Green Island 綠島

(Well, another green Island at least...)

As promised, let me tell you all about my trip to Green Island!

Green Island is a beautiful little island off of the southeastern coast of Taiwan. To get there from Taipei, our bold group of adventurers- myself, Nikolai, Jerry and Yunkai- assembled in Taipei Main station at the crazy early hour of 6 am on Friday morning and bought train tickets to a city called Taidong. 

(Side note: the Taiwanese aren't very creative with most of their city names. Taipei 台北 is literally translated "Taiwan North", because it's in the north of Taiwan. Then you have Tainan 台南, "Taiwan South", Taidong 台東, "Taiwan East", Taichung 台中, "Taiwan Central"... Taixi 台西 exists too, but it's not a city unlike the others, just a little village.)

Waiting for our train to come

There's no fast train along the east coast of the island, so it took us about five hours to get to Taidong- I bought a book for the trip. Taidong Station is very conveniently located next to the harbor, so upon arriving we just got our stuff together and walked over to the boat that would take us away from Taiwan Island.

Looking back at Taiwan

It was strange to be leaving Taiwan without really leaving Taiwan. That can happen because everyone uses the same name, Taiwan, to refer to two different things. There's the island of Taiwan, which used to be called Formosa, which everyone in the world, including Mainland China, recognizes as distinct from China and not the same thing. Then there's the nation Taiwan, officially called the Republic of China, which almost no government in the world- including the US- officially recognizes. So Green Island is both Taiwan and Not Taiwan.

I'll explain a little bit more about Green Island. It's a volcanic island about 100 km away from the east coast of Taiwan, with a little tiny population of about 1,500 people. The surrounding ocean is filled with coral and fish, it's often battered by many typhoons that bypass the main island of Taiwan, and it has a number of famous jails in the same vein as Alcatraz on it. In fact, until recently, the jails were very notorious and dangerous, since Taiwan's most violent criminals, most connected mafia bosses, and of course its political prisoners were all sent to Green Island, where they couldn't escape and couldn't influence people.

Happily, we didn't stay at the jail during our time on the Island; we went to a hostel called Monster 怪獸 instead.

They even lent us a couple of terrible scooters!

We only planned to be on the island for three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so we didn't want to waste any time- we went straightaway to the most important place on the entire island.

7-11, obviously!

After we'd bought snacks and gas, we once again mounted up and followed the hostel's owner- also called Monster- to the beach, with Nikolai trying his hand at driving the scooter.

Not bad!

Note that they didn't bother to give us helmets with the scooters. We didn't crash, so it was alright. 

We didn't really plan this out, but apparently Monster didn't see Nikolai driving the scooter. Once we stopped so I could also try, to my infinite sadness Monster told us that we foreigners- Nikolai and I- weren't allowed to drive his scooters because we'd crash. Reluctantly letting Yunkai keep driving me around, we soon arrived at the little cove Monster had in mind and finally got into the water!

The cove, and also Monster (the guy with no shirt)

The ocean was beautiful, but the beaches were a little uncomfortable- half the beaches were made of coral and shells, which were a little painful to walk on, and the other half were this:

Lava flows!

Which were more painful to walk on.

After an hour or so of playing around in the water, picking up crabs, scaring fish etc, the sun went down and we decided to head back into town for some food. We ended up deciding on seafood, obviously enough, and we also had a delicious slimy variety of ice cream made mostly out of seaweed!

Seaweed cream! Hooray!

Although it was dark, we decided it was too early to head in, so we went to the island's saltwater hot springs, which are naturally occurring but channeled into a bunch of different pools and at different temperatures. My camera isn't waterproof, and also I thought it would be creepy to take pictures of random people in hot springs, so I don't have any pictures of it- sorry! It was very relaxing and nice, though. 

After we had relaxed for a while, we wanted to head back to the hostel, plan the next day and get some sleep, but we couldn't find the scooter me and Yunkai had been using for the life of us. We searched for a while, but the darkness was slowing us down... finally, Yunkai found a scooter that started up with his key, so we got on and got ready to take off, when we realized this scooter had helmets on it. This wasn't our scooter! In the end, we found that Yunkai's key could start almost every single scooter in the lot, regardless of make or model! We thought about just taking a random scooter and leaving ours behind for someone else- if our key could start theirs, surely their key could start ours- but in the end we found the right one.

The next day, we woke up to find that we were no longer the only guests in the hostel- a Chinese family had taken up the other two rooms, a grandma and grandpa in one and a mother, father and little girl in the other. The little girl in particular was amazed to be sharing a hostel with real live foreigners- from her reactions I think we were the first ones she had ever talked to in person!

They had plans to go snorkeling, which sounded awesome, so we decided to go along with them to the rental place and pick up masks. Little did we know, the Taiwanese are very paranoid about snorkeling and swimming in general, and wanted us to get the whole set- not just a mask but a wetsuit, life vest, and boots! Nikolai and I compromised and wore the boots (coral really does hurt to step on) and life vest, but not the wetsuit. It was hot!

Ready!

When we actually got out to the reef, we found that they didn't want us to swim off by ourselves- we were supposed to hold onto a floating ring and just be dragged around the reef! That was too much, and we just refused. They were angry, but what are they gonna do, arrest us? We know how to swim and we're wearing life vests, relax. Apparently, though, most Taiwanese people don't know how to swim, so those kinds of precautions are necessary to prevent people from drowning.

The fish were gorgeous. Clownfish, parrotfish, fish I don't know the names of, beautiful and colorful and shiny. I don't have pictures because, again, my camera isn't waterproof, but it was well worth all the hassle.

Looking at all those fish made us really want to eat one, so we decided to go ocean fishing later in the day, but first we had some time... so we decided to explore a bit.

The Road

Green Island only has one road, and it circles the outside of the island. That didn't stop us *cough*Jerry*cough* from getting lost a few times, of course.

After driving randomly for a little while, we decided to stop at this place and go over to a cave we spotted.

Because why not?

The closer we got to the cave, the rockier and more difficult the terrain became, until we were basically climbing over boulders to keep going- but we did keep going...

Getting closer...

Only to find when we got there, it was already full of Mainland Chinese tourists who went around the other way, where there was a nice beaten path right to the cave! Well, whatever, it's about the journey, right?

Afterwards, we headed back to the port to meet up with our fishing boat.

It's the little one!

As it happens, that same family we went snorkeling with and who was staying at our hostel joined us on the fishing boat! Strange how these things work out sometimes.

Off to sea!

The boat we were on was an average Chinese fishing boat in all respects. Small, uncomfortable and kind of old, but sturdy and fast. Unfortunately, the boat wasn't very steady, and Yunkai immediately began feeding the fish- and stayed sick the whole time we were out. It was already hot on Green Island- it's solidly tropical- and it felt like it got even hotter as we got out onto the ocean...

I see you staring at us, Sun!

As we got fishing, though, either it cooled down a bit or I stopped noticing the heat. Probably both.

The way we fished is we had a couple people cast a line out behind the boat as it motored along, making sure to jerk and jiggle the lure to get fish, and when a fish bit the hook the boat would slow down and let you reel him in.

Our Hostelmate, with a beautiful fish!

Jerry, with another, slightly different fish!

Yunkai, feeling sad because he has no fish

We fished for a few hours, and in total Nikolai and Yunkai both caught one yellowfin tuna, I caught one yellowfin tuna and one squid, and Jerry caught a bluefin tuna (we think) and four squid. Not a bad haul for an evening's work!

The captain of the boat recommended a restaurant where we could take our fish and get them cooked, so we headed over with our haul.

Hunt fish! Eat fish!

It was a bit of a wait, but well worth it- check out what we caught!

They made sashimi out of it!

It was so much food, but really really good fish. Actually, writing this is making me hungry...

The next morning was Sunday, and sadly our boat would take us back to Taiwan Island at noon- but we still had the morning to mess around with, so we took another drive.

Under the Bridge, anyone?

Sunday was a bit cooler than the other days, and windier too- a typhoon was approaching. (Actually, as it turns out, our ferry was the last one to leave Green Island before they stopped the service because of rough seas!) It was really nice weather to drive around in, though- even when it started raining and we got rained on at 40 miles an hour!

It hadn't rained yet.

One thing we saw was this odd formation off on the coast of the island- according to the locals, it looks like a beautiful sleeping woman.

She's got that weathered look about her...

As we reached the top of a small mountain, the rain began to come down, and we had to hurry and get to the port before our boat left without us.

It was a short little trip, only three days, but very fun. I may have more pictures in the "Other Pictures" page of this blog, over to the right, later- Nikolai took many good shots he has yet to share with me.

Look at him go!

If I visit Green Island again, I think I'll take the diving classes they offer- my favorite part of the whole weekend by far was the snorkeling, and I'd love to see more of the reef around the island. That will have to wait for a future update, though. :-)