Orchid Island

 Orchid Island was a favorite of mine. I went with my Spanish friend, Gonzalo, who is quite the skilled photographer. We did a lot of shooting of the night sky. It was a good trip despite the rain. It’s not as small as Xiaoliuqiu but you can drive around the whole island in about 40 minutes. It has lots of goats. That was a major highlight, besides the beauty. You can see goats scaling cliff faces and large rocks. It's pretty awesome. It's also not very well developed which we both loved. It was like being in another country, but it was Taiwan. Lots of aboriginal people here. We met 2 teenagers smoking cigarettes and drinking on some random trail. They were bumping old school Snoop Dogg. I was amazed that these kids knew old school west coast rap. They even knew E-40! How two 17-year-old aboriginal kids from Orchid Island outshined the rest of Taiwan with their game was incredible! Communication was hard, but we had a nice chat about old school rap. We swam here, hiked, and did LOTS of photography. After the trip, I was told by my boss who is Taiwanese, and she said this island is where they dump their nuclear waste. I didn’t check to confirm, but that's kind of a bummer.

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 蘭嶼是我的最愛。 我是跟西班牙朋友去的，他是一個專業攝影師。我們拍了很多星空。這是一趟很美好的旅行，如果沒有下雨的話。這裡不像小琉球那麼小，開車環島的話大概要四十分鐘。有很多山羊。有一處高地，除了它的美之外，你可以看見很多山羊攀爬在懸崖，和大石頭上。超驚人的。這裡也不是很開發，所以我們都很愛。在蘭嶼很像在另一個國家，但他是台灣。很多原住民住在這裡。我們在某條步道上遇到兩個青少年在抽菸跟喝酒，他們放著史努比狗狗的音樂。我很驚訝，因為這些小孩竟然知道這些老派的西岸rap. 他們甚至知道E-40。兩個十七歲來自蘭嶼的少年竟然比其他台灣人都還厲害。溝通很困難，但我們講了很多老派的rap。我們在這裡游泳，健行，拍很多照片。此後，我的台灣主管告訴我，他們丟核廢料在蘭嶼。我沒有確認，但真是爛透了。