On Thursday we left Guo Qing at 11PM sharp. If you thought red eye flights were bad, try going on a red-eye bus ride. That will mess you up hardcore because it is pretty much impossible to fall asleep on a bus. The road to Green Island would take us about 6 hours which is a long time, but the bus, like everything else that matters in Taiwan, was equipped with a kareoke system. So we spent half the night singing our hearts out, but the kareoke system wasn't especially expansive, so we ran out of songs to sing by 1 or 2 AM. Then it was time to attempt to pass out in the bus.
Simon tearing it up on the mic on the way to Green Island.
I'm not sure what time I ended up waking up but when I did, the bus was stopped by the side of a beach, and there was an absolutely gorgeous sunrise peeking through the clouds. We got out of the bus and walked onto the beach to watch the sunrise.
It was gorgeous but, as most sunrises are, far too early, so we went back to the bus as soon as the sun came out and slept some more. We were nearing the ferry to go to Green Island and very far from Taipei and things changed. The roads are windy and open, the greenery is dense and packed. Here the trees outweigh the people and it is hard to grasp how dense and tropical a place with so much green is.
We finally got to the ferry place and it smelled like STANK over there. This was partially due to the fact that the ferry place doubled as a huge, HUGE fish market. And we got there just in time to see the daily catch come in. I've never seen so many different types of fish in my life before, especially THIS sucker:
The thing was huge and needed to be dragged by four men. But it didn't smell that bad compared to bathrooms that just didn't work. Regardless, we were stuck at the ferry place for two or so hours before we went on the ferry, and it was already feeling like a long, long day but it was actually only 9 in the morning.
The ferry ride to Green Island was glorious. The waters were pretty choppy and the ship was getting thrown all over the place. I heard the inside of the boat we were on was pretty much 100% puke zone, but me and a few other EAP'ers went to the front of the boat to experience the rollercoaster boat ride front and center. It was a glorious, sunny Friday morning and there was no better feeling than feeling the air rush by on the front of that boat.
Over the trip there were a few places I refused to take my camera. The front of this crazy boat was one of them. Thus I will be stealing pictures from various sources. This one came from Laura Jen; thanks in advance Laura!
We got to the Green Island and the first thing I can say about the place (Besides the fact that it is quite green) is that it is SMALL. We would later realize that we could drive around the entire island via scooter in half an hour. This place is tiny!After disembarking, we went to go get our scooters. This is the part of the weekend where I made an epic fool of myself. Only two out of 18 of us had ridden scooters before but we were all picking it up quite quickly. The owner of the scooter place didn't seem to care as we all drove away. So when it came to be my turn to scooter away, I figured it would be pretty easy. Well, it wasn't. I crashed that sucker into a bunch of other parked scooters right in front of the scooter place owner. Which is to say, nothing broke, I just tipped a few scooters over, but it was enough to have the store owner freak out and force everyone to come back to the scooter place. He demanded all of us show our scooter license which, naturally, none of us had (you don't even need a license for scootering in America, after all). So he asked for our driver's licenses and proceeded to make fun of us with his buddies in Taiwanese, calling us fakers and ABC's, etc. Of course, when a few of us started talking back to him in Chinese and Taiwanese, he quickly sharpened up and realized we weren't just foolish tourists. After an hour of arguing, we got our scooters as planned. Sorry again for the trouble my foolishness caused, guys!!!
Green Island only has ONE gas station on the entire island, so after waiting half an hour for gas, we ate lunch. Green Island really loves their seafood and deer meat, so we sampled a little bit of both. Most restaurants also allow you to write on the walls so we all made our marks on the walls before setting off.
If you feel like this entry is getting a little long, remember that this is just the first out of three days. And yes, it did feel this long. After lunch we were all feeling 100% beat from the entire day, so we all went to the hostel and passed out for an hour or two. Total, we were a group of 26, and we were fitting 18 people into a 10 person room. Accomodations got a little tight, to be frank. I passed out on the floor and never looked back; I must have been tired but that was defintitely the most comfortable floor I have ever lied upon.
Afterwards we split up. Half of us went snorkeling around, but my half (you know, the cool half) was too lazy to go snorkeling, so we went looking for a beach to lounge around at. Beaches here are not your normal kind of beach; there's huge coral reefs right off the shore so if you do try to go out into the water, you'll be standing on coral reef for a quite a while before you drop into the ocean. That said, it is cool because you can walk out and look at the coral reefs and resulting tide pools within them.
I don't think there will be another time in my life where I will get to watch both a sunrise and a sunset at a beach within the same day, but that's what I did on Friday. It was awesome.
After beaching, we went straight to the Green Island hot springs. Apparently the hot springs there are one of the world's best, and one of only three beach-side natural hot springs. While they have the normal assortment of artificial hot springs, you can walk down to the beach, where there are literally three natural hot springs in the middle of the beach. Floating in a hot spring, looking up at a clear, starry sky with the sounds of the ocean crashing a few feet away? Sign me up any day, this place rocks.
After hot springs, we had dinner at a hot pot place which was not filling whatsoever. Thus we went to go look for some more food, but the problem is that our hostel is located across the island from the main part of town with the vendors and the 7-11's. Cris, Jenn and I decided to go around the island the long way and be the first people of our group to go around the island on our scooters. We stopped by a cave temple (apparently there was a rock that looked like a human. In actuality, it looked like, I dunno, a rock) and scoped out some places to check out during the day time. It was a sweet, relaxing ride around a dark, tropical island, until we got a call saying that Brian Chow had gotten into an accident on his scooter.
We rushed back to the hostel to find a large group of people gathered on the outside. Brian had tipped his bike over, cracked his rear view mirror, gauge cluster, and skinned his hand and knee, but otherwise he was ok. We went back to our hostel where, finally, we crashed for the night. And it was only 11:30 PM.
The next day started off slow. Everyone was pretty tired from the ridiculously long day beforehand, but soon enough people got food in them and it was time to go explorin'. We wanted to go cave diving and hiking up a mountain, but we weren't sure where we could get that done. So, we went driving around the island until we saw a cave-like puncture in the island and went in. A few failed miserably, but one went in relatively deep. It's amazing just how DARK the inside of a cave is, there is simply zero light making its way in. We went into the cave until we were blocked by boulders.
Thanks to Linda Hang for this picture of the men jumping in front of the cave entrance.
Then we tried to go climb a mountain. This failed too. We found a path called the Across Mountain Path which, you would think, would take you up a mountain and then back down, but it didn't. Instead it sort of takes you on a leisurely walk though "spider and lizard alley," and then spits you back out the other end. No view, no nada, just a lot of stairs, trees, and spiders. Well, maybe it had an ooookay view about a third of the way in.
Feeling 100% jipped, we went around the island to get lunch. Unlike Taipei, food on the Green Island closes at 2:30 for siesta time, so you'll have to rely on 7-11 or small food vendors to get full after 2:30 PM. Luckily there was a food vendor selling beef noodle soup, so we ate that. We also went to this place called Ice Jail, which is a shaved ice place that uses seaweed flakes in the ice as well. Green Island used to be a prison where all the prisoners of Taiwan got sent to. Now the prison is non operational and a tourist destination, I guess more or less like Alcatraz. Why they would waste such a beautiful island on prisoners I have no idea, but that's the story behind Green Island, and this place called Ice Jail.
After lunch we checked out the light house. The light house was closed but the beautiful coral beaches below it were not, so we stayed there for a while and took some pictures.
After the lighthouse we went driving some more around the island, and ended up at the Sleeping Beauty pagoda. There is a walkway that leads all the way out onto a cliff, on which there are two pagodas where you can see a beautiful view of the ocean and the surrounding beaches and cliff formations.
This day passed by way, way quicker than the previous day. As we headed back from the pagodas the sun was already setting. We headed back to the hostel for some rest before heading back out to dinner. Dinner was at another hostel (our RA was staying at a separate hostel across the island). Then we decided to kill some time before we went back to the hostels once again, so I took a few people to the white beach we had gone to yesterday. This is where I chased Jenn on the coral reef and sliced my foot open, but no worries mom and dad, it's healing itself back up ok. Regardless, I got piggybacked back to the beach's pagoda when Cris came back with 500 NT worth of fireworks. Nursing my wounds with Jenn, we watched the fireworks set off on the beach. One firework went astray, flew sideways, and landed perfectly in Cris' hand before jumping up and blowing up in front of his face, but no worries, he's fine.
We headed back to the hostel for a night of card games and mafia. By 3AM we were all sleeping.
Sunday was our final day in Green Island, and it was legen-wait for it-dary. After moving out of our hostel and packing our stuff up in the van, we had half a day left to kill. We had nothing in particular planned, so we just decided to drive aimlessly. We found a really beautiful rock formation at the end of the island, off the main loop, and stopped there to take some pictures.
I didn't have my camera for ALL of Sunday, so here on out all pictures are yoinked! This came from Tiffany Tseng's camera, and it's Laura doing the "I'm the king of the world!" pose.
The day before during the lame hike, we saw a mountain on the map called "Fire Mountain," so we decided that something called "Fire Mountain" needed tackling. We went around the island to try to find it but instead found an awesome windy road going up to one of Green Island's many peaks. We stopped for a few pictures half way through and realized the top of the road was a military installation, so we turned around before getting shot.
All of them also from Tiffany's camera. The last picture is super bad-ass, Tiff. I thought you were crazy when you were taking that picture from the back of Laura's bike but now I am glad you did!
After that we decided to go back to the lighthouse to throw rocks and stuff. Coral reef rocks are ridiculous; you can skip half-foot-large rocks across the water because they are porous.Making our way back around the mountain, I pointed at a cliff I had been wanting to walk out on since I got to the island, so we stopped our bikes and walked out to it. It was 42452542403500% epic status. This was the highlight of the trip for me, and I'm pretty sure it was the highlight of everyone else's trip who made it up there with us. The walk there is beautiful, like an old military warzone with bunkers and trenches. It opens up into a completely epic field with huge rocks and mountains sticking out. We climbed the highest one and there was only a flat area that was maybe 5 feet in diameter for the eight of us at the top, before breaking off into a cliff. The view up there was absolutely amazing. I'm talking absolutely gorgeous.
No picture can accurately describe the majesty and awesomeness of this place but this picture from Tiffany's camera came close. It was so awesome that even Cris was dumbstruck by it. That's him on top of the mountain we climbed to see the following view:
This picture is from Laura and is only one of 360 degrees of beautiful view we had from the top of that mountain. It was seriously astounding; pictures really do this place zero justice.
The amazing views had made us half an hour late to lunch. Afterwards Cris and I wanted to do one final lap of the island before saying goodbye to the Green Island, but a quarter of the way in we found Jun and Gladys on the side of the road. They had fallen prey to an oil slick and were pretty badly scratched up, so we rushed them to the hospital, and then it was time to return the bikes, catch the boat, and head back to Taiwan.The ride back was very long as we said good bye to Green Island. The boat trip was sickening, the bus ride slow. It was difficult to wrap our heads around all the stuff that had happened on that island in just one weekend. It was fun, amazing, exciting, and awesome!
Coming back to class, and reality, is difficult! Time to get back in the zone. Until next time, zai jian!
-Justin
PS The rest of the pictures from the trip can be seen here:
Taiwan Part 九.
Taiwan Part 十.
1 comment:
wow. love the pictures. esp of you driving the scooter with a giant "OMGWTF__AHH!!!"
glad you're having so much fun (:
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