I took a trip to Orchid Island for some fishing and diving with some people I didn’t know. I drove down south and then caught a boat over. This is the harbor in Kending. 
Turned out John and I had similar fitting caps. A good sign. *Edit… John is a talented dude. He took the underwater shots below.
Leaving Kending.
Cape Eulanbi, the southern tip of Taiwan. Shortly after this some dolphins followed the boat for a bit and one did a full on flip. Nice start.
Pulling into the harbor at Orchid.
The dive shop.
The dive boat.
Diving. I’m mostly over it but I love the clear water at Orchid Island. The usual suspects:
At this point I’m always just thinking get me outa here and who cares about nudibranchs, lion fish and coral. Drift dives are cool though. The next day we did a crazy one along a wall. At one point I got ahead of the group and self arrested with my reef hook. The current was insane, like rippling the skin on my face. When the guide came around the corner I was hooked into I detached and was immediately pushed up to speed again… righteous! righeous! It’s great fun, like flying.
This is where the drift dive ended.
Not a lot going on in the evenings.
Can tour around by scooter. This one of the schools.
Seen one sunset you’ve seen them all. The next day I spent the afternoon fishing on the north side of the island. I was told to go to this spooky looking rock.
Had shrimp for bait and the jap style chum along with a sweet spoon for flicking it out into the water. Good stuff. I caught the pretty one below.
And I had this porcupine fish for a bit but I had to let it go. It’s about the size of a large bowling ball and about as heavy. So without a net I ended up cutting my line. Then later the highlight of the trip occured when I snagged a green turtle (no bullshit, not a fish tale). At first I thought it was another porcupine fish because it was so heavy but then a huge shape started to appear and then it surfaced and it was a freaking turtle. My line broke and it swam away. Maddness. I was tripping.
The sun started to go down so I packed up and began climbing back up to the road. 
But the path was completely blocked off by goats. It was a little creepy so I chose to wait it out for a bit to see if they’d leave.
Sick photo op.
But they weren’t going anywhere so in the end I threw rocks at them and eventually they left.
The next day we dove a Japanese logging wreck, which I had done on a previous trip. Still kinda fun though.
And that’s basically it. There was a moon festival bbq with the people I didn’t know but that was totally forgettable. There was this flying fish van:
Yours truly. Will get to the tuck knee or bone out someday. For now it’s gonna go the way dad likes it.
