BOAT BURNING AND ISLAND EXPLORING

A few weekends ago now, Phil and I headed down to the relatively small city of Donggang to meet up with some other foreign English teachers for the city’s Boat Burning Festival. This festival only takes place once every three years, so we were pretty excited about being able to see it.

We didn’t arrive in Donggang until about 11:00 pm on Friday, October 16th. We had to take a train, a bus and a taxi to make it to the city and get to our hotel. The hotel we stayed at was...how do I explain it...one of those where we were just really hoping we walked away from it without having lice. :) It was pretty cheap, though, so that was nice.

The husband and wife couple who owned the hotel didn’t speak any English, but they guessed correctly why we were visiting and brought us and the other foreign English teachers to the temple where the Boat Burning Festival started. We arrived at the temple around midnight and we were thinking (and had been told) that the event would be over by 3:00 am.

When we arrived at the temple we saw the beautiful boat. This boat’s only purpose was to be burned. About 30,000 USD were spent building and decorating it. The boat was burned as an offering to the god they believe watches over the waters. The hope is this offering will bring three years of good luck to all who partake in it.

A little after we arrived at the temple, many different dances and rituals began. Around 1:00 am they started moving the boat from the temple to the water. The distance between the temple and the water was not short...I would guess it was about a mile. The boat was followed by many different characters, symbolizing gods. The streets were absolutely packed as we followed the boat to the water. Fireworks and firecrackers were constantly going off. All the people, all the noise and all the lights were overwhelming at times. It was definitely like nothing we had experienced before.

The boat arrived at the water around 2:30 am. We were having a great time, but we were also ready to see the boat burn and go to bed...that didn’t happen for awhile. About two and a half hours were spent loading the boat with TONS of ghost money (a special paper that is often burned here as an offering to gods or for relatives who have passed away) and many other things.

The hour right before the boat burned was spent getting the boat’s sails setup and adding final decorations. At this point we were very tired. Because of how exhausted we all were, the process of adding final decorations to the boat felt like a game of hangman that had gone too far...you know, like one of those hangman games when you really don’t want the other person to lose so you keep adding things to the poor guy “Oh, he can have three hairs and we’ll give him some sunglasses.”

Finally, around 6:00 am, firecrackers were lit to ignite the ghost money that the boat was on and we saw the boat burn as the sun was rising. It was a very unique experience! (Visit this link if you’re interested in finding out more about the festival: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125315178060618481.html)

From the water, we took a taxi back to our hotel and slept for a few hours. When we got up, we were planning on taking a 25 minute ferry ride from Donggang to a tiny offshore island called Little Liuchiu Island, but before we got to that we received a random call on my cell phone. It was a guy who only spoke Chinese. We didn’t know what to do at first, but ended up asking three junior high girls who knew a little English to talk to him and interpret for us...humbling.

The guy on the phone was the taxi driver who brought us from the water back to our hotel earlier that morning. He had gotten my phone number from the owners of the hotel. He was calling because he had our camera. He told the girls he was in Kaohsiung City and would come back to Donggang to give us our camera but we had to pay him 5,000-10,000 NT dollars (about 155-315 USD). We thought it was funny he gave us a range...we wondered if he honestly thought we’d choose to pay him 10,000 NT dollars. :)

We only paid about 6,000 NT for our camera (the month before), so we had the poor girls tell him that we didn’t feel comfortable giving him that much. He wouldn’t budge. The girls tried to barter for us, but all their effort didn’t change his mind. We told the girls it was okay, he could have it. They wanted to call the police for us...they were very sweet, but we weren’t up for the drama.

We went to Seven-Eleven and bought a disposable camera and headed to catch the ferry. On the way there, we randomly saw our taxi driver who was in fact NOT in Kaohsiung City. :) We decided we’d be willing to pay him 1,000 NT (about 30 USD) for our camera. We went to talk to him and showed him the 1,000 NT...he seemed to recognize us right away, but after he realized the amount we were willing to pay, he started to “pay dumb”. Without anyone to interpret for us, we were stuck making the action of taking a picture and pointing at the money while he just shook his head.

We let it go and said goodbye to our camera for good. (The pictures above are from the other foreign English teachers who were with us at the boat burning. The pictures below are digital pictures of the pictures we got developed from our disposable camera....people don’t have scanners here so this was the only way we could get them on the computer.) We decided if we had to lose our camera, having it held for ransom was much more interesting/fun than just forgetting it somewhere! :)

After we put our camera drama to rest we headed to Little Liuchiu Island. This place was great! We were there from Saturday afternoon until the late morning on Sunday. We rented a scooter for that entire time for about 12 USD...dirt cheap! (No one cared that we didn’t have scooter licenses.) As you’ve probably already guessed, Phil was in heaven! :)

As we were checking out some of the island’s main attractions (small caves, short hikes, scenic overlooks), a local English teacher on the island spotted us and devoted his entire afternoon and evening to being our tour guide. (This helpful, friendly, welcoming attitude is much more characteristic of the Taiwanese people than the way our taxi driver acted.) He was very nice and although we were hesitant to have him show us around at first, we ended up really enjoying his company.

We spent the night at a beautiful little campground/resort. We were able to rent a tent and sleeping bags and ended up camping right by the ocean. It was great!

What a weekend! :)