Wanderer in Taipei - Day 3

Taipei day 3, 26 Oct


Hot springs in Beitou

I started the day with a trip to Xin Beitou, a hot spring area just slightly north of Taipei city center.

I was planning to take a dip in the public hot spring and came prepared with swimming trunks and towels. The entrance fee to the public hot spring was just NT$40 which was quite cheap.

I must admit that I had some fantasies of meeting some hot hunks who might be soaking at the hot spring on a Sunday morning. But when I got there, it was totally not what I expected. The place were full of old men and old ladies, and a few families with kids. They were all wearing bathing suites (those square types), and I had with me a Speedo trunk. Suddenly I felt very out of place. I almost backed out.

Then, I thought, what the heck. I'm here already and there is no reason not too try out the hot springs. I spotted a teenage girl wearing bikini suits and that sort of put me more at ease. As I got into the pool, it was actually nice to see the old folks socializing and hanging out. Most of them were apparently regulars. I guess it is really nice to have such a place to hang out when you retire. As I soaked in the water, I listened to the husband and wife gossiping about their relatives, the mother and the teenager daughter chattering, a young kid complaining about the water temperature to his father. It was an interesting glimpse to the local life.

This is the first time I ever soaked in a hot spring. There were 3 hot pools. I went into the least hot one and it was HOT! After 10 minutes I felt cooked, so I switched to a cold water pool. After a while I went back into the hot pool. Somehow the soaking was suddenly making me very hungry and my stomach was growling. I was perspiring and was not really enjoying myself very much. Half an hour later, I decided it was enough and I showered and left.

Next I dropped in at the Beitou Hot Spring Museum (北投溫泉博物館) which is built from a restored public bathhouse. I thought it was just a bathhouse museum. It turns out that there are interesting exhibits explain the geology of the area and how the hot spring was formed. There was also some information about the history and culture of the area.

After the museum, I had a nice stroll around the park.

There was a Japanese Shigon Shrine Puji Temple (普濟寺) up on a hill slope. It's a small quiet shrine. In the Hot Spring Museum, I read that decades back, the local Japanese community had donated a stone statue of a Guanyin that was meant to be the guardian of bathhouses. I could not find it though.

I dropped by the Hell Valley (地熱谷).It's just a pool of steaming hot water.

There was a Chinese Buddhist Cultural Center near Hell Valley(中华佛教文化中心). I thought it was some kind of exhibition center with Buddhist artifacts. It turned out to be a working temple operated by Dharma Drum Mountain (法鼓山). It was under renovation and only the 2nd floor was open. It was the main temple hall.

I spent about 3 hours in all in the area.

The Royal Palace Museum

My next destination was the Royal Palace Museum. I had always wanted to visit it and I thought it had a huge collection of artifacts. As a matter of fact, it has a pretty big collection but only a small selection was on exhibit each time. As it turned out, that small collection was quite enough. After a while, it gets too tiring to absorb all the information and look at everything in details.

I guess the thing about visiting museum is that you must have some interests in the exhibits and an open mind. Back in Singapore, some friends were clearly not impressed and complained that there was nothing much to see other than a lot of unintelligible scrolls and that the famous jabe cabbage was just a tiny piece of stone.

For me, I always had a keen interest in Chinese history. So it was interesting. As a Buddhist, I also had a keen interest in the various Buddhist artifacts in display. I also like the wide range of porcelain in display. What I like about the museum is that the artifacts are well label and there are good background information and explanation about the artifacts. I have visited a number of museums in the region in which the exhibits are not well arranged, and are quite poorly labeled.

It's too bad photography were not allowed in the museum. I thought they should at least allow photography without flash.

I only spent about 2.5 hours in the museum -- I had intended to spend more time there. But I was feeling really tired and sleepy after a while and it was difficult to focus. Two hours is typically my attention span in any museum, especially if I haven't had enough sleep. It would have been nice to visit over a few days.

There is a pleasant garden next to the museum. The ticket to the museum gives you free entrance to the museum.

Shilin Night Market (士林夜市）

From the Royal Palace Museum, there is a direct bus to the Jiantan （剑潭）MRT station, which is the MRT station near the Shilin Night Market.

Probably because it was Sunday, the street market was getting pretty crowded by the time I got there in the late afternoon. I had thought that the Raohe Night Market I visited the previous night was big and crowded. But Shilin is even bigger and crowded.

I was delighted to find a vegetarian fried bun stall at one end of the street market.

Besides the street market there is a huge food center just opposite the MRT station. I found a used book stall here. I was happy found a few books I wanted for NT$35 only.

I was able to find 4 vegetarian stalls in the food center. I had arranged to meet my Taipei friend for dinner and we ate at one of the stall. I had my first stinking tofu in Taiwan here. It turned out to be quite palatable. The stall also had vegetarian "tian bu la" (which is some kind of fried fish cake) and dumplings. The vegetarian fried oyster omelette is made with seaweed and beancurd skin and tasted much better than the stall near Yuanshan MRT.

For the rest of the evening, I just spend time going around the night market and chatting with my friend. I was interested to know about the gay community in Taiwan. One interesting perspective he provided was that he thought that it was the soft power through the literary works of authors like Bai Xian Yong (白先勇) which helped the gay community gain some acceptance in the early days.