Taiwan Travels!

Hello again! So sorry I haven't posted in weeks! 

Allie and I enjoying the first rays of sunshine we'd seen in months during a break in the Conference

After the Fulbright conference ended in Taipei in early March, I stayed on to travel with many of my fellow Fulbrighters. The conference ended on Thursday evening. Friday, I went to the National Palace Museum, which has one of (maybe THE?) the largest collections of Chinese artifacts. They have so much stuff that they can only display 10% of their collection at a time. The rest is stored in a vault hidden in the mountain behind it. Most of these artifacts were brought from Mainland China when the Nationalist government fled in 1949. Mainland China is still very angry about this, but in reality, a lot of these artifacts might have been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution if they hadn't been "stolen" by the Nationalists. The museum was packed with tourists, but we saw some great stuff. Surprisingly, all of the exhibits were exactly the same as when I was there two years ago during an IES trip that I took while living in Shanghai. Still, it was cool to see everything again, including the famed "jade cabbage".

The Museum from the outside

That evening was a big game in the International Baseball Tournament (or something like that...). Taiwan was playing Japan, which is a huge rivalry (Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule after the Chinese lost the Sino-Japanese War in the late 1890s until the end of WWII). Literally every TV screen in country was watching the game. There were crowds of people standing outside every shop, which turned their screens to face out into the street. Spoiler: Japan won.

Crowds outside our hotel watching the game

That evening I also met up with my friend Margaux, who is doing a Fulbright ETA in Taiwan (English Teaching Assistantship). Margaux and I endured a trying summer together in Mianyang a year and a half ago while teaching English there. This was our first time seeing each other since then, and it was great! We ate delicious indian food, and caught up!

Notice the amazingly drawn caricatures by Sophie in the background...Fulbright love!

After dinner, Sophie and I met up with Connie, Minami, and Sophia who all did IUP with us in Beijing. They are now attending another Chinese language program in Taipei that actually used to be affiliated with IUP before IUP moved to the Mainland. It was great to hear about what they'd been up to in Taipei, and to enjoy delicious cocktails at a swanky Taipei bar!

From left: Connie, Sophie, Sophia, Me, Minami

Saturday morning, Gordon, Mark, Allie, Meghan, Tucker (all Fulbrighters), and I headed down to the southern tip of Taiwan to Kenting. We hopped on a train, then a bus, and arrived on the sandy beautiful beaches of Kenting.

excitement for the ride! expect Gordon, who is annoyed that I'm taking a picture...

We stayed at a cute guest house just across the street from the beach!

After getting settled in and having a wonderful western lunch, we hit the beach! The first afternoon, we all escaped sunburn because it was late in the day. That evening we headed to Kenting proper where we had dinner, got 10 minute massages on the street, and explored the night market. Also lots of monopoly deal, the greatest card game EVER.

Sunday we headed to "White Beach", which is actually in Kenting National Park. All the boys thought it would be fun to ride scooters over there so we headed to the scooter shop, where we realized that only Tucker and I actually know how to drive scooters. Gordon's heavy handed gas approach was a fail, and Mark was too nervous to try so in the end, Tucker and I drove the scooters and everyone else cabbed. The scooters we drove we SO slow, averaging about 20 km/h but reaching a peak speed of about 50 km/h going down a huge hill!

White Beach was paradise. It was so white and sandy and picture perfect! Allie and I enjoyed delicious beachside cocktails while basking in the sun. I thought we'd stay at the beach all day, but everyone wanted to head back to do water sports at the other beach so we left mid-day (and sadly wasted some peak sun hours...). Sophie arrived in the afternoon, and we had another delicious lunch. By the end of the day, most of us, especially poor Allie, were quite toasted, as in burned beyond belief. We found some aloe growing by the side of the road, but it only made the sunburn worse for me (think lots of stinging and itching).

Monday morning we headed out for our next supposedly beautiful beach destination, Green Island. The train ride was beautiful:

View from the train

So after taking a bus and a train, we arrived in Taidong to catch the ferry to Green Island. Somehow, we overlooked the fact that Green Island only has 1 ferry a day during the off season, which leaves at 9:30am. We discovered this fact around noon when we arrived in Taidong. So instead of spending the afternoon lounging on the beach as I'd hoped, we went for a bike ride along the grey industrial beaches of Taidong in the 65F, drizzling rain. Connie also joined us in Taidong.

Taidong's beach. HUGE waves.

the bike path! actually really pretty and peaceful

That afternoon I went for a really nice run along another bike path that runs through the city. The only redeeming quality I found about Taidong were its bike paths and public parks. That evening we all just chilled out and played more monopoly deal of course.

Tuesday morning, we woke up early to catch the ferry to Green Island, which crosses almost 20 miles of open Pacific Ocean sea to get there. It was a VERY up-and-down, bumpy ride, which I found soooo fun. Because the ride is so bumpy, no one's allowed to go outside because they'd probably get thrown off. However that also means its a lot easier to get sea sick (the best cure for sea sickness is standing outside the boat watching the waves and the horizon). So 5/9 people in our group got sick, but not me! I wanted to even bigger waves. The worst part was hearing and smelling all the vomit. I put my headphones in and tried to breath through my sleeve so that I could just pretend that everyone next to me was not throwing up. Another Fulbrighter, Alison, also met up with us for the trip to Green Island. Once we arrived on Green Island, we stopped off at our hostel to drop stuff off. Turns out, it's basically a princess fairy tale hostel, complete with princes and princesses painted on the walls. Most of the rooms were entirely pink or purple, with lace and frills.

view from the hotel

Allie laying our pretty pretty princess bed!

view from the hotel 2

That afternoon we went for a hike up to the peak of the island. The hike was nice as the weather was cool. And unlike Chinese hiking, it was actually a trail, and not just paved stairs. We encountered a lot of scary big spider webs spanning the path, which was scary.

Lilly pads along the path!

We reached the top after about 1-2 hrs, and you could see the whole island!

It was really nice to get some exercise on the hike. That evening after dinner in the town that had about 2 restaurants open, we went to the hot springs, which are the only salt water hot springs in the world (or something like that, I don't remember...). It was raining while we were there, which made it even cooler because you could sit it in the hot water while the cool rain fell down on your head. There were a bunch of different pools that had different massages jets. We stayed there until we were thoroughly pruny.

Wednesday, everyone went to go exploring, except Connie and I. We instead went scuba diving! I am scuba certified thanks to a wonderful trip I took with my family about 10 years ago in Indonesia. Connie is not dive certified though so she did a "discovery dive", where they literally hold your hand and do everything (well almost everything) for you. We went with Eddie, a south african man who nows lives on Green Island. I did 2 dives with him, and Connie just did 1. Eddie and I dove together, and Connie had a different instructor. Unfortunately for poor Connie, the instructor didn't tell her about equalizing and the pressure changes that occur. So for the first 15 minutes, Connie was in a lot of pain, and just happened to swallow, which cleared her ears. But after she finished the dive, she had a bloody nose and had popped all the blood vessels around her eyes! It was really awful. We didn't go that deep, maybe 10M, but that's definitely enough to hurt! I had a great dive with Eddie. We saw lots of coral and fish, including lots of little Nemos (aka Clown Fish). I also saw the oldest living organism, a 12,000yr old mushroom coral! It was pretty cool. The second dive was just outside my hotel, where Eddie's dive shop is located too. It was much darker and kinda scary. There were lots of rock caves we explored, and even saw a sea snake! ah! I really didn't wanna go near the sea snake, but I had no way to signal to Eddie that I was terrified of snakes without looking like I was having a problem with my equipment, so I just had to meekly follow him as we swam after the snake! Once the dive was over, I was stranded by myself because everyone was out exploring, and I had no way to get around on my own. So I walked 1 hr to the "White Beach" of Green Island, which was just rocks and shells. So I sat on the rocks, drinking a beer by myself and just chilled out. Turns out, White Beach is the best place on the island to watch the sunset! It was beautiful! And a couple people came to pick me up so I didn't have to be alone for the sunset.

That night we went to the hot springs again. This time, we took them up on their offer of eggs to purchase when buying your ticket. So the hot springs are so hot that you can boil eggs in the water. You can actually walk down to the beach area below the springs, where the water is just naturally hot and bubbling. We boiled our eggs there and ate them. They tasted pretty normal to me.

Thursday we hopped on the only ferry back to Taiwan. Thursday was very windy and rainy, so it was not an ideal time to take te vom-ferry. Fortunately this time we all took a dramamine before so only 1 person got sick in our whole group. But there were definitely a few times when I thought we were going to capsize. The ship was big, but there were 30 foot ocean swells so we could have easily been toppled over into the shark infested waters. Scenes from Life of Pi kept flashing through my head, and I was looking around the boat for life jackets and life boats. That being said, it was SO FUN! We made to safely to the mainland, and Allie and I got on a train back to Taipei for our flights out the next day.

Friday morning, I headed to the airport, and flew to Shanghai via Beijing to meet up with Zan and Kate for a girls weekend, plus a Vassar networking event!

Overall it was a nice week of relaxation, but I really wish I had had more time on the beach. But oh well! Taiwan is a beautiful country, and I'm sure I'll be back again soon!

Post Ferry Ride- We survived!