Sun, snorkeling, scooters, and seaweed ice cream

Sunday morning, 5:30am, we woke up and quietly exited our friend Faith's apartment to get breakfast and wait for our taxi. The taxi conveyed us to the boat launch maybe 20 minutes away. We heard that we were liable to get sick on the ride so we both took some medicine. The boat was pretty fun (though we almost got on the wrong one), but I did feel a little nauseous by the end of the hour long ride to Green Island. When we got off the boat we looked for someone carrying a placard with our name on it, but no one was there for us yet, after a few uncertain moments, a man drove up in a van and apologized. What followed was perhaps a more turbulent ride than the boat itself as our host expertly maneuvered around tour buses, hordes of tourists on scooters, and pedestrians while going around curves on the narrow island road. When we got to the hotel, there were a group of guys who ended up translating for us that we couldn't rent scooters from the hotel because we don't have a scooter license, and that our rooms wouldn't be ready for about an hour, but we could leave our things in the lobby while we went out on the provided bikes.

All the guys at the hotel. The guy next to me in the blue shorts and white t-shirt is the hotel owner.


Now this was all very interesting, but it worked out ok in the end. After riding our bikes for a short time we decided that a scooter was a must, and armed with information from our foreign friends back in Taidong we figured we could at least see how easy it would be for us to get scooters. We rode back to the area where the boat docked and found a scooter place where it was NT300 for two days ($10-15), and the man even drove back to our hotel and drove us back to his place. Recalling all we could from our 5 minute lessons the week before we confidently (or not so confidently) got on our scooters and went. Driving a scooter turned out to be really easy and a lot of fun. Most of the driving around the island was just on a highway without too much other traffic, and even though I was a little nervous about driving through town, that was quite simple too. I really got used to it... pity we had to give them back .

Hope on her scooter.



Me with my scooter! It rained most of Monday morning.

We returned to our hotel to finally get settled in our rooms and then proceeded to drive around the island! It takes about 45 minutes to drive around Green Island, though we stopped many times to look at the amazing views and decide which places we really wanted to return to the next day.


What a beautiful place!

When we got back we had lunch and papaya milk, which I think is really yummy! I think I like it better than just eating papaya.... it seems rather easy to make to, just stick a papaya, some sugar and milk in the blender and then pour it over some ice, I'd recommend it! After lunch we returned to our hotel for a little nap and had to be roused to go snorkeling. After many doubts and trials in being properly attired, we finally got to go, and I'm really glad I didn't change my mind, because I almost did a couple times. I slipped and fell going in and coming out and sustained some small cuts on my hands and leg, but nothing to worry about. One of our fellow hotel guests whose name was Gus really watched out for me, which was very kind of him. For my first time snorkeling, I didn't find it too difficult. I thought it would be claustrophobic to only be able to breath through that one little thing, but it wasn't. We were out for around an hour, and started off hanging onto life preservers, but then once we felt confident we were able to let go. It was so incredible to see the underwater world in that way. Green Island has some amazing coral, with anenomes and tons of brightly colored fish. It is definitely something I want to try again! Oh yeah, at one point I got "lost" meaning I had somehow ended up in the middle of a different group, though I think my group realized it long before I did. We came home and showered and then ended up watching a movie and part of The Amazing Race. That especially was really exciting! I think Hope and I would make a good team on that show hehehehe. That is the first time we've really watched English TV since we were our hotel in Hualian. In the evening we commenced a long search for supper... both being hungry, but not knowing what we wanted and being a little short on cash, we ended up wandering up and down this road for a long time and getting rained on before we settled on cheap instead of particularly delicious, though it wasn't bad. We ended up eating oolong noodle soup, which only cost us NT90 for both of us (other places were 180-300 each). After that we decided to get some bing which is a cold dessert made of shaved ice, and usually with fruit or other sweet things topping it. As we were walking down this street this young girl tried to talk to us, it was really cute. When we tried to talk to her more though, she got really shy and ran inside her family owned restaurant, the problem was though, that it was the exact shop we had been headed for... anyways, we ended up chatting with her a bit and got bing. Hope got a pineapple one, and I, feeling adventurous, asked for their "most special one." Which WAS really special... it came in this bowl made from a giant seashell which was really cool (so sad to say I didn't have my camera with me). And was topped with (this is all going to sound gross, but it was actually quite good) these transparent jellies, sweetened condensed milk and some green stuff that I later discovered was seaweed.... yes, seaweed. Now I generally like seaweed, but we had earlier passed by a shop advertising seaweed bing and I thought, that sounds disgusting! So I suppose if I had known in advance, I wouldn't have ordered it, but it turned out to be ok!

We crashed pretty quickly after we got to the hotel, and were planning to get up for the sunrise (since we're on an eastern island), but when we woke up it was raining. I think we finally left the hotel around 8 to get breakfast and continue our drive around the island as we took a ton of pictures, which you can see after this entry. We stopped at a lovely sand and coral beach and would have stayed there longer, except that it started raining again, so we made our way to the hot springs. Green Island has a natural hot spring right on the ocean, as well as a little inlet (i'm not sure what the true term for it is) where you can swim in the ocean, but it's protected by breakers, so there aren't too many waves. Anyways, I think we spent a couple of hours there, and that's where I got most of my sunburn (it's always worse when you're in the water), though my forearms had been burnt the day before from riding the scooter.

We had lunch, drove out to visit another site and took a ton of pictures (at the cool rock formations), and then went to drop our scooters of and walk back to the hotel in time to do some shopping along the way and then get our stuff together before our 5:00 boat. But alas, it was not to be. Just as we were browsing the one store on Green Island that takes credit card, we received a call from the hotel owner saying that our boat had been cancelled, and now the last boat going out was the 3:30 boat. Current time: 3:26. We tried to explain to him that we'd just returned our scooters and were on foot now, and eventually got it through that he needed to come pick us up. Thus our leisurely trip ended in a mad frenzy of speeding back to the hotel, throwing all our stuff back into our bags and running out to the van, where he drove like an ambulance to get to the port, but since the boat had just arrived there were hordes of people milling about, cars arriving to pick them up, and just general chaos. I'm suprised our driver didn't wear out his horn trying to get through it all, meanwhile the driver of the boat is calling his cellphone asking if we're here yet... when we finally get out the boat has started to pull away and they pull it back and we hop on, a minute later realizing that they hadn't let about 6 other people on who were late like us... thanks God for taking care of us! After my heart stopped pounding, I discovered that we were allowed to go out on the deck of the boat, so I enjoyed the ride from there, which was really great! I didn't feel sick being outside either. So that was our wonderful vacation! Happy Birthday Hope!