A couple of friends have come to visit me during the new year. After a very nice new year celebration, we decided to go explore the rest of the country for a bit. The eastern part being generally nicer, we decided to go there.

On Friday morning, me and my friends Anton, Axel, Marcus and Robert took the high speed rail south to Kaohsiung, then crossed to Taidong in the east by normal train. After we found a hotel, we borrowed a couple of bikes and rode around by the seaside.

  • Setting out
  • BAmboo tunnel
  • Biking in the woods
  • Group picture
  • Writing messages on stones
  • Baseball with a coconut
  • Another group pic

Though nothing spectacular, we had a good time on our cheapo bikes. When night came we had some dinner then headed to the hotel to try every strange alcoholic drink we could find in seven eleven. During the evening, Yini joined us as well, as she had arrived after work.

Some interesting drinks for the evening

In the morning, the six of us went out to the small fishing harbor in Fugang and took the seasickness inducing ferry to Green Island (it was some horrible 45 minutes on the boat) and found a hotel. We rented some scooters then drove around the island, stopping whenever we found something interesting.

  • Lighthouse
  • Beautiful lagoon

We had a fun game of taking photos of each other taking photos

  • Typical coastline
  • Robert and Yini on the scooter
  • Marcus in front of a big cave
  • View from one of the caves

A couple of landscape views from a bunker

  • Inside another cave
  • This coral beach is pretty cool
  • Grown ass men playing around on a coral beach
  • With every wave the water comes bubbling up from this hole
  • Robert doing his own version of a hero pose
  • Lookout point group photo
  • Another group photo shows how windy it was

This was a really fun game as well

There was a lighthouse, several kilometres of beautiful coral coast line, a number of caves and some lookout points high atop cliffs and mountains. In my opinion by far the best though was a small cove on the north east, where we first found an abandoned village, then a natural rock climbing wall, with lots of small rocks embedded in petrified mud, and even a waterfall.

Selection of shots from the abandoned village

Climbing the wall full of embedded rocks

  • Headding down the beach
  • Waterfall
  • Me at the waterfall
  • Everyone assembled
  • HEading even further down the beach
  • We could never get into that cave by the end of the beach

When it got dark, we drove back to town, had a nice dinner and finished the night with a couple of hours in the salt water hotspring.

Day two on Green Island, we aimed for seeing those parts we hadn’t seen the day before. A random stop in what looked to be just a park by the seaside lead us to an old prison come museum which was very interesting. We also found a park for deer which seemed locked up and abandoned. A short walk around the corner we found an entrance, and did actually see the deer, but the park itself was not worth much.

Some views from the seaside park

  • Prison exercise yard
  • Guard tower and view of the sea
  • View from the guard tower
  • Group of us exiting the guard tower
  • Cell block corridor
  • Another cell block corridor
  • Testing the padded walls
  • Getting a drink through the food hatch
  • Guard tower on the back side
  • Backside of the cell block
  • View of the prison yard on the back side
  • Birds eye view of the prison yard
While the dear park was closed there was deer at the restaurant where we had lunch before getting on the boat back

By that time we had seen pretty much all there is to see on dry land. Since the season was not good for snorkeling or diving, we took the seasickness ferry back to the main land. Now here we are on a train, heading for our next destination, Hualien.