Green Island Trip, Taiwan
I am finally feeling better! It’s been over a week since I’ve had to visit the porcelain bowl, which has been wonderful. I’m still getting a bit queasy sometimes, but I’ll take this any day compared to what I was experiencing.
We’ve been quite busy. Last weekend was our weekend trip to Green Island, a small island off the southeast coast of Taiwan. It’s small enough to get around by scooter within about 45 minutes. They have very few cars, so scooters are the only option for driving around. We took a domestic flight from Taipei to Taitung, then an hour ferry ride to the island. The ferry ride was awful, choppy and made a lot of people seasick, including Liz. I had taken medicine, otherwise, I’m sure I would have joined her since she threw up all over me! It was pretty nasty. Poor baby though, she was pretty miserable for most of the ride.
Once we got to the island, a man called us over and put us in a van, drove about 100 feet, had us get out and pick up scooters. We quickly got our first lesson in driving one and off we were to our hotel. We stopped at this place so they could show us a map and tell us that we were to go snorkeling that afternoon. We kept asking where hotel was, when we could go to hotel and clean up, etc. They kept saying, here, here and we were a bit perplexed. This was just one room with some tables next door to some shops, we had no idea it was a hotel – more of a motel. Turns out behind the building, there were some rooms set up – cleverly called “cottages” by the travel agent, not exactly cottages, more like 4 walls of plywood put together to form a room. 2 HARD beds, one typical Taiwanese bathroom with shower being the whole bathroom – no bathtub or curtain, a wall air conditioning unit which only stayed on when you were in the room. Very interesting and NOT at all what we were expecting for the money we had paid for the room. Apparently, they don’t charge for the room, but for the number of people in the room and because there were 4 of us, we were charged more. We decided to make the best of it and went around the island. It was beautiful. Lots of coral rock formations and beautiful beaches (rocky, coral) with tide pools for looking at small fish in.
That afternoon, we went snorkeling. We were taken to a little place across the street from hotel that had the gear we were required to put on for snorkeling (and this is NO joke!) – full body wetsuits including boots (no fins here), a lifevest and snorkeling mask and then once we rode our scooters in all this fine HOT gear, we were to go out with a guide who was holding onto a rope attached to round floaties that you could hang on to. There were lots of waves so the kids stayed ashore and Anthony and I took turns getting out to the reef. Once past the rocky and wavy shoreline, the snorkeling was beautiful – lots of fish, some squid and nice coral. It was just a strange experience seeing groups of Taiwanese holding onto swim rings in groups of about 5 or 10, all snorkeling together with a guide. Not something I’m used to seeing.
Saturday was spent running around the island, sightseeing all the beautiful coral formations, along with the one of only three natural ocean hot springs in the world. It rained off and on all day, so we actually spent quite a bit of time at the hot springs in the warm water. It was strange, smelly and pretty dirty water. We walked around all the tide pools letting the girls find shells and crabs and see the fish in the water. They even got to see a beautiful black and yellow angel fish in one of the shallow tide pools. At one point, we had to take refuge from the rain under a little overpass, sort of a cave in the rocks, since it was raining so hard and we couldn’t drive the scooters in it. There were a few families there and they enjoyed making comments about Ashley and her yellow hair and how cute our kids were, meanwhile, ignoring their own kids standing right next to them. It’s a strange feeling sometimes.
We were told we would be leaving Sunday morning at 9am, but then when Sunday morning came, we were told the ferry was full and we would leave later, so off we went to try and get in some more snorkeling. I ended up being able to rent some snorkel gear (yes, with wetsuit!) on my own and doing some snorkeling alone while Anthony spent time with the girls on the shore. It was gorgeous, although really strong waves, so kind of hard to really relax and snorkel around. Anthony did go out once, without a wetsuit, and ended up scratching his back up pretty bad when he fell into a hole while walking and fell down onto the coral. Guess we learned why wearing a wetsuit is beneficial in those types of conditions!
We made it back for our ferry ride to the mainland – and this time, it was much, much calmer and no one got seasick! We had a good trip there, just weren’t too happy with price or accommodations.
We’ve been quite busy. Last weekend was our weekend trip to Green Island, a small island off the southeast coast of Taiwan. It’s small enough to get around by scooter within about 45 minutes. They have very few cars, so scooters are the only option for driving around. We took a domestic flight from Taipei to Taitung, then an hour ferry ride to the island. The ferry ride was awful, choppy and made a lot of people seasick, including Liz. I had taken medicine, otherwise, I’m sure I would have joined her since she threw up all over me! It was pretty nasty. Poor baby though, she was pretty miserable for most of the ride.
Once we got to the island, a man called us over and put us in a van, drove about 100 feet, had us get out and pick up scooters. We quickly got our first lesson in driving one and off we were to our hotel. We stopped at this place so they could show us a map and tell us that we were to go snorkeling that afternoon. We kept asking where hotel was, when we could go to hotel and clean up, etc. They kept saying, here, here and we were a bit perplexed. This was just one room with some tables next door to some shops, we had no idea it was a hotel – more of a motel. Turns out behind the building, there were some rooms set up – cleverly called “cottages” by the travel agent, not exactly cottages, more like 4 walls of plywood put together to form a room. 2 HARD beds, one typical Taiwanese bathroom with shower being the whole bathroom – no bathtub or curtain, a wall air conditioning unit which only stayed on when you were in the room. Very interesting and NOT at all what we were expecting for the money we had paid for the room. Apparently, they don’t charge for the room, but for the number of people in the room and because there were 4 of us, we were charged more. We decided to make the best of it and went around the island. It was beautiful. Lots of coral rock formations and beautiful beaches (rocky, coral) with tide pools for looking at small fish in.
That afternoon, we went snorkeling. We were taken to a little place across the street from hotel that had the gear we were required to put on for snorkeling (and this is NO joke!) – full body wetsuits including boots (no fins here), a lifevest and snorkeling mask and then once we rode our scooters in all this fine HOT gear, we were to go out with a guide who was holding onto a rope attached to round floaties that you could hang on to. There were lots of waves so the kids stayed ashore and Anthony and I took turns getting out to the reef. Once past the rocky and wavy shoreline, the snorkeling was beautiful – lots of fish, some squid and nice coral. It was just a strange experience seeing groups of Taiwanese holding onto swim rings in groups of about 5 or 10, all snorkeling together with a guide. Not something I’m used to seeing.
Saturday was spent running around the island, sightseeing all the beautiful coral formations, along with the one of only three natural ocean hot springs in the world. It rained off and on all day, so we actually spent quite a bit of time at the hot springs in the warm water. It was strange, smelly and pretty dirty water. We walked around all the tide pools letting the girls find shells and crabs and see the fish in the water. They even got to see a beautiful black and yellow angel fish in one of the shallow tide pools. At one point, we had to take refuge from the rain under a little overpass, sort of a cave in the rocks, since it was raining so hard and we couldn’t drive the scooters in it. There were a few families there and they enjoyed making comments about Ashley and her yellow hair and how cute our kids were, meanwhile, ignoring their own kids standing right next to them. It’s a strange feeling sometimes.
We were told we would be leaving Sunday morning at 9am, but then when Sunday morning came, we were told the ferry was full and we would leave later, so off we went to try and get in some more snorkeling. I ended up being able to rent some snorkel gear (yes, with wetsuit!) on my own and doing some snorkeling alone while Anthony spent time with the girls on the shore. It was gorgeous, although really strong waves, so kind of hard to really relax and snorkel around. Anthony did go out once, without a wetsuit, and ended up scratching his back up pretty bad when he fell into a hole while walking and fell down onto the coral. Guess we learned why wearing a wetsuit is beneficial in those types of conditions!
We made it back for our ferry ride to the mainland – and this time, it was much, much calmer and no one got seasick! We had a good trip there, just weren’t too happy with price or accommodations.
posted by The Armstrongs at
9/22/2005
