Chinese New Year- Little Liouciou

Last week was Chinese New Year, and that meant a whole week off of work (and yes, I still got paid for that week of work). The new year is a big thing around here. A lot of stores and businesses are closed for the week and they spend time with all the family. Each night they do something a little different, but most of it involves eating a lot of food and setting off fireworks. Some of my roommates got to go to dinner with a family and experience it first hand.

We went to an island on the southwestern side of Taiwan, little Liouciou. It was beautiful. It was only about 5 km wide, but it was sunny and warm. We had to wake up early to catch a train down south and hop on a bus to get to a small town to catch a ferry to the island. Some of the most adventures come from transportation to your destinations. Let's just say if it was not for Lonely Planet and some nice people on the streets we would never have made it to Liouciou, but luckily we did. We got off the ferry and tried to rent scooters. Easy enough, right? Wrong! The street was crowded with tourists and we were in the way with 4 scooters. Brittany attempts to get out of the way of oncoming traffic, but does not know how to drive a scooter. She presses on the gas handle and goes, right into Carly, who was 5 ft away knocking her off the scooter. The people at the scooter place immediately grab Brittany, get her off the scooter and hand her back the money. Carly is still on the ground with a scooter on top of her and her humungous pack with sleeping bag and pillow attached to the outside. Luckily no one was hurt and we went on our way, heads a little bit down so no one could see the "stupid americans that do not know how to drive a scooter." At the time it was not funny for me. It would have been so nice to have a scooter to drive around the island, but alas, we could not. But it turned out to be okay. We walked to the campsite and got to enjoy a beautiful walking path along the coast that we would not have been able to see if we were on our scooters. The next day we went to a different scooter rental and rented 2 scooters, which Carly and Candice drove. Brittney and I took scooter driving lessons so when we were to Kenting we would not have a problem with renting scooters due to the fact that we did not know how to drive them.

The island is made up of mostly coral along the coast. It makes for beautiful images, but not so comfortable walks on the beach. It was nice to be one of the islands of our island and to see and smell the ocean. I forgot how much I love the ocean. Being in Utah did not allow me the chance to feel the breeze or feel the serenity that water brings me. A even now it is not very often that I get to be near the water. I now can appreciate it more, knowing that I do not get to have it near me all the time.

The campsite that we stayed at how a decent amount of people. In the morning before we left for our excursion of exploring the island I asked Carly to do my hair. She does some nice french braiding, which I take advantage of the fact that she has this skill. I sit down to have her do my hair and an Asian man comes over and motions that he would like to do my hair as well. So we say yes and he begins to braid the other half of my head. It was so funny, because his whole family came around to watch him braid the meigourens (americans) hair. I called him the asian hairdresser. His braid turned out very nice and lasted me all day and into the next.

Here are some pictures of Little Liouciou. I did not take any pictures and so all of these are from the internet.

This is the famous Vase Rock. This is the most famous thing about the island. It is just a chunk of coral that is shaped like that. It is kind of cool!