[quote=“Feiren”]The recommended rides on the East Coast are Great Taiwan Bike Rides Part 1: Taidong to Hualian (Easy Version) and Great Taiwan Bike Rides Part II: Taidong to Hualian–the hairy-legged version. You’ll notice that these are both between Hualian and Taidong where there is less traffic.
I can’t really recommend the riding on the coast north of Hualian. Yilan(Toucheng) to Suao is dull flatland city riding for the most part, and as urodacus mentioned, Suao to Taroko is prohibitively dangerous. If you must ride down the coast, I recommend that you ride out to Fulong on the coast and then ride down to Luodong in Yilan and catch a bus going toward Hualian. Get off at Taroko. You can generally ride these buses by taking your front wheel off the bike and stashing it underneath. From Hualian follow the route in the first link to Taidong.
Taidong to Dawu is a boring wide road for 90km with trucks whipping by. A broad road shoulder makes it sort of tolerable. The ride from Shouka at the top of the South Link Highway down the Hengchun peninsula to Kending is a classic 80km ride.
Frankly though riding all the way down the East Coast just can’t be recommended even though the Hualian to Taidong and Shouka to Kending sections are very good. It’s doable, but there is far better riding in Taiwan’s mountains.
A much more interesting (but considerably more difficult) way to do this would be to ride out to Fulong, down to Yilan, and up the 7 to Lishan. From Lishan, take the over to the 14 and ride down and through Taroko–doing this at dawn before the tourist buses strike is an experience you’ll never forget. You will cross two passes over 2,000 meters. From Taroko, follow the instruction above, but consider taking a bus to Shouka from Taidong.
Let me know if you need more specific help. Google Maps is very useful these days.[/quote]
Hey Feiren, thanks for the detailed post. I had actually been going from Google Maps when I planned my initial route, but I didn’t go into any detail. I was basically thinking of taking a bus from Taipei to Ilan and then cycling to the 9 and cycling that all the way down to Hualian. It looks like I’ll have to change from the 9 to the 11 at Hualian if I want to stay near the coast, and then back to the 9 around Taidong.
I’m obviously doing the trip for the scenery, but I do accept that quite a lot of it will be fairly dull riding. One of the main ideas is also spending some time in the little villages along the way and meeting some interesting people. This is why I haven’t done too much planning on the route as yet as I wanted to just play it by ear so that I didn’t have too tight a schedule to stick to. I’ve had some great times in the little places in this country and I find the people genuinely open and friendly (well most of them anyway).
I have 8 days at most to get to Kenting. If I’m slower than that I’ll catch a bus for the rest of the way, and if I’m faster I’ll have some more time on the beach there. Do you think the above is possible and how do you rate the safety of the route?
Oh, and I like your write-ups on your trips, especially the one from Hualian to Taidong. I’ve also read that the area around the sugar factory and Shanyuan (sp.?) beach are truly stunning.
