Taiwan: Xinbeitou Hot Spring // 台湾的新北头

Wow wow wow, is it already MAY? Seriously, where does the time go?

This semester has been flying by. We just finished mid-terms in early May, and thank be to god, after all of our studying and toil the University allowed us 2 days holiday from classes. With this freedom me and my two girlfriends decided to enjoy the holiday by taking our first ever trip to Taipei, Taiwan!

We had always heard good things about Taiwan from friends who had visited in the past and wanted to find out for ourselves. We were definitely not disappointed. In actuality, when compared to China, it looks very similar but is a crazy combo of both Japanese and Chinese culture. Also, is a much more peaceful and quieter country that basically has better quality food for much cheaper and where the people are much nicer… Plus it is an island so there is greenery everywhere and even mountains to climb and explore. All are wins. Kind of interesting to wonder if modern day China would be more like Taiwan if they didn’t undergo Mao’s reign and his great ideas like the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward… Poor China…

Since we only had 2 full days in Taiwan for our holiday, we had to cram in all of the best activities to do. Funny thing was, we were all so busy before we arrived, that we didn’t have time prior to research and plan out our trip. Well, thankfully we managed to spot out the best places from recommendations from friends and handy-dandy TripAdvisor.

The first thing we did on the day we arrived was check out the Shilin Night Market, Taipei’s largest night market. The amount of street food was absolutely overwhelming. I can honestly say that none of us even felt hungry during our trip, because wherever we went, there was always some awesome street food or small snacks to try. It’s also said that if you go to Taiwan and do nothing else but eat, then you would have had a successful trip. So yeah, food in Taiwan is a big deal which I didn’t realize before arriving but HEY that’s definitely something I’m 100% cool with. Please enjoy these glorious photos of food and other weird things.

Unexpectedly, our first full day in Taipei ended up being such a Japanese day. After getting ready we went for an early lunch at Kura Sushi, a very popular Japanese restaurant chain. I went for the first time when I was in Osaka with Yuna and her family and when we went inside the Taipei branch, it felt like we were back in Japan. You can just pick up sushi plates from the rotating conveyer belt or you can order individualized pieces to your liking, which suddenly shoot out of the kitchen and appear in front of your table within minutes. It’s all very entertaining and delicious at the same time. Also, we tried this special cold mochi dessert for the first time and it was amazing! So sad I can’t remember the name of it. I must find it again.

After our sushi brunch we managed to find our way to the Songshan Street Market for some early shopping. However, it seemed we arrived a bit too early because most of the boutiques hadn’t opened yet. But anyways it was very relaxing compared to the crazy Shilin Night Market that we experienced the evening before. After walking around for a while, the shop owners started to arrive for work and the boutiques began to open. There were tonssss of cute clothes, but as is the case with most boutiques in Asia, the clothes are made for little Asian bodies and not for White girls with curves. I guess this was both a blessing and a curse because if they had fit me, I probably would’ve spent way too much on clothes.

After our semi-successful shopping spree, we managed to find the metro and make our way to XinBeiTou, a popular northern mountainous area of the city that also happened to have some natural hot springs for tourists to splash around in (not). They are so strict at these things! We arrived and missed the last “soaking” period so we had to wander around for an hour before they let in a new wave of guests. This ended up being really great because we walked up the mountain a ways and explored little alley ways and saw some awesome things like weird Daoist drawings and beautiful orchids. However, we were quick to return to the hot bath house because the mosquitoes seemed to like our foreign flavors (ew) and we were not having it.

For the time we spent getting there and waiting around, we actually spent a very short amount of time in the hot spring, but I mean, it was a pretty good time. Everyone else was local Taiwanese and pretty much on the elderly side except for one other white guy that had a really long beard and a lot of tattoos. We also realized that we were the only ones that were wearing bikinis. Oops. So yeah, we basically stood out like sore thumbs and got a lot of weird looks from the locals as we were obviously three foreigners and were always huddled together giggling.

We were almost enjoying the nice and warm (nearly scolding) water but then this one lifeguard(?) started yelling at us. He was really out to get us and basically told us that everything that we were doing was wrong. We didn’t know that there was a right and a wrong way to bathe in a hot spring. We didn’t know that we had to rinse off our feet before entering the water. We didn’t know we couldn’t stand up in the hot spring. When we sat down, we didn’t know there are only specific places where you can sit. We didn’t know we couldn’t splash each other or throw water. SO MANY RULES that weren’t posted anywhere so we got yelled at a few times. This of course just caused more weird looks from the locals. For them it was a bath and a show! Needless to say, we didn’t stay very long and it was really crowded anyways. Plus, there were some homemade popsicles that we were excited to try on the way out so that’s all we really needed as a reason to dry off and leave. We did end up feeling very refreshed after the bath though, and with the water being so hot, our bodies were kind of a kind of shock so the humid air didn’t feel so sticky anymore.

On the way out, some really good looking mochi ice cream caught our eye and we decided that we might as well just add more Japanese influence into this already very Japanese day so we treated ourself to some delish mochi. By the way, mochi is a kind of Japanese sweet glutinous rice dessert and it’s kind of weird at first but then you love it!