Temple of the Eighteen Lords

A temple that is all about praising dogs... yep, you can find such thing in Taiwan. Specifically, I'm referring to the Temple of the Eighteen Lords (in Mandarin, 十八王公廟 or Shíbāwáng Gōngmiào), located at the very north of Taiwan.

The story is quite interesting, from Wikipedia:

According to legend, during the Qing Dynasty, a boat carrying seventeen people and one dog capsized near the coast of northern Taiwan. All of the people died, but the dog survived. When residents on the shore were burying the dead, the dog jumped into the grave to be buried as well.^[a] Locals then immortalized them collectively as the "Eighteen Lords".^[1]

And according to the same Wikipedia article, "In the 1980s, the temple was popular among gamblers playing dajiale (a type of illegal lottery) and sex workers." I find it surprising that none of the Taiwanese that I've spoken to (to be fair, not that many... lol), were not aware about the existence of the temple.

Apparently it's not super easy to get there on public transport from Taipei. While, of course, I wanted to see the temple, my main motivation was to ride there: it took some 85km and 2,000m of climbing but most of it on nice roads and accross the mountains, so a tad hard but super enjoyable.