Exploring Taitung Taiwan!

Hello guys! Welcome to Taiwan. I'm so excited to be here. I've never been here before and I got invited here with the Taitung County Tourism Board to bring a friend. I brought Karina. So we're here for a few days to explore this whole area of Taiwan and we're currently on Orchid Island which is like southeast of mainland Taiwan and it's so, so beautiful here. Honestly, it looks like Jurassic Park or Lost or something could have been filmed here because it's just incredible and there's like coral rocks everywhere. Yeah, anyway, we have about a day here so we're just going to go explore as much as we can. How beautiful is this place? I just want to come back here and yeah, just like spend the day here like Karina was saying. Just bring food and music and just chill. It's so nice here. Cutest little puppies. Hi! How are you? This color is coming through on camera but this is so incredible. It's like one of the bluest waters I've ever seen. Yeah, it's gorgeous. It's just saturation is so high right now on the sea. Wow, amazing. So today we are visiting the Bunan tribe which is actually spread out all over Taiwan but we're visiting one like area of it and yeah, we're currently in a valley surrounded by mountains. It's incredibly beautiful and I was just reading a little bit about them on Wikipedia and yeah, I'm really excited to hear more about their culture and apparently they're really well known for their singing so hopefully they get a show later. Another thing they're well known for is their wooden sculptures. There's so many of these everywhere and they're actually all kind of different. I don't know, I guess everyone kind of takes their own, like their own style. I really love how some of these carvings are just in the tree. Like, I didn't even notice there were carvings in there at first. That is so amazing. So as you guys just heard, the Bunan tribe had a lot of songs and chants and dances that they would do for different things, for different traditions. Some of them were to like welcome a good harvest, some of them were hoping that the animals would come out when they go hunting and just like tons of different things but yeah, it was really, really cool to hear that and I'm kind of a sucker for history so I love seeing those kinds of things and knowing that like thousands of years ago there were people singing just like that in the mountains. The Bunan tribe especially is from the mountains and just trying to like visualize that. Obviously this was on a stage and they were putting on a show but when you break it down to the roots of it and like just who these people were and what the culture represents, yeah, I just, I find it so fascinating. We're getting a lesson in archery. I've never done archery before so let's see. Yes, Dave! It's so hard to pull. Wait guys, archery is so much fun. Why have I never done that before? Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm going to be sore in like the weirdest places tomorrow because it uses random muscles really intensely but that was so, so much fun. Louie, can we please do archery more? Yeah, love that. We are getting a tour of this organic farm right now in the middle of the valley. It's so beautiful. So we got these sexy hats to wear as we are getting a tour of this farm and Taitung County actually is the most suitable for organic farms in Taiwan because it's the least polluted area so yeah, I hope we get to eat some of the stuff. There's really, really amazing vegetables. But one of the things that we were told on our tour that was the cutest thing ever is that, so this is a Bunun, like the Bunun tribe owns this farm and they don't, basically they don't hurt the bugs that come and eat some of the crops because they said that and like for aboriginals it's, yeah they're taught that it's okay to share and that you should share so they kind of see it as like, you know, we are getting to eat these crops and why can't the bugs eat a little bit, you know? And I just thought that was so cute and when they harvest millet, if there's any grains that like fall on the ground, they leave some of them so that the birds can eat and it's just the sweetest way to live I think and we can all definitely learn from that and realize that it's, not only is it okay to share but we should be sharing and yeah, it's just, I feel like especially with where the world is today, that's a big lesson that I wish everyone could learn, you know? Wow, this smells amazing. Chinese mushroom. Oh thank you. Mmm. Yum. So good. I love it. Wow. Oh my gosh, I want that in the soup right now. Except actually it's ten days and it's maybe not in the soup right now. They're making dumplings guys. Oh my gosh, how good does that look? Oh, so cute. Can we just look at this vegetable feast for a second? These are all the things from the farm. I don't even know what half of this is but it looks incredible and it's officially the biggest plate I think I've ever eaten from. Look at this. Oh my gosh. This looks amazing. Look at this dragon fruit guys. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than that? Yeah. Didn't think so. Chai Dong. Cheers. Chai Dong. So we've just come to a tea plantation. We had a tour of where the tea's growing. It's so beautiful out there. And now we're going to try the tea. And it's crazy. So there's these bugs that honey flavored oolong tea that has no honey in it. It's just, that's so cool. I've never even heard of that before. So yeah, it smells so good. So we've just walked into where they actually dry the tea and it smells incredible. I wish you guys could smell this right now. Guys, we're making lemon tea right now. We've got a lemon with a hole and we have to use the spoon to take out all of the insides basically. And I think we're going to fill it with tea and let it dry in there. Oh, this is going to be so good. Okay, so we've hollowed out our lemons. That was so much work. What did you say? It felt like giving birth to a baby. That was like work. Yeah. Okay, and then we've got the tea here. Tea leaves that have been mixed with lemon juice. So now we have to stuff them in the hole. So from now until you can drink it, it's two months? How long? Three. Three months. Literally so much work for that cup of tea that you just don't even think twice about. But from now on, every cup of tea I'm going to be like, I know. Months of work went into this. Amazing. Do you guys see this inside? So this is what that lemon that we just made, this is what it will look like in about three months totally dehydrated and hard. And you just have to crush this and it's full of tea as well. You crush it and then the little pieces become tea. So we're going to take this with us and have some of the tea that we made. See you later. Bye. Today because, what day is it? It's her birthday. It's my birthday. All right, we've just gotten on the boat. No idea where we're going, but oh no, somewhere not on the island. Oh my gosh.