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On every corner, in every street, outside the cities and inside the old town they are the things you will notice the most in Taiwan, the land at the end of the world - or the beginning, that depends on from were you look, of course. The people in the streets are rolling and tumbling with their two-wheelers, they are going alone on them, with two or sometimes with three people on the seats.
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Kings of the road, tiny kings
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Nearly no one has a motorbike like the ones guys in the western world rides. In the capital Taipeh small and colorful scooters are the kings of the road. If you drive in your car, they are coming from the back and from every side, they take up the space at the very front of the traffic lights and they are the first ones who are storming the street when the green lights go on.
Every corner is a scooter corner
It's a love affair between the Taiwaneses and their scooters. Taiwan, a country of 23 million people, has the highest scooter density in the world by far with estimated 14 million-plus registered scooters, with at least 1 million of them in the capital Taipei. One scooter was owned per 1.8 inhabitants, that's are 375 per square kilometer - and in the traffic it seems sometimes that every single one of them is moving at the same time. It rattled and smokes, honks and buzzes everywhere. And at the roadside you see hundreds and thousands of scooters are waiting for getting in the game.
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Every.
The most of them have only 150cc or less and they are all a good deal for their owners. Although the cost to use public transportation like MRT or busses in Taiwan is very cheap, the price of the gasoline for a scooter is cheaper. Even the moped itself doesn't cost much: A regular scooter you can buy for $2,000–3,000 and you can use five or ten years.
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Sometimes it takes three
You don't need a huge parking lot, you don't have to pay a lot of insurance. And because there are so many scooters on the road, all the traffic is designed so that you are the boss everywhere. Bicycles are not so common, because with all these scooters on the streets and the cars behind them there is no space anymore to ride a normal bike.
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Sometimes it carries a lot more
But for the scooters Taiwan has an excellent infrastructure. Parking spots are plentiful and marked, and the roads and intersection design have accounted for scooters. Taiwan has a scooter-friendly geography too: All the things you can drive to are on the coastlines of the small island. So it is reachebable with the scooter too. At the weekends you can see a lot of the millions of scooters driving long distances to places outside the capital to see things you will never see if you don't have your own two wheels.
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The scooter race
Just like on the countryside in Germany young Taiwanese are happy with the mobility that give them an independence to go where they want. The landscape is generally flat and it is very romantic if you drive along the coastline with your scooter. There is rain sometimes, but no snow, never ice or any freezing temperature that forces you to wear thick clothes in Taiwan. This makes scooters practical all year long and a practical and valuable thing for everyone.
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A flock of scooters
Cars are expensive even if you only need them to drive short distances especially the rent for a flat in Taipeh eats up a lot of income. So the love of the taiwaneses for their scooters transformed KYMCO, once a small parts supplier for Honda, into the biggest Taiwanese scooter company today - at the same time the fifth largest scooter manufacturer worldwide.
This man wears a special safety hat: A german steel helmet from the WWII
The other side of the romantic story is of course the pollution from the small engines. The most of them are not so new and high-quality, so the air has always his burden with the smoke and the toxic breathe. But because the taiwanese government always predict that someday they would go back to mainland China after the communist era, Taiwan should only a temporary home for the most of the people. So a big car would was a little bit too big for those who were expecting the return. A scooter wasn't not.
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Lost in traffic
The garage
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One man caravan
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Old ladies on two wheels
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At the evening to the pub
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and back home
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No chance for regular bicycles.
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