To Green Island

I made a little vacation for myself. As we had Tuesday as a national holiday (no changing dates for convinent three day weekends here) I took my co-teacher's suggestion and used one of my five personal days on Monday to make a four day weekend. I convinced Colin to do the same thing. The two of us then took the 4 hour train and then the 50 minute boat ride out to green island, a tropical vacation spot of Taiwan.

What can be said of visiting a tourist site in the off season. For one things it's not crowded with people you must convince yourself you are not like. You also see what the place is without the facade of tourism and usually it's a little bleak. The island is only 16sq. km. and I wondered what people did on their free time. I answered that pretty quick, they watch TV. Anyway we had been warned not to go off tourist season, but what was the weather to us, I mean we went to Harbin in February. The first day was beautiful and I thought everyone must be crazy. We rented a tent, and set up camp at a beautiful sight that we could overlook the ocean from. We drove around the island 1 1/2 times and ate not quite fresh seafood. Infact I would call it meta-seafood- It was the version of seafood that is mass produced to seem like the sea food you would get at a place like green island, namely fish balls.

We planned to wake up to take in the sunrise from one of the only 3 salt water hotsprings in the world. However, it started thunder and lightinging in the middle of the night and by the mornining it was too gray for much of a sunrise. We tried to go to the springs on the second day but wind had knocked out the electricity. Finally we got there in the morning before we left on the third day. It was raining and a little cold. The pools out by the water had been so pummled by waves that they weren't particurally warm. None the less there was a nice bit of comradery created between the patrons on this unoptimal morning.

Hum so far this is ounding like a failure of a trip. Not true! We really enjoyed driving around the island on the second day. The sun kept picking out as we stopped and wandered around beautiful tidepools and along cliffs overlooking the ocean. The fact that the wind almost blew us away only made it more exciting. We ordered out and ate a lovely quite picnic lunch at our camp site just the two of us. And we hiked the one hike on the island and saw deer and goats.

Really the only bad part was the boatride. The waters between the island and the Taiwan were really choppy and I got really seasick. It's probably the first time I've been seasick since our boat trip and I kept thinkingabout it while I felt like vomiting. In retrospect I don't know how I was able to bare the seasickness, gross processed sea water, horrible food, and religious company.