During January 2019 we road around Taiwan on our tandem. Generally we followed the out aim was to follow the Taiwan No 1 bike route wich circumnavigates the island.
Generally cycling in Taiwan is done on roads with the exception of a few very good cycle paths around Taipai. Here is a run down on the type of failities you can expect:
I think due to the large usage of motor scooters motorist are pretty good when it comes to safety. Also we say quite a few people getting booked so the roads are reasonaly well policed.
We landed at Taoyuan aiport and had planned to take the train into the city. There is somewhat of an issue with bikes and trains. For a start Tandems are not permitted on trains at all (except perhaps as luggage). You can not ride the metro from the Airport to the Taipei with out a folding bicycle. We tried on the first day to get on with our tandem and I think the ticket office at the station thought we were nuts. This is a shame as there is really plenty of room on the train.
We ended up putting asking our navigator to find a route and just road in. This was not really a very good strategy, one which we did not use getting back to the air port. If you find the airport on the map you can see that we took a longer route hugging the river (passing Bali !). This roads leading up to the route are fine and as soon as you get to the river its cycle path all the way (have a look at our map and you will see two paths near to/from the aiport). I would recommend this route or perhaps looking at one of the other official cycle routes (see below) to get started.
Click here for more information on Taipei trains and bicycles (BTW we got this from a QR code in the Taipei metro - it seems to be impossible to find otherwise).
Useful information
Taiwan Tourism has an official route named 'Route No 1' which runs around the country. The route is ridable but has not really been made to provide the best riding. It seems that someone has drawn a nice route around the country but not taken into account facilities such as nicer side roads or bike paths.
I recommend looking at the sub-routes as they take you to the top and bottom of the country (which we did ).
The roards a generally marked faily well with direction but I would recommend downloading the GPX (see link 2) version of the maps into your navigator or phone.
We went down the west coast and back up the east coast. In January there was a lot of wind which was behind us on the east and against us on the west. Speaking to other people this seems to be the weather pattern.
Accomodation is pretty easy to find and book. We used booking.com and expedia.com to book accomodation and just about everything was listed and available.
If you read the Korea section of the website there is a mention of 'love motels'. There was a similar concept in Taiwan but the places were bigger and the booking in process was not so secretive. There really good ones were very nice places to stay.
Here are a few things you should make sure you do in Taiwan:
Motor scooter (bike) hire is quite accessible in Taiwan and well run. You will need an international driver's license (which means you must have a local license) otherwise you will not be allowed to ride. At Sun Moon Lake and some other places they also hire out electric bikes which may not need a license (although you should know how to ride).
There is a major issue with helmets. Although it is compulsory to wear a helmet it seems that there are no standards (or at least they are not enforced). I would suggest that you choose a place with decent helmets before choosing where to hire the bike from. It is advisable to bring your own although this does not work if you are cycling as well.