Hey all,
I plan to scooter down south to Sun Moon Lake in the next couple of weeks, and hopefully making a stop at Shei Pa National Park. I am thinking that no. 3 is probably the best option. Does anyone know of any existing road damage in the area, or a good provincial route to take as a detour to Shei Pa? If not, which government agency is a good place to approach for the answers?
Xie xie.
Are you talking about the No.3 highway? Unless the law has changed, I don’t think that it is legal to ride a scooter on any major highway (高速公路) in Taiwan. There should be a book floating around on how to take scooter trips that don’t use the major highways.
Sorry, I meant the no. 3 provincial highway. I have pretty good maps in Chinese covering all the major routes, just need updated info.
Thanks.
Where are you coming from? Taipei? The no.3 should be OK; it’s a big road, not to high and any damage should have been fixed already I think. Which road will you go east on? The 14 or the 16? I know there’s been some severe flooding down where the 16 is; don’t know how the road is although again as it’s a major route they should be fixing any damage quickly.
I always take the 136 to go southeast from Taichung but it’s pretty messed up at the moment. I wouldn’t really want to take a scooter up there for another few weeks anyway.
You mentioned going into the Shei-Pa (Xueba) National Park area. A quick and very pleasant detour might be the 62 to Taian hotsprings. I haven’t been there but Mucha Man’s glowing post here;
[forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … 462#103462](Taiwan Top 10
makes me want to go there as soon as possible.
There are the Neiwan and the Nanzhuang areas – nice especially when less crowded i.e. not weekends.
Routes that go deeper into the National Park are the 122 to Guanwu (Hsinchu County?) and the little “47” something to Daxueshan in Taichung County. I think they’d be more likely to be damaged though.
I don’t know the current states of any of the roads for the above detours. I too would be very interested in a phone number to contact the roads agency, particularly if there is an English information line.
By the way, it would be good to plan an overnight stop somewhere along the way. Taipei to Sun Moon Lake is a long long way on a scooter and I think it would be difficult to maintain alertness and safety if you do it in one day.
The park headquarters for Sheiba (also spelled Syue Ba and many more) national park are actually on county road 62 on the way to Taian. It’s worth while to drop in and pick up some maps and brochures. One guy who works there is doing his army service and speaks good English. He has also translated all the diorama and display articles so you can learn a bit about the park.
You can also check out how the new public section of Sheiba is coming along. This area is on the western edge and called Syuejian. By the end of the year a road, 62-1, will lead from Taian to Syuejian. Syuejian will some cool hikes including a 30 or 40km path following an old Japanese patrol route. This is part of the forestry department’s goal to restore old trails and create a nationwide network.
There was talk of a trail being built from Taian into Syuejian but I don’t know if that is going to happen. Actually, because of Typhoon Mindelle, there is talk of closing Sheiba completely to the public as well as closing a lot of mountain roads.
If you want to stay in Guanwu you need to book in advance. Here is the website for the reserve area.
recreate.forest.gov.tw/index.php … st&char=en
Joe’s right. Neiwan and Nanzhuang are nice for cruising around.
Joe have you been to Neiwan lately? They were doing a lot of work, building pavilions and paths and such (even a tourist info centre it looked like), when I was there in March. I wonder how it looks now.