Taiwan really is Beautiful, if you ignore the Trash
Argh, Liz is sick now. First Ashley last week, with just a cold, runny nose and cough and now Liz, with a high fever and cough. And, of course, it’s when the weather is absolutely beautiful outside and we could be doing some stuff around town. Oh well, such is the life of a mom.
We had a good weekend. Anthony and I have concluded that Taiwan really needs some PR work. Taiwan is an amazing island, with gorgeous mountains and wonderful beaches – if only, they would keep it clean. We decided to head out to the Northeast Coast on Saturday and go to a beach. We drove along the coast line until we came to Yanliao – which is a beach area. This place also has a little water park area with pools and fountains. Thank goodness for that since the beach area was FILTY. It’s a beautiful sandy beach, soft on your feet, small waves for the kids and yet, there were mountains of trash just laying all over the beach. It is such a sad sight. There was NOONE at the beach and just a handful of people at the water park. This is on a sunny Saturday, with them temps in the upper 80’s. We found it very strange. We played in the water park for a bit, letting the girls run around in the water and slide down a water slide. They had fun.
We then decided to keep driving and went to Fulong Beach, which Lonely Planet touts as one of the best beaches in Taiwan. Again, lots of trash on the beach. This place was supposedly closed, as we were told NO SWIMMING and not to get in the water. There were still people in it – doing wind surfing. We just hung out in the sand and let the girls play with some other kids for a bit. It looked like with a little care, the beach could be great. I don’t really understand it – why Taiwan doesn’t seem to realize what natural beauty they have in this island and why they can’t take care of it. We were told that the beach would be open on Sunday and we still have no idea why it was closed on Saturday. We ended up taking a mountain drive back, which we thought would be nice and scenic, which is was – amazingly scenic at some points. But with all the horrible driving on the mountain roads, don’t know that we’ll want to do that again. Big tourist buses and big trucks passing us around corners on a 2 lane highway going up the side of a mountain. It was CRAZY. It took us about 2 hours to drive 75 kilometers (about 46 miles).
We had a good weekend. Anthony and I have concluded that Taiwan really needs some PR work. Taiwan is an amazing island, with gorgeous mountains and wonderful beaches – if only, they would keep it clean. We decided to head out to the Northeast Coast on Saturday and go to a beach. We drove along the coast line until we came to Yanliao – which is a beach area. This place also has a little water park area with pools and fountains. Thank goodness for that since the beach area was FILTY. It’s a beautiful sandy beach, soft on your feet, small waves for the kids and yet, there were mountains of trash just laying all over the beach. It is such a sad sight. There was NOONE at the beach and just a handful of people at the water park. This is on a sunny Saturday, with them temps in the upper 80’s. We found it very strange. We played in the water park for a bit, letting the girls run around in the water and slide down a water slide. They had fun.
We then decided to keep driving and went to Fulong Beach, which Lonely Planet touts as one of the best beaches in Taiwan. Again, lots of trash on the beach. This place was supposedly closed, as we were told NO SWIMMING and not to get in the water. There were still people in it – doing wind surfing. We just hung out in the sand and let the girls play with some other kids for a bit. It looked like with a little care, the beach could be great. I don’t really understand it – why Taiwan doesn’t seem to realize what natural beauty they have in this island and why they can’t take care of it. We were told that the beach would be open on Sunday and we still have no idea why it was closed on Saturday. We ended up taking a mountain drive back, which we thought would be nice and scenic, which is was – amazingly scenic at some points. But with all the horrible driving on the mountain roads, don’t know that we’ll want to do that again. Big tourist buses and big trucks passing us around corners on a 2 lane highway going up the side of a mountain. It was CRAZY. It took us about 2 hours to drive 75 kilometers (about 46 miles).
posted by The Armstrongs at
6/07/2005
