Taiwan Trip 2015 - Raphael Pöham

09Mar 2015 by Impact Unicycles

Raphael Pöham:
It all started when a Hungarican, “Aidan Teleki” asked me if I wanted to go to Taiwan with him. I didn’t take him seriously at the beginning, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go. Aidan told me that we could stay at the house of the Chiu family and they could host a maximum of 4 persons, so we were thinking who else would have the time to go with us. As Aidan is a trials rider and I’m a Flat/Street rider we needed another person with a special talent. Immediately “Jakob Eschlböck”, the Slow Race World Champion of Brixen came to my mind and a call later he was in. Jakob again was here! Also Matyo Zachar, joined because of his special social skills.

Flights were booked, and we were ready to go! We were off to the bus station to drive to the airport and then fly for too many hours… After 30 hours of traveling in total, we finally managed to arrive at the house of the Chiu family, but our luggage with our unis decided to stay in Shanghai for a few more days because it was so beautiful there. However, we were happy to arrive safely.

The first days we were visiting different schools in Taiwan, where we taught them some easy tricks and what else is possible on a uni. The climate change was huge. From skiing in the Alps one to almost 30°C the next day was something we had to get used to.

We could see they were more into Freestyle than Flatland, that’s why we were happy to have Aidan with us, who had some nice Freestyle combos in his mind!

Also the teachers and headmasters of the school were pretty fascinated in what we were doing. After some discussion we got permission to ride the roof of the school’s entry. We were always happy to find good spots! Here is the photo we got:

Finally after 4 days without fresh underwear and our own unis, the luggage from Shanghai arrived. Jakob and I were pretty happy to finally start serious filming!

The first week we spend around the city we were staying in: Chiayi. Well, the air was different to what I was used to from Austria, Tirol.

The Food. As expected we had lots of rice every day! Also the sea- and special food from Taiwan was very delicious. Nevertheless it took pretty long sometimes to eat everything just with chop sticks. We definitely should have practiced more before the trip. Matej had the worst time of all, always complaining about how he had to “fight with the food” and almost always asked for a spoon and fork.

After lots of good filming sessions near Chiayi, we started our road trip to the North of Taiwan where instead of taking the normal highways through the cities, we took the more beautiful route through the East coast. The landscape was completely different there. Lots of small villages, palm trees and lonely beaches. Because we only had one week to get to the North, we didn’t have too much time staying at one place filming for huge tricks. That’s why it was necessary to keep the tricks fast and easy to get enough footage for a video.

There were so many good spots to film, where we didn’t have the time to stop. However, one day we want to go back there for a longer time!

After two weeks the trip finished in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, where Jakob and I had to fly back home, while Aidan and Matyo stayed for another week. Back home a lot of work waited for me and it was really hard to sort out the clips and start the edit. But now, after a few weeks I’m finished with the whole editing process of the final video.

Here it is, turn up the volume and enjoy!