We’d aimlessly cycled until the path merged into a highway, energized at the sight of the first sunshine we’d seen in a week. Behind us, Central Taipei cowered beneath a family of threatening clouds. Last night, they’d claimed palm trees like bowling pins. Random turns soon had us lost in a darkening residential area, so Anna decided on a right turn in search for a train station. Immediately, our surroundings started to change. Buildings shrunk in height and their facades, once white, were now tinted with layers of soot and lichen. A nonsensical knot of cars appeared in the main square. We edged through, making brief eye-contact with a flailing warden trying to unpick the mess around him. The others seemed nervous, streaming ahead between aged bollards, angled precariously out of ruptured concrete foundations. The demographic had also suddenly aged. Where elderly people piled together, looming over mahjong games, it suddenly hit me that the unique Hakka dialect being spoken by these villagers would prove a barrier to us getting home. At the end of the road, Anna stopped by a car park ticketing booth. “Can someone ask him for directions?” “Alex”- a verbal finger, pointed. We all turned as she arrived last at the scene. Being the only one of us who knew Mandarin, she smiled knowingly, quickly propped her bicycle up against a dented railing, then pivoted to confidently pace towards the doorless booth. It was, like all the infrastructure in the area, worn. Maybe it'd once been pink and glazed, but time had exposed various shades of ionizing metal between peeling paint. Alex peered in. The attendant, surprisingly young compared to everyone else in the area, leapt up. Abruptly, he pinned her with his arm to the side of the booth. Audible gasps escaped from our side of the road- until we followed his line of sight and watched a car pull up to collect a ticket. The tension shattered into nervous laughter. She took a visible sigh of relief too, before launching into the mission we'd sent her on. “You're joking." He pointed towards a highway on a bridge I hadn't noticed before, towering behind us. In the foreground of my sudden panic, he continued gesticulating wildly, hands swimming over bridges and palms bending to indicate corners. Alex was met with a unified ‘What did he say?’ as she crossed back. Following closely behind, the attendant attempted to sign her translation. Then, the universal signal for ‘Hold on!’. A game of charades. He sauntered back over to the booth and reached in. After looking around, he slung on his motorcycle helmet. “Wait, is he coming with us?” “Wow, he’s closing the car park for us?!” Stunned, we watched him straddle his motorbike, then, on turning it on, wave to us. It was otherworldly. “Let’s follow him”. We hesitantly kicked the stands under our bikes and jumped on. He led us down a narrow side road, then mounted the pavement, humorously waiting with us for the green man at the pedestrian crossing to light up. Once we got to the highway, he pointed for us to stream across five lanes of merging traffic to a precariously narrow pavement on the other side. I recall muffling my screaming, knuckles white, eyebrows furrowed as I glared at the road ahead of me. It was terrifying. I’d embarrassingly only learnt how to cycle a month beforehand and was now praying that of all times to become imbalanced, this wouldn’t be one of them. Soon, he stopped on the hard shoulder and indicated for us to follow suit. I laughed, absorbing the magnitude of our stupidity and his kindness. “Your photo?” I started pulling my camera out from under my jacket, ready to blog my experience. “No, I don’t like. Sorry”. He quickly turned to Alex. Some more hand gestures accompanied Mandarin, which she relayed as directions to the train station, just down the road. A chorus of profuse thanks. He smiled, bowed slightly and turned the engine back on and we subconsciously mirrored his behaviour. By the time I’d raised my head again, he’d sped back off to his booth. I shook my head and grinned. Truly, only in Taiwan.