The Egg-Question

April 11th 2019

14:10 — Somewhere between Taitung and Lüdao

I drink some water, close my eyes, and hope that I make it out here alive — left and right you hear puking tourists, dotted by the occasional rustling of plastic bags.

In other words: The ferry to the Green Island lives up to its reputation. Still, we survive the one-hour trip and arrive on the island in reasonably good condition, where we are greeted by our host.

Despite my bad experiences with sea sickness, I also survive the ride with only minor circulation problems and cold sweat.
To get anywhere on this island (including our room), we rent one of the scooters that are the main means of transportation here at the harbour (Good trick to tell locals and tourists apart: helmet = tourist). Technically we'd only be able to get a small electric scooter, but after Jan confirms that he's a 'good driver', there's nothing more between us and a proper scooter.

To be fair, I didn't realize they were asking if I was good at driving scooters, specifically — but after a few curves I felt pretty safe and enjoyed it, too.
After a short (safe!) drive, we arrive at the Reefs Café — if you squeeze past the full tables with your two backpacks, you get to a nondescript door right inside the café which opens to reveal our room. Again with sleeping-on-the-floor, but less Japanese and more well-there-wasn't-room-for-a-bed this time.
Now that we have a motorized means of transport at our disposal, I'm hard pressed to convince Jan to walk for more than five minutes at a time — but I do have to admit that the airflow is really great in the heat.
So, after stopping by at the Human Rights Memorial nearby (more on that later), we drive to Niutoushan, a little mountain on the northern tip of Lüdao.
From up here, we have an amazing view of the island and the ocean — but I was also never so close to being blown off a cliff, the wind here is insanely strong.
A bit further along the coast, we find nothing less than the 'Little Great Wall', a cute miniature copy of the Great Wall on the mountainous coastline.
To end the day (and yes, also to not flood the shower in the bathroom / storage room of the café) we drive across the island to the Zhaori Hot Springs — one of only three salt water hot springs worldwide — which are open 24/7 at this time of the year.
The water temperatures in the different pools range from objectively pretty cold up to 41.6°C or, as Jan puts it, 'not that warm'.

That estimate turns out to be wrong after a little while, I have to correct: It's really hot.
On our way back in the dark we had to avoid crabs crossing the streets and tourists on the side of the road, apparently on the lookout for some sorts of animals.
The two young Taiwanese women on the opposite side of the pool brought a plastic net with five eggs which they now apparently try to boil in the hot (bathing) water until the pool attendant who might have told us off for not wearing swimming caps puts an end to these shenanigans.
That the two turn up in our café the next morning with a visually identical net of eggs only causes more questions we will likely never know the answer to.
After breakfast, we escape the heat for a while in the Human Rights Museum, which is housed in a former prison building. How much of the contents of the exhibition we understood correctly is highly questionable — historic nuance is definitely not one of Google Translate's strong suits and the misleading and euphemistic names (what used to be called 'Ocean Villa' in its time was, in fact, also a prison for political prisoners) don't make it any better.

In the era of the Kuomintang's authoritarian dictatorship, political prisoners were kept on the island until 1990. As Taiwan began to deal with the crimes of its past summarized under the term 'White Terror' after the end of the one-party state, the former prison was opened to the public and a monument was dedicated to the victims which is now one of the important sights of the island.
Now that we're done with today's dose of history, we check our a stretch of cliff coast where one can see the crumbling remains of an indigenous village — as an added bonus, there's also a large cave to look at.
Apocalypse?

We were just planning to check out and make our way to the harbour, but the streets look like war just broke out: All around us, long strings of fireworks are lit until the street is completely covered in their red paper shells. Through the hellfire walk two meter large gods, accompanied by two shrines on the shoulders of for men each that stop on the side of the street when someone wishes to make an offering of incense.
When the explosions slowly subside, our host explains that the gods of Lüdao are travelling around the island today, as they do once a year to chase away malicious spirits and bring luck and prosperity to the people of the Green Island.