Green Island

Oh gracious. We didn't get home too late last night, but I had had it and I went almost straight to bed. I woke up with a sore throat Saturday morning, so I knew I was getting sick, but I hoped that it wouldn't happen.

The trip as a whole was good, but I've got to say that the owner of the bed and breakfast was terrible. There was so much about the trip that could have been better. And then, I would start to see the benefit to the things that were going wrong, and then something else would come along. So, there was a constant struggle between satisfaction and dissatisfaction on my trip.

Nancy and I actually woke up on time and made it to the train in plenty of time. At the train station, we were met by a lady who drove us to the boat dock and bought us a ticket and showed us where to wait. On the boat I started to get a headache. A little because of the boat and a little because I was sick (remember the sore throat?).

Once we got to Green Island and got off the boat, we were walking around trying to figure out who was supposed to meet us. Um.... nobody had come. One of the guys who owned a scooter rental finally called the bed and breakfast for us and the owner came and picked us up. He took us straight to get bikes. First mistake- no one met us at the dock. Second mistake, we were most definitely supposed to get scooters! Then we went to the bed and breakfast where the owner gave us the tickets for the things we were going to do: we were going snorkeling at 2:00 pm, we could go to the hot springs, we could go to the deer reserve, and he gave us our breakfast ticket. Huh?! Yeah, that's right, apparently it qualifies as a bed and breakfast if both things are included in the price because we had to go to a different restaurant to eat breakfast. Alright, so we were there around 10am, and we weren't snorkeling until 2pm, so we decided to hop on our bikes and explore the island a little. We went off in one direction and stopped to look at the beach a little bit. We kept riding and came to a hill which was hard for Nancy to get up, but we made it and kept driving along the coast. We hit another little hill, and at the top of that there was a pull off. I pulled off and decided to hop the wall and climb out on the lava to get a better look at the lava. I'm not sure if that would be frowned upon or not, but I didn't break anything off and I didn't even explore that far or for that long. Shortly after that we turned around and headed back to get some lunch.

We found a breakfast shop that was still open and I got a tarro roll and a rice dumpling. We also stopped off

and had some ice cream served out of a giant shell. Luke and Kaylene had told us about that. They had seen it, but didn't have a chance to stop and try it, but we did :o) After lunch we went back to the B&B to change and meet the guy for snorkeling. I now know why everyone is so surprised to hear the Nancy and I do things with just the two of us. We saw a bunch of groups of friends who were vacationing on Green Island, and I'm pretty sure that no group of friends had less then 8 people. There was one group of friends that went snorkeling with us, but that means that there were 10 or so of us out there. We put on wet suits and the other people put on live vests as well. The guide had the people hold onto a leash of flotation devices while we were out there too. The water was so warm and so clear. The only bad thing was that it was so salty that every time I tried to dive down to check out the rocks and coral and stuff, and wouldn't make it too far before I was pushed back to the surface. A lot of the fish I had already seen before because they are the same ones they have in Hawaii. There were new ones too though. And, I loved snorkeling in Hawaii, so it's not like I didn't love this too. The guide had brought a bag of moldy bread to feed to the fish. In Hawaii, that's very frowned upon and now I know why. The fish weren't scared of us at all. In fact, when they came up to eat, I would reach my hand out, and I touched a few of them. It felt weird and I felt bad for touching them so I stopped trying.

After snorkeling we went exploring in the opposite direction then we did before lunch. We stopped at the visitor's center and picked up a map. We found our way to the light house and wound our way around the coast where we saw different ports that people used as swimming holes, we found the old prison that is now the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park. (We found it that day, but didn't learn that that was what it actually was until the next day when we went back and a nice couple explained it to us.) We also went exploring on a path that passed through a cemetery and led to a cave, but the cave was tiny and not very exciting.

We headed back because it was getting close to dinner time. On the way back we stopped off at a BBQ place. This place was awesome. You had to pay 250 NT$ (so around $7) but it was unlimited food. You took a bowl into a room with three refrigerators and you picked out raw meat. Then, you took it back to your table and there was a mini fire pit in the middle of your table and so you cooked your own food right there. The down side of that was that since the fire pit was in the middle of your table, it meant that under the table was pretty hot and occasional ashes would fall. Some landed on my foot and I still have a burn mark. We stayed there for a while because it was good food, they were playing relatively good music, and we had nothing better to do. I don't know what half of the stuff I tried was, so I can't be too proud of trying new stuff. Except, I did try pigs blood with rice. It was REALLY sticky, but didn't have much flavor. If I hadn't known what it was, I would have kept eating it. But, because I knew that it was pig's blood, I felt uncomfortable eating it and stopped. I can say that I've tried it though, and if I had to again for some reason, I know that I could because it really wasn't bad.

By the time we got back from dinner, it was pretty dark, but it was only 7pm. We had no idea what there was to do at night and so we decided to walk around to all of the tourist shops. We did a little bit of souvenir shopping and then went back and went to bed a little before 10pm. We were willing to go to bed before too late because we were getting up at 4am so that we could go to the hot springs and watch the sunrise while there. Because the guy hadn't gotten us scooters (oh yeah, we went back down later with our licences and told him in Chinese that we could drive scooters but he told us no) he told us that he would drive us where we needed to go. We told him we wanted to see the sunrise in the hot springs at 4:30am. Guess what? He didn't wake up. I was so upset. I told Nancy that he wasn't showing up and that we had to get a move on it because it looks like we were going to have to spend all day biking the whole island. It was pretty watching the sun slowly light up the island, but there were two things I was really looking forward to about this trip: one, getting to drive a scooter and two, watching the sunrise in the hot springs. Well suck! Both of those did not happen. However, we were able to get there way sooner then I had thought. We left the B&B at 4:45am and got to the hot springs at 5:05am. We had missed the sunrise by no more then 20 minutes. Urg!!!! If I would have known that, I would have just gotten up and left at 4 and not waited for Mr. I own a business and can't keep my promises who didn't show up anyway. But, the sun was still low and hiding behind clouds, so it was beautiful, just not as beautiful as I'm sure it was 20 minutes before hand. We stayed there for half an hour or so, but had more to see and only bikes to see it on so we made a move. Once we left the hot springs we saw the owner of the B&B. He asked some girl if she spoke English and she told us that he wanted us to put our bikes in his car and he would take us back. Well, his car wasn't big enough to put the bikes in so he asked us if we were going to bike back the way we'd come. I pointed in the other direction telling him that we were headed around the island.

So that's where it turned out that it was okay that we didn't have scooters because I felt pretty accomplished to know that I biked around a whole island (the tour book says it's 11 miles around). The guy drove off, but he didn't warn us before hand that right ahead of us, there was a giant mountain that we had to get over. And don't even worry about it, the mountain was honestly a mountain and so it went up and up, with no down hill. We rocked it though. We only had to stop and walk our bikes once and it was only for a few feet. After like, I don't know, let's call it a half hour of riding up hill we hit the top and walked a little way to an over look of a beautiful cove. Then we hit some downhill and our trip went a little faster. We stopped and looked at various sites along the way. The road didn't stay downhill for very long, but it never went straight up ever again. We passed the deer reserve around 7am, but it didn't open until 9. There was absolutely nothing around for us to kill 2 hours with and so we decided to keep going and have the owner drive us back there later. We had to go back to the B&B to ask where the breakfast shop was because we had no idea. It turns out that it was in the area Gonggua which was at least a ten minute bike ride back in the direction we had just come from.

I was pretty amazed though, we left the B&B at 4:45 am, and by the time we got back (before going to breakfast) it was before 8 am. We made it around the whole island and stopped to look at stuff (one place we stopped for 30 minutes and others just 10 minutes) and it took us 3 hours. Go us.

On the way home from breakfast Nancy called out. "Hey Brooke, wait.... blah blah fell off." I didn't hear what happened but I look back and she's holding something kind of big. Her pedal had fallen off. Not just the foot part, but the whole arm. She was not happy!!!! I couldn't help but laugh. After everything that had already happen between yesterday and that morning, I just laughed that there was just one more thing on top of it all. We had leave her bike parked outside of some cafe because there was no way she was getting it back (she tried, and trust me, there was no way she was getting it back). Okay, okay. I don't care what you eat in Asia or how much Chinese you speak.... You are NOT Asian until you can pedal someone on the back of your bike. Guess what? I'm ASIAN!!!!!! We were still pretty far away from the B&B and so we decided to see how hard it is to pedal someone who is sitting on the luggage rack of a bike. Everyone does it in Hualien so I figured we could too. I was laughing so hard the whole time we were riding. No one rides bikes on Green Island, they all ride scooters, so we kept on getting passed by packs of scooters. At one point in time I asked Nancy how come these people weren't impressed by us. Right after I said that, another pack of scooterers rode past and they all smiled/laughed and gave us the thumbs up. One scooter even challenged us to a race (he made the motion of reeving his engine).

We made it back to the B&B alright and we handed the owner the pedal and told him the bike was in Gonggua. He grabbed some people who were checking out and tried to use them as translators. They didn't speak a whole lot of English and they kept on saying the same information over and over. At first the guy told Nancy she was going to have to pay for the bike. When we asked him to call Yuling, he changed his story and told us not to worry about the bike. This whole argument/discussion took place at 9am. Our boat didn't leave until 2:30pm. Guess what he told us we could do until our boat came? We could run around the island- like honestly run. Um, yesterday he said that because he didn't get us scooters he would drive us around but now that we don't even have bikes we have to run?!

Urg. I pedaled Nancy to a swimming hole and then I went to go get stuff out of the basket of the bike. Um crud. The bike was most definitely gone. Good thing there was only a crummy old towel and an empty water bottle in the basket. I rode back to the swimming hole and told Nancy. She wasn't too concerned because we had asked to guy to take us to the bike to go and get it and he kept on telling us he would get it later. We swam for a while and then went back to shower up. When we got up to our room the cleaning lady told us we had to get out of the room. We had never been told a checkout time (Yuling told us this morning that she had forgotten to tell us that checkout was at 10am) and so we had no idea that we were supposed to be out. We took super fast showers and then packed up and got out. Unfortunately we had to be back at the B&B at 2pm so that the owner could drive us to the boat dock. I would have just left on our own because the dock wasn't very far, but Nancy reminded me that he probably wouldn't call the lady and have her pick us up from the dock to take us to the train station unless he dropped us off.

Because we had no bike to get us back to the deer reserve (and even if we did, the hill to get us up there was too steep to want to do anyway), I tried to give the guy back the tickets. He wasn't sure what I was saying at first (although it was in Chinese) and I'm pretty sure at first he told us he wouldn't drive us and then he told us he couldn't give us money for them. Duh, but can't he use them for the next group, there's no point in having the tickets and not using them. But I do still have them and I have no where to use them.

So, around 11am we were out of the B&B with nothing to do and 3 hours to do it. The day was so hot and so we bought nice cold juice and sat in the shade of the store for 20 minutes or so, then we sat on a bench that over looked the water for about an hour. We ended up going back to the B&B half an hour early and the owner had me return my bike and then took us to the dock where we waited and waited.

The boat back took an hour. Luckily the lady did meet us there and drove us back to the train station. Unfortunately we had 2 hours to kill at the train station. On our drive I tried to see if there was anything close to the train station that could fill our time, but there most definitely was not. The train ride was 2 hours long and then we biked home, I made soup for dinner and then I went to bed.

I had the worst headache while I was there. It was due in part by: I'm sick, the sun was intense, the owner of the B&B was a...... very unpleasant, unhelpful person.

So, there were ups and downs to all of it. Green Island itself is a beautiful place where there are some amazing sites to see. Staying at the place we did will ruin the trip and cause you to have a terrible attitude (that is if you are a terribly bitter person who tends to think people are out to get you).

Nancy and I traded off who took there camera where, so I only have pictures from the first day of the trip. Sorry.