I am planning a cycling trip to Taiwan. Everything was okay until I found out it has poisonous snakes and long tunnels with no alternative.
I was wondering how common it is to run into a snake if you are cycling, especially on the East Coast, and what other cyclists have done with tunnels: did you just go through them or maybe take the train and avoid that segment of road?
I was two weeks cycling in Taiwan and I never saw a snake - I've seen plenty in SE Asia. I doubt very much its an issue.
As for tunnels, make sure you bring (or buy there, bike shops are excellent and cheap in Taipei) a good rear light and a front light capable of pushing out a good beam, in addition to a couple of small flashing LEDs. The tunnels are not well lit, and they are sometimes potholed inside (I've no idea why the otherwise excellent Taiwan roads restrict their use of potholes to tunnels only). But they are quite short and on the east coast and the roads over the centre of the island are very lightly trafficked, so I personally didn't find them a big issue, certainly not enough to put anyone off cycling there. The only scary one is at the very top of one of the cross-island roads (Highway 20 I think), which is one lane only and unlit. But there is very little traffic on that road, so as long as you are well lit, you'll be ok. Lots of local cyclists do it.
I believe there are one or two very long tunnels on some recent major highways, but I think they are off limits to cyclists anyway and can be by-passed using older mountain roads.
Everything was okay until I found out it has poisonous snakes
Of course it has poisonous snakes. Everywhere that isn't a frigid island out in the sea has poisonous snakes. I think the only countries with no poisonous snakes are Ireland and Iceland. Do you worry about poisonous snakes when you go to other places? The worst place for snakes is probably Australia, but how often do you hear of tourists having a problem with one?
I once walked along a path in Canada, that well-known warm country, and came to a place where the path was completely covered in snakes. According the map, the location was called Snake Bluff. There must have been a good 30 of them. I probably saw more snakes in that one glance than I have seen alive in the wild in the rest of my life. But one over-fast movement from me and they all vanished in a trice, so I didn't get a photo. Shame because they were bright yellow, and nearly all the other snakes I hvae seen have been rather dull.
In Malaysia you get used to seeing squashed snakes on the road, practically all little brown ones. Once I discovered one that hadn't been squashed, though I didn't realise this until I ran over it - I don't know if they survive being run over by a bike.
In Burma, noted for its many poisonous snakes, I saw only one in a month there. One day I employed a young "guide" to take me to some hard-to-find local sights including some temples in some tunnels. We also gained some hangers-on, ie his mates hoping for a bit of charity to fall on them too. In the tunnels, they showed me hatched out snake eggs in some recesses. Later walking back over land knee-high in sparse grass, we came across a snake, thin brown one about a couple of feet long. It was trying to get away as fast as possible, but there was a lot of screaming from the kids who started to pelt it with stones, but I got them to leave it to make its escape.
So, the reality of snakes that one normally encounters, even in places where they are supposedly relatively common, is that they are mostly little brown ones, mostly squashed, and the rest run off as fast as they can. Even in Guam, which due to accidental introduction of the (you've guessed it) brown tree snake has become completely infested with the things, they aren't much harm to humans, and you rarely see them.
I've only ever had 2 issues with snakes.
Once in Australia on a short day trip, and the other in India.
Both times it was while climbing a hill. so I was going pretty slow and the snake passed through the front wheel. I can only imagine what would've happened if it got up in the brakes.
Ouch!!
