Taidong and Green Island

Our next trip was to Taidong and Green Island.  Taidong is in the Southeast of Taiwan.  Unfortunately Eva and I missed our first train (I'm fairly certain it never came) so we had to cough up another $280 each for the next one.  At least we got seats!  In Taidong, a local that we had met before boarding the train helped us find the last bus that was leaving the train station to Taidong city.  We arrived at Fruit Street and found our hostel pretty easily.  The owner was very helpful-she instructed us on how to get to Fugang harbor for our adventure to Green Island the next day.  After we had settled, we went out and walked through the pretty unimpressive night market, in search of dinner.  We ended up getting Aboriginal boar meat sandwiches.  The vendor also let us try some 米酒 (mijiu- rice liquor) that he had for sale, which we had been curious about.

The next morning, we had a very early start.  After some initial confusion, some locals helped us find the right bus to take to the ferry (it was actually a van).  We wanted to eat breakfast, but didn't dare due to what we had heard about the ferry ride to Green Island.  The talk was true; it was the roughest boat ride I've ever experiences.  As the boat slammed into the incessant waves, I played my music as loud as it would go, closed my eyes and gripped my jacket as hard as I could in order to resist the urge to puke.  Even through the music I could hear the people around me barfing, and you could smell it on the air.  The ride felt a lot longer than fifty minutes.  Somehow Eva and I made it without throwing up, and we got off the boat as quickly as possible.  Once back on solid ground, we walked around trying to figure out what we were going to do about transportation.  We eventually aasked a random hotel if they would be willing to rent us a moped, and lucky for us the worker was very helpful.  He drove me over to a nearby rental place and I followed him back.  However, the moped was electric (I don't have a Taiwanese or international license, so I don't think they would have given me a gas-powered one) and wouldn't be able to get both Eva and I and all of our stuff up hills, so he lent us an ebike for free, which Eva rode.  We then set out to find our campground.  It started raining almost immediately, and didn't let up until late that night.  At the campground, we had to wait for a while before a manager finally showed up and showed us which spot we should use.  Luckily the campground had spots with wooden platforms and roofs, so we didn't have to worry about getting soaked at night.  After paying and dropping off our things, we hit the road again, planning to go around the entire island (not hard to do since it's so tiny).  We stopped many times to see things such as the Little Great Wall, the Pekinese Dog and Sleeping Beauty rock formations, a waterfall, a cave, the Zhaori hot springs, and more.  Zipping around on the motorbikes was great fun, even though we were getting pelted with rain the entire time.  We finally ate lunch around 2:00pm at a sketchy little shop, but stopped again a couple hours later at a proper cafe, when we couldn't bear the coldness and wetness any longer.  We ordered hot things: coffee, venison pizza (apparently the island is popular for its venison meat), and french fries.  It was hard leaving the wifi and dryness to go back out into the incessant rain, but we did, buying some snacks and playing cards for when we would be back at camp.  We then headed back to the camp to change into our bathing suits for the Zhaori hot springs, which we had decided to visit since we were unable to snorkel that day.  Zhaori hot springs is one of three salt water hot springs in the world, the other two being in Japan and Italy.  The warm water felt great after a day of borderline hypothermia, and we relaxed there for a couple hours, before taking proper showers and heading back to camp.  We set up the tent in the dark, and had to construct a questionable system of strings, since we couldn't stake it down into the wooden boards.  We then played card games and talked until we fell asleep.

The next morning we got up very early again and packed up, returned our scooters and then awaited the dreaded ferry that would take us back to Taidong.  We intentionally kept our stomachs empty again, but the ride back wasn't nearly as bad as the initial one.  I didn't feel nauseous at all.  Back at Fugang Harbor, we shared a taxi with a man that had also been at our campground the night before, and went back to the city center.  He wouldn't let us pay for our part of the ride and also recommended us a popular restaurant for lunch.  Taiwanese people can be so nice.  After lunch, we didn't really know what to do, so we walked around and tried to make it to Liyushan park, but didn't have sufficient time, since we had to catch a bus back to the train station.  Instead, we got gelato at a nearby shop.  Finally, we made it back to the train station and after 4.5 hours of standing on a train, arrived in Taipei.