Prelude
If you're anything like me, you stay up late at night watching an action movie with a bag of Doritos, not 100% focused on the movie, or the Doritos, for that matter. That's a good thing, actually, because if it really did take 100% of your focus to eat a bag of Doritos, then maybe biking in the city with your small children isn't such a wise move. But I digress. As I've just demonstrated, my mind often wanders, and lately I've been thinking about how to make money doing something that I really have fun doing - riding my bike. And when I'm not thinking about that, I think about how I can enable my family to enjoy the wonders of biking like I do. That's been hard for me to figure out in Taiwan, but luckily my wife spotted a bike rental place from an elevated MRT stop next to the Danshui River bike path, and the rest is...this cycle story.
The Setup
Goal: Biking with the family on the Danshui River bike path.Destination: Bali
Requirement #1: Must be able to rent the bikes.
Requirement #2: Don't want to ride on city streets, so the bike rental shop must be near the river bike path.
Requirement #3: The entire route must be rideable for an 8 year old.
Question: What do you get when you combine a bicycle rental shop with an indoor shrimp fishing pool/restaurant?
Answer: The bicycle rental shrimp fishing restaurant at the Zhuwei MRT station. Oh yeah, and as a bonus, this place satifies the first two requirements.
I don't know, maybe I'm in the minority here, but I just don't get shrimp fishing. But I do think the store owner is way ahead of her time. She's like the Bill Gates of the Taiwan bicycle rental/shrimp fishing industry. OK, maybe that's overstating it just a little bit, but she's basically figured out a combination of services that caters to everybody - people who like to move around, and people who like to sit around. She's a savant! I want to model my business career on this kind of ingenuity.
Finding the bike rental shop
The rental shop is at the north end of the Zhuwei MRT station (you can see the bike rentals from the MRT platform). If you exit from the northeast end of the MRT station, head north about 50 feet and you'll see a small road going downhill toward your left. Go down that small road to get to the bike rental shop. There are actually two bike rental shops. The first one is just a bike rental shop, no shrimp fishing and not all that many bikes, for that matter. Keep walking north another 100 feet and you'll see the bike rental/shrimp fishing shop. Their single person bikes (dan ren jiao ta che) are your basic Walmart type mountain bikes, $100NT for the day. The tandem bikes (shuang ren jiao ta che) are $150 for the day. Bikes are due back by 8pm.Getting to Bali from Zhuwei
To get to Bali, just go straight down (south) the small road that leads out of the bike shop; that small road will soon lead you to the Danshui River bike path. You'll need to take that bike path to the Big Red Bridge (otherwise known as the Guandu Bridge); it's 1.5km from the bike shop to the bridge. You have to cross the Danshui River via the Big Red Bridge to get to the Bali side. Once you're on the Bali side, it's a straight shot to Bali, just head north for about 6km. You'll know you're in the heart of Bali when you have to get off your bike (at least on weekends); on weekdays, it's actually possible to ride through Bali.Things to do in Bali
OK, there's the standard fare...lots of street food, night market type games for kids to play (e.g., throwing darts at balloons, losing a small fortune for the chance to grab a small stuffed animal with an even smaller metal claw), so I'm just going to focus on the things that I found outstanding.Outstanding thing #1:
Making window ornamets: There's a tiny store in the middle of the food vendor area (where the outdoor seating is), where kids can paint these clear vinyl like window decorations. The decorations themselves come in a variety of shapes: cute animals, manga girls, more cute animals, Hello Kitty, Sponge Bob, you get the picture. My kids easily spent an hour in there.
Outstanding thing #2a:
Barbeque chicken stuffed with pork fried rice. Trust me: do not leave Bali unless you have tried this morsel of deliciousness. In addition to barbeque sauce, they season the outside with several optional spices, including sesame seeds and cayenne pepper. There are at least two stalls that sell this. The second photo below shows one of the stalls; zoom in on the photo to read more about the how the chicken is made.
Outstanding thing #2b:
Nothing else was in the same league as the stuffed barbeque chicken. But, for the sake of uniqueness, I'm giving an honorable mention to the deep-fried thousand year old eggs (regular thousand year old eggs are called pei dan), seasoned with garlic, and green onions. I actually love thousand year old eggs, and I now have Christina Perri to thank for poetically capturing my love for these eggs...and I quote, "I have died everyday waiting for you...I have loved you for a Thousand years...I'll love you for a Thousand more..." And I don't think that deep-frying thousand year old eggs makes them taste better. But, deep frying a food makes it more of a guilty pleasure, and isn't that what street food is all about?
Outstanding thing #3:
The "To House." "To" (or "tu" in pinyin) means rabbit, and To House is a cafe/restaurant that has a gazillion rabbits running around the premises. This is exhibit 1A in business ingenuity...the start-up costs are pretty minimal - you basically start with 2 rabbits and the very next day, voila, a fully stocked rabbit house! The cafe itself has indoor seating (frankly, I have no idea why anyone would want to come to a rabbit house and sit inside when all the rabbits are outside), but all the action is in the backyard. Get a table out back and the rabbits will literally come to your table. The restaurant staff will provide carrots and lettuce for you to feed the rabbits, but don't give them all to the rabbits. When the coffees are $140NT a pop and the juices are $160NT, the carrots and lettuce start looking pretty good after a while. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that there's also a massive pig in the back.
Getting there: keep riding northward on the bike path. There's one point where you think the path ends, and there's a main road on the left heading west. Ignore that road and just keep heading north-ish through the white wall with an opening in the middle (followed by another white wall with an opening). When the path ends, you'll see a small single lane road; take a right onto that road. That road will soon head west along the northern coast of Bali. Follow that road for 1, maybe 1.5km, and you'll see a small wooden house on your right. The wooden sign out front will say "To House." The address is No. 46號, Lane 202, Bówùguǎn Road, Bali. Andre has written a blog about the To House, which can be found here: http://dreintaiwan.blogspot.tw/2012/03/afternoon-tea-at-to-house-rabbit.html.
Outstanding Thing #4:
The museum of archeology. After the rabbit house, keep heading west on that small road another kilometer or so, past the little park. You'll see a number of scultures outside the Museum of Archeology. The museum itself houses a number of archeological artifacts unearthed from the area, the Shihsanhang Site. Here's a link to the museum's website: http://www.sshm.tpc.gov.tw/html/ensshm/shcomment.jsp?cparentid=223
