Staying in a Taiwanese love hotel with the true object of his affections: His bicycle

Taiwan love hotel perfect for traveler with bike

TAIPEI, Taiwan — We were guys staying at the same hotel with our mistresses.

He looked like a Taiwanese gangster, with permed hair, black suit and pointy knockoff Italian loafers. It was 5:30 a.m. and he was renting a room for a few hours with a woman in a leather mini skirt, fishnet stockings and the longest false eyelashes I’ve ever seen. They had no luggage.

My mistress was my $4,000 carbon-fiber bicycle, and I was carrying my beloved out of the hotel lobby for a morning workout when I passed the couple as they were checking in. It must have been a surreal sight for them, a tall Western guy in a red polka-dotted jersey, tight Spandex shorts, lugging a fancy magenta-colored road bike and clip-clopping out the door in stiff-soled, cleated cycling shoes.

I was doing what I love to do: taking my bike on a business trip and staying at an inexpensive, no-frills hotel close to some spectacular cycling terrain.

This time, I was bunking at the Feeling Hotel — one of the numerous “love hotels” in Taiwan’s capital. They are cheap places often used for lunchtime flings and one-night stands in crowded Taipei, where privacy can be hard to find. The establishments are designed for discretion, often located in alleys or backstreets. Rooms can be rented by the hour, and no questions are asked. A complimentary condom can usually be found in the bedside table.

Best of all, you can roll a bike through the lobby and wedge it in the elevator without anyone hassling you. The staff is used to weirdness.

Although they may sound seedy, establishments like the Feeling Hotel are clean and well-run by professional and friendly staff. They’re usually small and only offer bare-bones amenities, but that often means the rooms are inexpensive, about $50 (1,650 Taiwan New Dollars) a night at the Feeling Hotel. This makes them popular with families and business travelers during these hard economic times.

The biggest plus for me was that the Feeling Hotel is at the base of the spectacular mountains of Yangmingshan National Park, just outside of Taipei. The hotel in the suburb of Tienmu — long popular with expats — is also surrounded by great restaurants, stores, decent bike shops but few standard hotels.

Whenever I travel for my job, I try to bring my bike along. I’m a serious cyclist who tries to stay in race shape, so I can’t afford to be off the bike during trips that can last as long as a month. I also hate working out in hotel gyms, pedaling in a pool of sweat on a squeaky stationary bike facing a wall.

I would much rather explore a city by bike, and traveling with one is easy with the latest bike boxes and bags that are relatively light and protect your rig.

In Taipei, I can get in a tough two-hour ride in the mountains before work if I get out the door by 5:30 a.m. It’s a fantastic ride that begins in the “Blade Runner”-like urban chaos of Taipei and within a few miles takes you into the lush green mountains that provide terrific views of the humming, sprawling city below.

Taiwan is undergoing a cycling renaissance. Bicycles were once the main form of transport for the masses before the leaf-shaped island evolved into a manufacturing juggernaut and the economy boomed. But the people who shifted to motor scooters and then cars are rediscovering the joys of cycling. On the weekends in Yangmingshan, the roads are filled with people pedaling mountain bikes, high-end Italian racing frames and tricked-out collapsable bikes.

My favorite ride is a 57-mile out-and-back tour from the Feeling Hotel, over the mountains in Yangmingshan National Park and down to Jin Shan beach on the northeastern Pacific coast. The climbs can be steep, and in one three-mile section, I felt like the two greasy fried eggs and toast I had for breakfast were inching their way up my gullet with each pedal stroke.

But the payoff is huge as you speed down long descents into mountain valleys where farmers grow vegetables in small terraced plots on the hills. Elderly ladies set up rickety stands under umbrellas on the side of the road and sell cabbages, eggplants and greens. One itinerant butcher in a rusty red van throws a wooden chopping block on the roadside and hacks up cuts of meat for passers-by.

The park is full of hot sulfur vents that spew steamy clouds into the air that smell like rotten eggs. The tropical rainforest vegetation is loaded with bamboo groves and tall grasses, where locust-like insects make a strange metallic whirling noise that sound like a space ship is about to land.

A switchback-filled descent of about 12 miles ends at Jin Shan Beach. When I rode there on a recent Saturday, the beach was full of young Taiwanese surfers enjoying the higher waves being kicked up by a tropical storm. I stopped at a roadside food wagon, and ordered a second breakfast of coffee and waffles with a generous dollop of whipped cream. I sat down at a small plastic cafe table and watched the people riding the waves.

When I turned around to go home, I could see dark rain clouds hanging over the mountain. Rather than wait out the storm, I decided to push through it. A hard rain began to fall about 10 minutes into the climb back over the mountain. But as I pedaled higher, I climbed out of the storm and spent the rest of the way uphill in a fantastically refreshing mist that kept me cool. It was much like a dream.

I returned to the hotel absolutely exhausted but with a wonderful buzz from being in the spectacular outdoors. I lugged my bike up the steps of the Feeling Hotel and opened the door with a big smile on my sunburned face. As I stepped into the lobby, I saw the Taiwanese man in the black suit with his date. He was also grinning, looking tired but happy.

If You Go…

YANGMINGSHAN NATIONAL PARK: Located in Taipei, Taiwan; www.ymsnp.gov.tw/HTML/ENG/INDEX.ASP.

FEELING HOTEL: No. 2 Lane 728, Section 6, Chung Shan North Road, Taipei, Taiwan; www.feelinghotel.com.tw/. About $50 (1,650 Taiwan New Dollars) nightly.

TRAVELING WITH BIKES: Bike travel cases range in price from $100 to $500. The cheapest option is to take the bike to a local bicycle shop and have the bike packed in a cardboard box for free or a small fee. Travel cases can usually fit in a taxi trunk or backseat, and they are checked like normal luggage. Airline policies for bike cases vary widely. Some won’t charge extra if the weight of your total luggage does not exceed the maximum limit allowed. Others will automatically charge a fee — sometimes about $100 — for oversized luggage. Some ticket counter employees can be flexible, so it’s always worth asking them to waive or reduce any fees.