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.

Road cycling

It's been almost a month since I haven't ridden a (real road) bike. About a year and a half into my PhD I bought a road bike, influenced by a good friend of mine, and it totally changed my life and my perception of Melbourne, not to mention helping me stay afloat in some very dark days.

Even though I loved my bike and I actually invested quite a considerable amount in accessories and parts, I decided it was not worth it to carry it to Mexico and then to Taiwan. My plan is to get a road bike in Taipei asap when I get there; how quick I'll do this will depend on several factors.

I enjoyed my time riding in Melbourne and it's one of the things I will miss dearly. At first I'd always start riding at Clayton and my favourite routes would include taking the Scotchman's Creek trail to the city, riding on Beach Road, where I reached Mount Martha several times and climbed Arthur's Seat at least once, riding some of the climbs on the Dandenong Ranges like the "1/20" or "The Wall", doing some laps at Albert Park Lake, or taking the Yarra Boulevard for its sake or en route to other places such as Mount Pleasant road up in Research (yes, there's a suburb called that).

Melbourne was such an amazing place to ride in; I wish I could've ridden in other places in Australia as well, but I was busy doing my PhD. Anyhow, I'm now looking forward to riding in Taiwan; hopefully I'll be able to find a place where commutes to work will be nice and for sure I'll be eager to explore the country by bike whenever possible. There's also the famous Taiwan KOM Challenge, which I'd be happy to try in case it gets on during my time there.