today we went straight to the tourist information center after the breakfast to ask for a recommendation on what to do and what to see in hualien. unfortunately the ladies did not speak english, so we decided to rent a bike (yes, a bike, not a scooter), and explore hualien by bike[02-36]. so we spent the morning and afternoon biking along the river to the shore on really nice cycle lanes[02-07,12,18,22-23]. oddly enough we were not the only ones doing sports on a very hot and humid day. there were quite a lot of taiwanese and chinese people on bicycles. but i guess we were the only ones getting a nice sunburn. nina in the face, me on the back of my hands. but the ride was really nice, and we got to see a lot[19]. after having a long shower at the hotel, we went for a stroll in the area around the hotel. we found a little market hall where they produced mochi and other sweets (no photography allowed). also there was a little coffee house where we had a taiwanese coffee. the shop was owned by two lovely ladies[39-40], that seemed to be drinking coffee all day long. to us it looked like they were on drugs, talking a lot and very fast all the time - great fun. and really nice. after that we went to another sweets shop where we bought bamboo mochi (that's mochi inside a bamboo stick), and tried several other sweets. all very nomnom. next we found a pachinko hall[44] (as in japan, these are amusement arcades, full of gambling machines (again no photography allowed). so we spent a few hundred taiwanese dollars on games. each one of us could pick a game, then we played one game, then the other one could pick a machine. so when it was nina's turn, she picked an alien shooter[45] - hmpf. it hurt to kill all those cute little aliens... after all the suffering and pain we went on to grab some dumplings - as usual, very delicious. in the meantime we also decided what to do on the next day. so we went to the tourist information center, and booked a one- day tour, called the "rift valley tour", to see some stuff from the area around hualien. also we booked one more night at our hotel, the "green hotel - ching yeh". we hope there's an english guide on the bus tour. track: day 15