Because it is one of only a small figure of holidays the Taiwanese have, lots of them planed to travel during this days, which made the booking even more complicated. But if you know somebody who is able to speak Chinese, it is not impossible to find anything. That’s how it worked out for me, I asked Ching I to help me and she arranged real great trip. Following the plan we should have started on Wednesday from Taipei to Taidung by air plane, followed by a one hour at a boat, which should have brought us to the well known Green Island. On Green Island we planned to stay until Friday before going back to Taidung for one night. Next, we planned to travel along the east coast by car and spend the last night in Hulaien. Sunday the travelling should have ended by sitting in the train back from Hualien to Taipei.
As you might have recognized, I am using the phrase “should” a lot. As many of us know, most of the times it ends up a complete different way as it was planned to do. That’s exactly what had happened to me at this trip. Another thing you might have found in my wording is that the travelling was not planned for a single person. I had Felix as fellow traveler.
The start on Wednesday worked out, as it was planed. As I think, most of you know how it is to fly with an airplane, which gives no need to describe this any further in detail. But due to the rough weather which was making high waves, the ride on the ferry became a real experience. During the way I took a look at some faces of the passengers of the ferry and I think since that I know why Green Island is called Green – maybe it is because of the many green faced people arriving there. The real reason for the name, was hard to lose sight of when I did the first step onto the island, of course it is because of the large amount of green plants, trees and ferns.
The program for the evening just consisted of dinner. But not any usual dinner, it was a kind of BBQ. On Green Island you can find a lot of restaurants offering a kind of private BBQ like all you can eat. You just sit down on a table on which they put up a grill or sometimes the grill is already embedded into the table. In fridges they offer typical Taiwanese meat, vegetables and specialties for you to put onto the grill. Just take whatever you think you might like to have grilled and put it on the fire. Of course, the bigger groups combine it with some karaoke singing and lots of beer. All together it was a funny dinner.
For Thursday we had rent a scooter to go around the island and see all the great sights and places.
As it took us only till noon to go around the island once, we had some stops and did some walks. Finally I did one of the two hiking trails which led me through a kind of forest, a tropical forest and made me see a lot of small animals, which I had never seen before, like this small boy.
At the beginning the hike was a little bit scary, because I did this hike alone and could always here something moving in the trees or plants. But most of times it where just small salamanders or squirrels trying to hide as soon as possible.
After the hiking we went to the famous hot springs. The hot spring place on Green Island is one of the three existing places, where the water in the hot spring is directly from ocean. Fortunately the weather was not to hot so that the break in the spring was a nice experience.
On Friday morning we took one of the early ferries back to Taitung to start our trip along the east coast which I holding a lot of great sight you should not miss, when you are in Taiwan. Originally the plan was to rent a car for seeing as many sights as possible on the way along the coast. Unfortunately Felix did not arrange the car, as he had promised while we had planned all the booking several weeks ago. Due to that we had no car. But a car is not the only existing vehicle which could have brought us along the sights – scooter would have been another possibility. But what a pity that we could not find the scooter rental, which the colleague of Felix had spoken to on the phone in advance and within this chat had promised to offer scooters to people with an international driver’s license. Too bad that Felix had not even brought the phone number of one of this ominous rent agencies to double check if we had asked at the right place. This sequence of unlucky problems or as I would prefer to say dishonest brazenness brought me back to the tourist information in Taidung to check on other possibilities like a round trip by bus. But as I mentioned before it seemed that every Taiwanese was travelling at this weekend. The only possibility which seemed available was to be renting a bike and get to the places by own source. So I asked for some addresses of rental agencies for bikes and tried to go there by local bus, which was not as hard.
But as it usually is, one unexpected happening does not come up alone; exiting the bus Felix did not like the idea of renting a bike. He preferred to go on searching for another chance to rent a scooter. Due to this seemed to be chance like cero to me I decided to go to the bicycle rent place on my own. As I spoke out my thought about this loud suddenly Felix started arguing that I could not let him alone and split up our “group”. I tried to explain him, that he only had to arrange a car or another possibility to see the sights at the east coast and for he did not do anything on this, I would not be stuck in this town and try to find something for me.
As he came up with shouting at me that I have to give him his money for the hotels back, because he would go back to Taipei, when I let him standing at the street alone my doubts that I was really travelling with somebody who wanted to be at the age of 27. Before he could went on blaming himself I decided to let him some space to breath and think about if an excuse for his arguing at me would not be better than going on shouting in the streets and I made my way up to rent a bike. To rent a bike was a real great idea, as I found out while following the bike way in and around Taidung. If I should describe it without using the pictures I took there, I would say it was like driving through the Landes-Garten-Show-Gelände near Paderborn just with tropical flowers instead of the typical German plants and trees. Due to the fact, not every reader might know the Landes-Garten-Show-Gelände in Paderborn I will add some pictures, as usual.
Another difference compared to the German Bike trails near Paderborn is, that here you can see the sea and some beaches. On one of these beaches I stopped and had a short break. During this break I made up my mind how to spend the next two days. For I always heard the voice of the lady from the tourist information saying that all the buses from the funny named Ding-Dong-Bus-Company are fully booked for the weekend I had to think about an alternative to get around the east coast. As I had experienced that day it was as impossible to rent a car as getting on a bus and not easy to get a scooter for rent with “only” an international driver’s license. Now I was thinking if I should stay and try to waste my time the following two days by getting stuck in Hulaien without anything to do in the town itself or if I change the plan in total. Finally I acted spontaneously, returned my bike and took a taxi to the railway station to get a ticket back to Taipei.
So this “weekend”-trip ended for me before the weekend had started, with the return to Taipei. With this, it offered me another choice for at least two day-trips. As this has nothing to do with the Dragon Boat Festival I will keep this experience as reason for another post, which will follow within the next days.
After the hiking we went to the famous hot springs. The hot spring place on Green Island is one of the three existing places, where the water in the hot spring is directly from ocean. Fortunately the weather was not to hot so that the break in the spring was a nice experience.
On Friday morning we took one of the early ferries back to Taitung to start our trip along the east coast which I holding a lot of great sight you should not miss, when you are in Taiwan. Originally the plan was to rent a car for seeing as many sights as possible on the way along the coast. Unfortunately Felix did not arrange the car, as he had promised while we had planned all the booking several weeks ago. Due to that we had no car. But a car is not the only existing vehicle which could have brought us along the sights – scooter would have been another possibility. But what a pity that we could not find the scooter rental, which the colleague of Felix had spoken to on the phone in advance and within this chat had promised to offer scooters to people with an international driver’s license. Too bad that Felix had not even brought the phone number of one of this ominous rent agencies to double check if we had asked at the right place. This sequence of unlucky problems or as I would prefer to say dishonest brazenness brought me back to the tourist information in Taidung to check on other possibilities like a round trip by bus. But as I mentioned before it seemed that every Taiwanese was travelling at this weekend. The only possibility which seemed available was to be renting a bike and get to the places by own source. So I asked for some addresses of rental agencies for bikes and tried to go there by local bus, which was not as hard.
But as it usually is, one unexpected happening does not come up alone; exiting the bus Felix did not like the idea of renting a bike. He preferred to go on searching for another chance to rent a scooter. Due to this seemed to be chance like cero to me I decided to go to the bicycle rent place on my own. As I spoke out my thought about this loud suddenly Felix started arguing that I could not let him alone and split up our “group”. I tried to explain him, that he only had to arrange a car or another possibility to see the sights at the east coast and for he did not do anything on this, I would not be stuck in this town and try to find something for me.
As he came up with shouting at me that I have to give him his money for the hotels back, because he would go back to Taipei, when I let him standing at the street alone my doubts that I was really travelling with somebody who wanted to be at the age of 27. Before he could went on blaming himself I decided to let him some space to breath and think about if an excuse for his arguing at me would not be better than going on shouting in the streets and I made my way up to rent a bike. To rent a bike was a real great idea, as I found out while following the bike way in and around Taidung. If I should describe it without using the pictures I took there, I would say it was like driving through the Landes-Garten-Show-Gelände near Paderborn just with tropical flowers instead of the typical German plants and trees. Due to the fact, not every reader might know the Landes-Garten-Show-Gelände in Paderborn I will add some pictures, as usual.
Another difference compared to the German Bike trails near Paderborn is, that here you can see the sea and some beaches. On one of these beaches I stopped and had a short break. During this break I made up my mind how to spend the next two days. For I always heard the voice of the lady from the tourist information saying that all the buses from the funny named Ding-Dong-Bus-Company are fully booked for the weekend I had to think about an alternative to get around the east coast. As I had experienced that day it was as impossible to rent a car as getting on a bus and not easy to get a scooter for rent with “only” an international driver’s license. Now I was thinking if I should stay and try to waste my time the following two days by getting stuck in Hulaien without anything to do in the town itself or if I change the plan in total. Finally I acted spontaneously, returned my bike and took a taxi to the railway station to get a ticket back to Taipei.
So this “weekend”-trip ended for me before the weekend had started, with the return to Taipei. With this, it offered me another choice for at least two day-trips. As this has nothing to do with the Dragon Boat Festival I will keep this experience as reason for another post, which will follow within the next days.
No comments:
Post a Comment