Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means (33 page)

She told me she had been working on the farm for twenty years and, much as she liked fruit and vegetables, tending the flowers was what she did best.

‘What’s your favourite flower?’ I asked, thinking she’d say ‘orchid’ or something equally exotic.

‘The cabbage flower,’ she said.

‘Oh, right. Do you eat it?’

Shaking her head, she laughed. ‘No, you don’t eat it. It’s food only for the eyes.’

 

 

On the morning of 21 July I was up early, listening for the distinctive sound of dirt bikes coming up the drive. After boats and bicycles, buses and trains, today I would negotiate the rest of the central highway with a bunch of bikers. I could hardly wait and by the time the bikes arrived I was as excited as a little boy at Christmas. There were four of them, led by Clint, a forty-four-year-old doctor who worked in the local emergency room and had been on duty for the last twenty-eight hours. Then there was Sam, an older guy who spoke no English, and Joseph, apparently one of the most famous motocrossers in Taiwan. He looked about twenty-five but was actually forty, and I was amazed to discover he had been riding for only five years. The fourth member of the team, June, was one of the few women racers in the country. When she wasn’t racing against the men, she ran her own internet café. The most important thing was that they had a bike for me: a Yamaha 250.

I was in my element, doing stand-up wheelies as we left the farm. The roads were fantastic and from the back of the bike I began to see the real beauty of this country: tea plantations and alpine forests, rich mountain farmlands that reminded me of my dad’s place in Ireland. Landslips and mudslides were commonplace up here and the roads were tight and twisty. In some spots the height of the drop sent a shiver through me. It all added to the buzz, though - these were some of the best roads I had ever been on and it felt great to have the adrenaline pumping.

Although we were on tarmac most of the way, we did find a spot where we could ride off-road. Clint had taken the lead and after a few miles he came across a narrow stretch of tarmac that cut through the jungle. This in turn opened on to a mountain cut into terraces and interwoven with a string of dirt roads used by trucks to pick up the produce. We had a great time messing about, before eventually dragging ourselves away to head east and up into the clouds. For the first time since I had left England, I was cold: we were so high there was a nip in the air and the clouds swamped the road in places. For a few miles the visibility was poor and we had to keep the pace right down; then all at once the sky opened and I could see the spiralling blacktop all the way to the valley. I put my foot down and for a quarter of an hour I was in the zone, riding as hard and fast as I could with no thought in my head save for taking the oncoming bend.

We stopped for lunch just as the clouds burst and in no time the whole mountain was soaked. The rain came down like a monsoon; I’d never seen anything like it, even when we were in Cambodia last year. Within minutes the surface of the road was flooded and the hillside a mass of tumbling streams. I could see how easily the land would become mud and how that mud would become a slide and what kind of devastation that could cause. Indeed, further down the hill there had been a recent big slide and they were only letting traffic through during the first fifteen minutes of each hour.

Eventually the sun came out and by the time we had gone a few miles the tarmac was bone dry. It was mesmerising; we took hairpins that made your hair curl, crossed bridges over fast-flowing rivers at the bottom of terrifying gorges. We rode beneath savage-looking cliffs and into jungle where the trees were so dense it was almost like riding at night.

By the time we stopped in Taroko Gorge, it was all Clint and the others could do to prise the keys to the Yamaha from my hand. I’d had the most brilliant day.

 

 

Taipei is situated on the northern tip of Taiwan, and to get there we would go through the Hsuehshan Tunnel. After a night in Taroko, we were catching a train north to Suao, where I planned to take a dip in one of the world’s few natural cold springs. In fact, they occur only in Taiwan and in Italy. I had visited plenty of hot springs in my time, but never a cold one. Though at a constant twenty-two degrees Celsius, these didn’t sound that cold.

We were on the road at 7.45 a.m. and already I was sweating. The sun was blazingly hot and now we were back at sea level the humidity was close to 100 per cent. As I made my way to the station, the thought of taking a swim in cool water was suddenly very appealing. We had spent a quiet night in Taroko, a gentle place with hardly any traffic. In the station I looked on the map at where we had been yesterday and thought again about just how amazing that road had been. I couldn’t remember a single straight; it was bend after bend - on a supermotard bike it would have been even more awesome.

On the train travelling north we passed through a series of small towns much like the one we had just left and I could see for myself how few people lived on this side of the island. The Japanese had established their port at Kaohsiung and everything spread out from there - the roads, the cities - all the way up to Taipei. And because the land was so mountainous, crossing from west to east would have taken for ever. Over here it was very quiet and peaceful; when we arrived at Suao an hour later, it was just as sleepy as Taroko had been. The station was awesome, though. Whoever ran it must have had a real passion for art, because crossing the bridge to the main entrance we saw painting after painting hanging on the walls: the
Mona Lisa
, Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
, Rembrandt, Monet, they were everywhere. Not the originals, obviously . . .

Once outside we hopped in a cab to take us to the cold springs. I didn’t know what to expect; sometimes these places can just be a hole in the ground and sometimes they can have entire spa complexes built around them. I suppose this one was half and half. The water gushed from various pipes into a kidney-shaped pool lined with natural stones. There was a brick wall to one side, with the jungle scaling the hillside above it. There were changing cubicles and showers, but it was all in the open air and it had a Victorian kind of ambience. I changed into a pair of swimming trunks, wandered over to the stone steps and went in. God it was cold! Twenty-two degrees? It felt more like seven!

After a few minutes my overheated body adjusted and I was glad of the cool; it was nice to wallow for a while. We had heard that today there would be an eclipse and, as I lay back in the water, the moon slowly crossed the sun. It didn’t get properly dark, but everything faded to a weird kind of half-light as if someone had slipped a filter over the sun. I had experienced only one eclipse before, in Cornwall years ago, and I remember everything had got much darker. As the light dulled, the sheep and cows had become confused and started lying down as if settling in for the night. It wasn’t like that here, but with the falling water, the old brickwork and the jungle surrounding me, it was still quite a moment. Having said that, the magic was ruined slightly by the smell coming off the water. It’s supposed to be odourless, but there was a definite whiff of sulphur.

Nicely refreshed, it was back to the station again, only this time we walked. It wasn’t very far, less than half a mile, and it was pleasant to take in the quiet streets and the smiles of the people. I’d noticed that everyone in Taiwan had seemed genuinely pleased to see us; they would wave and say hello and ask us where we were from. Sunny said it was more difficult to make a living here in the east, and over the last ten years places like the cold springs had helped put them on the map.

Our next train took us north to Jhuangwei, where we grabbed a bite to eat before meeting up with a man from the Highways Agency. These were the people who looked after the Hsuehshan Tunnel - the longest in the country and the second longest anywhere in Asia. I thought someone had told me it was 120 kilometres, but this guy explained that it was actually just 12.9. I couldn’t help but laugh. I don’t know where I got the figure, but thinking about it, that would have been a bloody big mountain! Just under thirteen kilometres sounded much more like it. On average 2200 cars pass through Hsuehshan every hour; some nineteen million a year. It is part of Highway 5, a fifty-five-kilometre stretch of road.

As we drove up from Jhuangwei the Highways Agency guy explained that the tunnel had been built with the specific purpose of trying to redress the east-west balance. It used to take at least two hours by road from Taipei to Yilan County but now it was just a thirty-minute journey. Sunny, who lives in Taipei, told me that it makes all the difference. Gradually the east coast is opening up and people who live in the capital can have weekend breaks in places like Suao.

The tunnel took fourteen years to build, a central pilot bore hole with twin tunnels either side to carry the traffic. I’ve always wondered how these passages underground actually function - how they’re maintained and who responds when something goes wrong. Every time you go through one you see all those little metal doors, don’t you? Where do they go? What’s behind them? Finally I got to find out.

When something went wrong in this tunnel, the highway emergency teams were summoned. If a car caught fire then eight fire-fighters with state-of-the-art equipment responded from a station a couple of kilometres south. We were invited to pay them a visit, and the fire chief showed me all the gear, including a Suzuki motorbike with water tanks, compressed air and a reel of hose mounted on the back. I rode it around the car park and tried to imagine high-tailing it to a burning car with all that equipment making it top-heavy.

While we were there the fire-fighters invited me to join them in a quick drill. When a call came in I had to pull on the protective clothing and jump into the fire engine. I managed it in one minute and ten seconds, which was not half bad. Although, I only had to put on the jacket and helmet - the boots and trousers, which come as one, were too small for me, so I stayed in my own gear.

We took a maintenance truck into the tunnel. The driver told me that when they were building it the construction workers encountered quite a few problems, not least of which was when one of the support tunnels collapsed. They had to contend with six major fault lines, ninety-eight fracture zones and thirty-six highpressure underground water courses. During construction they hit at least one of those water courses and had something like 750 litres of water pouring in every second. During the fourteen years the tunnel took to complete, twenty-five people were killed.

Inside the control centre we watched on monitors as a car broke down. In minutes the police arrived and a minute later a tow truck. The lane was closed, the car loaded up and the lane opened again inside ten minutes. Any longer and traffic jams would build up, something the controller refused to allow. It was a really slick operation. Only cars are allowed in the tunnel, though, which makes it easier. (Big trucks were banned after the Mont Blanc tunnel fire in 1999.)

Highway 5 is watched over by one hundred traffic cops. At the end of our visit to Hsuehshan we met one of them - a young officer called Warrent - who offered us a lift to the capital in his BMW.

Perfect, Taipei at last. It is always exciting to arrive in any capital city, and this time we would be arriving in style, in a very fast police car. It was white with red chevrons on the bonnet and boot, red and blue lights on the roof and an iron bar fixed to the floor where they handcuffed the bad guys. Warrent had been in the job for three years and clearly enjoyed it. I asked him if he fancied becoming a city policeman, a detective perhaps, but he wanted to remain with the highway patrol. He drove us into the capital and dropped us at the foot of the Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building.

I would be making the crossing from Taipei to Japan on a boat, but before then I had a few days free and was really looking forward to exploring the city properly. Taipei lies in the valley of Danshui, surrounded by mountains, and is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. I had a feeling it was going to be an interesting few days. But as I said goodbye to Warrent I had no idea just how eventful my time there was going to be.

 

 

The first morning was hot and muggy with clouds smothering the skyscrapers; I could barely see the top of Taipei 101. Jumping on the Metro and than a local train, we headed out to National Central University at Jhongli, where I had been invited to take a look at a motorbike powered by compressed air. It had been developed by a mad professor called Allen. Okay, he wasn’t exactly mad, but with his longish hair and glasses he was just as I’d imagine an engineering professor. His bike - a standard moped - had been fitted with a tiny engine, powered by twin tanks of compressed air strapped on the sides. It was basic, but pretty amazing nevertheless. I asked Allen about the tank capacity.

‘At the moment it can take ten litres each side. Those are the smallest tanks we can get. Anything bigger would be too big for the bike.’

‘And how far will the bike go on that?’

‘About two kilometres.’

It didn’t sound very far, but this was just the prototype. ‘At the moment the pressure in each tank is only 110 bars,’ Allen explained. ‘We can increase it to 250 maybe. When I am finished the bike should go fifteen or twenty kilometres.’

That was still not very far, but the bike was simple to ride and as I took it for a spin I decided that in London it would probably be enough to get you to and from work. And it was so cheap - all you had to do to fill up was pull into a garage and plug in the air hose. I loved it; it was so innovative. Allen had developed it because the pollution in Taipei is so bad. Riding along you could hear the engine hissing away like something from
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
- it was incredible that this little bike ran on something as simple as compressed air.