Day 277: Beitou Hot Springs

Today’s plan is a day trip out to Beitou, a geothermal area just outside of Taipei. The hour long metro ride took us through the city and the building were dotted along the mountain side.

We started at the Beitou Hotspring Museum, built in an original bath house from 1913. This is one of the oldest bath houses in East Asia and appeared in dozens of Taiwanese movies, helping make Beitou famous across the country. Due to management instability, the house was abandoned in the 1980s before re-discovery and revitalization in 1994. The museum has brought increased awareness and tourism to the area, which has helped Beitou flourish in the past 20 years.

Since we skipped breakfast, we went straight for lunch at a small restaurant in the town. We had some bubble tea, braised pork rice, tomato and beef udon soup, and hard-boiled, sulphur eggs. Kieran greatly appreciates the reduced intensity of Taiwanese cuisine aka no raw octopuses or wondering what he’s eating 😂

We then visited two geothermal parks, Thermal Valley and Sulphur Valley. Each park had large thermal lakes with some geyser features. This area is unique as it produces a green acidic sulphur and a mineral known as Hokutolite; this mineral can only be found in Beitou springs. They would also mine sulphur and you could see the left over artifacts, structures, and geothermal pathways from this time.

The Sulphur Valley included a small pool at the bottom to soak your feet. These pools always feel great after a lot of walking, we enjoyed sitting with the locals as the sun set and moon rises

Taiwanese hot springs offer mixed gender pools and requires swim suits. We packed our bathing suits, expecting to be able to use the public bath. Unfortunately, the public house had some strict restrictions on the swimsuit type and Kieran’s swimsuit was too long lol

We found a private resort which was the move because it offered 9 different baths with waterfall features, bubbles, and a really really hot tub 44.6 degrees C! We hop on a local bus with two older ladies. Two stops before our stop, one comes over and asks where are we headed and we say Spring Valley resort. She yells at the driver to tell him and we realize they think we are lost, confused westerners who hopped on a random bus 😤

We near the stop and hit the bus stop button and the ladies cheer us and give us double thumbs up because we know how to use their buses and where to get off at 👍🏻👍🏻 They fucking cheered for us all the way when we exited properly and said thank you in Chinese 😭😭😭 never have felt so encouraged and supported in our lives for the basics.

The hot springs were great and the hotel offered a free shuttle back to the train station; we accepted the shuttle to avoid any future bus interaction with locals 🤣 stopped by two food stands on the way home and went to bed.

Food:
Braised beef and rice
Tomato and beef udon
Sulfur eggs
Onion pie
Ximending nabeyaki egg noodles

Spots:
Beitou Hot Spring Museum
Thermal Valley
Sulphur Valley
Spring Valley ResortBaca lagi