It's okay..it's Green Island!

As I mentioned before, my coworkers and I went on a short vacation to Green Island which is just an island off the southern coast of Taiwan. We left on Sat. night on a "harrowing" train ride quoted from my coworker. It was pretty intense to say the least since the train was packed, and I mean packed. Many people were traveling because of the holiday and it was so jammed since there are no limited number of tickets so basically a lot of people are trying to jam into one train. We were so squished that my coworkers let some people sit on their laps! We luckily had seat tickets so we had seats since we had to be on train for 6 hours. We left Sat. night at 11pm and arrived to Taitung (Taidong-pronounced this way) at 6am.

We then took a ferry to Green Island. The ferry ride wasn't so rocky but some of my coworkers and I got a little bit seasick. One of my friends gets motion sickness super bad so she didn't feel well. We were going to be picked up by our hotel company but since they didn't have enough room in the car, they wanted us to ride scooters. We were planning to drive scooters but I thought I would have time to practice. There were 6 of us but we needed 3 people to drive the scooters. My roommate could do it although he has never driven one. My other coworker knows how to drive a scooter. I tried driving it but I didn't so well and I was practicing on a busy road where there was also a marathon going on. I thought I would have time to practice on a empty parking lot. Anyway since I didn't do so well the lady wouldn't let us rent the scooters, well only to the girls but we would still need another person to drive us around. Luckily there was a big van and it was stickshift but Drew could drive it lol I was bummed at first but it's fine since I don't want to endanger my life or someone else's. Also, the next couple of days rained and the weather wasn't the greatest so driving a van was pretty nice so we could stay warm.

When we reached the hotel, we all passed out. We took a 4 hour nap lol We got there around 11am and we finally woke up around 2:30pm. We looked around and got some snack food at nearby food stands. We drove around and checked out the beach. We then got dinner and we went back to the hotel to go to the night tour that was offered from the hotel. But the thing was that everyone was driving scooters and the tour was in Chinese. It was hard to follow them since it was night so it was super dark. We lost them since we were driving and manuevering in our big van and we couldn't find our group lol We eventually found them and we were checking out this cave but we couldn't see anything since it was crowded and everything was in Chinese so we just left. It sucked that we couldn't ride our van but actually it was nice that we all could be together. Then we got some desserts and then went to bed early for the next day.

The next day we got up super early to go scuba diving. I am pretty scared of water but I wanted to go scuba diving. It was fine in the beginning when we were getting ready to go. But when I was in the water, my regulator (the tube I breath oxygen from) had a hole so they wanted me to use Drew's regulator. But that also meant that I had to stick close with Drew since we were sharing the same oxygen tank. Drew didn't want to do it and I wasn't comfortable either and I kept telling the guy that I want to go back and they finally let us. He thought I was being nervous but I was like no, we can't share the same tank. It was scary though since we were talking in the ocean where the current was pretty bad so we kept bobbing up and down.

My other friend's regulator wasn't working well but she ended up being okay. Then I went again and I was fine as we went underwater but then I didn't grip the regulator good enough with my motuh and I started to swallow water. I freaked out and then I had to go back up to the surface. I was freaking out. I thought I wasn't going to make it lol I know it's a psychological thinking too but it was scary as I was only breathing in water and not air. My scuba diving person said are you ready to go down again? I was like uhh hold on a sec! lol But yes, I managed to go down again and I was fine although I wasn't really enjoying myself since I was getting light headed, my ears hurt, and I wasn't used to breathing through the tube. I barely fed the fish haha

But I'm glad to say that I scuba dived :)Then we went to a nice hot spring outside which is awesome but it was so windy that the water wasn't super hot or anything. Then we drove around the island which only takes about 20-30 mins. We climbed up this small walkway called "The Little Great Wall of China." It has an extraordinary view of the mountains and the beach. Then we ate at an all you can eat BBQ for only $250 NT which is about $7USD. The food selection wasn't the greatest but everyone on the island had great sashimi (raw fish) and of course seafood. We then went shopping for a bit and saw this cool stand where they sold engravings of rings and stamps. We bought some stuff there then we went to a small restaurant to get some drinks. We went home that night and I ended up passing out right away lol

I woke up at 6am wondering where I was at since I was still in my clothes and it was dark lol I couldn't believe I passed out lol We left early to go back to the ferry and the weather was bad. It was windy and rainy and so the water was really chopping. Luckily Drew had strong medicine and we all didn't get sick but we were super drowsy. We then had to take 2 trains but after the ferry we had a 2 hour time span so we went to a cow farm. It definitely reminded me of Iowa. It was crazy to see cows near the mountains lol It also looked like Switzerland and Germany. We got home close to 7pm last night.

Some interesting things I saw on the trip:

-a real deer tied to a store outside selling deer jerky
-seaweed desserts, especially on ice
-a store with the name of a bad word (F***) and having tons of slang words although they were playing tradition Taiwanese music inside
-a former prison that was used for political prisoners in the 80s-90s
-animals being tied up
-a nude boy with his family on the beach (Drew thinks they were French-no pun intended, Drew knows French lol)

Today is my busy day at work but surprisingly I wasn't tired at all. I'm used to teaching and I slept a lot on the train and last night too. It was a great time and I really liked the island. The reason why this blog is titled "It's okay..it's Green Island" is because people there are super laid back and there are no really laws. People were driving around in scooters without helmets and you can really park anywhere and no one would care. Kids are walking on the busy streets and it just seemed like no one cared about anything. So everytime we worried about something or something happened, we would say it's okay..it's just Green Island!

Pictures above are just from the trip. The first picture is the first day we were there and I'm showing my shirt that says in Chinese "Taiwan." I'm at the beach. The second picture is of the hot spring outside. The third picture is a group picture of us near the "Little Great Wall of China", and the last picture is of the "Sleeping Beauty" rock where it looks like sleeping beauty laying on the side of her head. The hole is where her neck is. I can't wait for my upcoming trip next month!

-Chihchat