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Touring & Bicycling Through Jiji

Jiji is a small town in the middle of Taiwan with a population of no more than 13,000. It is a little mountainous but far more tropical as the temperature is just as high as the humidity percentage. I'm really not sure how we chose Jiji as a place to go to. I'd never heard about it before, but the sights were very pretty and the townspeople friendly, so it was a fun day trip out of Taichung. One strange thing about this town was that all over and in random places were monuments of tanks. I wasn't able to read the signs of story behind them, but I think its about Taiwanese independence.

Quite a few of us woke up early (6am) and met at the Taichung train station. It's a small train station with only 4 or 5 platforms, which is actually a little big by taiwanese standards. It only cost NT$186 for a round-trip ticket from Taichung to Jiji. The train itself was comfortable and bore a similarity to those in Europe; small & compact. In between some destinations it would get packed full and then empty out at other stations.

We arrived at Jiji an hour and a half later. I had a very interesting conversation about taiwanese cram schools and work ethic in general of the taiwanese with one of the girls that went. I think they're crazy with 6 day work weeks and cram schools for children, but there's a lot of subtext to go with my opinion.

Once we arrived in Jiji, we all rented bikes and set out to explore around. The first stop was a typical natural history museum. There is a surpringly large amount of variety in Taiwan when it comes to natural history, however, in the end a lot of the stuff in there was foreign to Taiwan. Some of the English translations were pretty crazy as well. The museum was a nice stop for some air-conditioning because it was really humid outside. Riding a bike in that kind of weather was tough, but fun.

After the museum we got some lunch and explored further. A temple, tropical wilderness and another temple. The last temple in the picture was extraordinary to look at. It had so many colors and drawings all over it, quite amazing. The group of taiwanese kids were amazed by the very last picture of my green leaf mask. They insisted upon me getting a picture like that. Made me just a little confused.