not working well and couldn’t drain the water. We then used the spinner to try to dry our cycling jerseys as much as we could. As we huddled in bed looking at the official photos taken by the Giant team’s DLSR camera and reminiscing about the day’s events, we felt a slight tinge of sadness as we knew that our tour was coming to an end soon. Two more days of cycling left, let’s make them count!