Twenty men in orange lifejackets just launched themselves across the Bashi Channel in a hand-carved wooden boat, chasing a connection their ancestors made centuries ago. It’s not a typical Tuesday, but for the indigenous Tao people of Orchid Island, this voyage represents something far bigger than a weekend adventure.
The Golden Friendship—a 12-metre tatala, the traditional seafaring vessel of the Tao—set sail Monday from Taiwan bound for the Batanes islands in the Philippines, roughly 185 kilometres away. The crew expects to row through the night and arrive Tuesday afternoon. What makes this particular journey historic: it’s the first such crossing in 300 years between these two Austronesian communities who share deep cultural, linguistic, and historic ties that time and geography have tested.
The tatala itself is remarkable. Traditionally carved from living trees and hand-painted with intricate designs, these boats were built for survival—used to catch flying fish to feed families on Orchid Island’s 45 square kilometres. The newly crafted Golden Friendship is an enlarged version, custom-built to carry 20 people, making it the biggest the Tao have ever constructed. But don’t mistake this for purely symbolic. The red-and-white-painted vessel carries genuine spiritual weight for the Tao; as sound engineer and participant Hsiao Chun-hsiang said, it’s “like a member of the family.”
Among the crew is 26-year-old stand-up paddleboarding coach Wu Hsi-lung, who told reporters he’s always wanted to visit where his ancestors journeyed and “feel that I carry the blood of this place.” That blend of personal pilgrimage and community pride runs through the entire expedition. Organizer Syaman Maraos, chairman of the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, hopes the voyage will spark broader cultural exchanges across the Pacific—and he’s already dreaming bigger: next year, he hopes Ivatan islanders will row the Golden Friendship back to Orchid Island, creating a two-way cultural bridge that could reshape maritime heritage in the region.
This isn’t just nostalgia or tourism, though the tatala has certainly evolved to meet those needs alongside its traditional role. It’s a deliberate act of reclamation, a way for descendants of early Tao seafarers to reconnect with roots that colonialism, distance, and three centuries of separation nearly erased. The boat will be displayed in Batanes once it arrives, but the real cargo is far more valuable: the message that these ties still matter, that the ocean isn’t a barrier but a highway, and that some journeys are worth making precisely because they’ve been forgotten for so long.
