taiwan tiger 台灣的老虎

Chinese New Year Trip: Taipei

After landing in Taipei, I walked up to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, where I saw lots of really interesting calligraphy done during the Japanese occupation.  From there, I made a trip to BeiTou to soak in the hot springs.  I had a few other destinations in mind, notably the handicraft museum up in the hills.  From the Xin Bei Tou station, I walked uphill for about 30 minutes only to find a sign noting that the museum was closed for a year for renevations.  Argh.  Evidently, this was written in Chinese on some of the road signs that led up to the museum, but it escaped my notice.   Once up there, I walked next door to Shann Garden, where I was completely ignored by all staff members while I stood at the front desk waiting for someone to say something to me.  I left, annoyed, and went to the little tea house attached, where I met a much nicer and talkative staff member.  Had I not been by myself and had other plans, I would have stayed and had tea in this nice little tea house.  Skip the restaurant and "spa" and go to the tea house instead. 

A walk back down toward the train station led me by a few hot spring resorts.  I only like the private, no swimsuit kind, so that limited my choices somewhat.  I chose Spring City Resort, a resort that included an "afternoon tea" with their one hour soak for NT$780 , which seemed like a decent price for  hot springs near Taipei.  I was actually really  pleased when the afternoon tea was a delicious roasted chicken meal with soup, a great salad and dessert!  The bath room was nice, with the one exception of having no windows.  Other than that, though, a really reasonable and enjoyable hot spring experience.

Of course, all the walking around put me kind of late, so I missed the aboriginal Ketagalan Museum.  Once back in Taipei, I decided to head to Page One books, in Taipei 101.  Supposedly, they have an excellent English book selection.  While I would say it was indeed pretty good, I didn't find any of the books I was looking for. The staff didn't seem very knowledgeable either.  When I asked about local Taiwanese literature translated into English--of which there are a few titles--they pointed me to a section on classical Chinese literature.  Huh?  Whatever.  I picked up some good Taiwanese history books, though, which made me quite happy.

A big moon overhead, I left 101 to search for The Tavern, which I have heard about.  I had a GREAT Bangers and Mash for dinner.   

All in all, things went well in Taipei.  I got done all the things that are much harder to do in Kaohsiung--cultural museums, English books, great Western food.  Interestingly, while my Chinese pronunciation has never caused problems in Kaohsiung, I was misunderstood twice while in Taipei.  Once by a older taxi driver whose Chinese was heavily inflected by Taiwanese.  He confused Min Sheng and Min Cuan road, and started to take me to the wrong place.

The second time I had troubles would be on the trip back to Kaohsiung and would have a bit more inconvenient result.

Another spa?

While we are on the topic of hot springs and spas, here are some photos from a hot spring hotel near Puli.  We went up for a weekend in February, and stayed overnight.  There was a large spa area outdoors, with hot and cold pools, as well as a kid's pool area and jets that spray out from about 2 feet above your head, pummeling your back and shoulders into submission and better circulation.  The better springs, however, were inside in the Japanese style.  That is to say, outside you wear your swimming suit, and inside you wear only a smile.  The first night I went, there was only me and one other man (the naked hot springs are segregated) in the huge pool.  The second night, however, there was a crowd of about 10 men, but it was still better than the 30 people in the outside pool.  Fin told me, though, that her side had about 20 women on both nights.  The pool on the right is one of the outdoor pools.  I imagine in warmer weather, that one has more people, but it was a bit chilly out there when there were more protected pools to visit.

The rooms were actually a bit disappointing.  Small, and despite the fact that the hotel is in a beautiful valley flanked close by mountain slopes, the tiny tiny windows were up high on the wall.  Not just ours, every room had only a small narrow window.  Why?

Chiayi Spa

I'm moving house tomorrow, and I don't have DSL in my new place yet.  Here's why.  I go to China Telecom to ask about changing.  As always, one of the "guards" or information men comes up to me and asks me what I need to do.  I tell him, he repeats it back to me, then directs me to stand in line at desk 4.  After waiting at desk 4 for 15 minutes, I get to the front of the line, where the lady behind the counter tells me to go upstairs instead and to take a number.  Argh.  So I go upstairs and draw number 5400.  And they are now serving...uh, 5370.  After waiting another 10 minutes, during which we progressed to 5372, I give up and decide to go to a branch closer to my impeding appointment across town.  I get to the smaller branch, which is usually faster for paying bills, and pull another number.  And wait another 15 minutes.  At this point, I am really stressing my time limit for waiting in line, as I have to go and teach a class in 20 minutes, so I leave.  Yes, maybe that first place would have panned out in the end, but my suspicion was that I would have reached the front of the line just as I had to drive across town.  I'd like to think that it's all a trade off--things are sometimes cheaper here because they hire fewer people to do the job in order to keep labor costs low.   But not at China Telecom.  It's like a small city in there, with at least a hundred people working, some of them seeming to do nothing but hold up doorways or keep their desks from floating into the air.  At any rate, waiting in line is a definite part of life here, and I don't yet know when to budget 2 hours for what seems like a simple task.

While I am away from guaranteed DSL, here's a photo album of a trip to a Spa hotel in Chiayi.  Although this hotel has some of the same feeling as Taiwan's "love hotels," this place is more of a spa, really.  Some things are somewhat the same, what with the private garage and piped in romantic music (though some channels were just corny) and multiple light settings available at the push of a button, including "comfortable" and "conversation" (or something like that) and "romantic" light settings available on the remote that controlled everything in the room.   

All in all, the spa was a wonderful break from an otherwise very hectic month. 

Enjoy!

白河 Bai He Hot Spring

In January, a group of us from Kaohsiung took a day trip to 白河 to go to the Japanese style hot springs.  We tried to choose between the Toong Mao Resort and the neighboring and the much smaller 沐春 Mutsun Resort.  We eventually settled on the second.  The hot springs here are inside in private rooms, which was unexpected to me.  The waters also contain a gray mineral substance that is supposed to be good for your skin and such.  Our group split up into 3 private rooms for a good soak.  No bathing suits of course.  In this place, you must turn on the faucets yourself and fill the tub.  Our water contained less mud than I thought it would, but it was a nice refreshing soak nevertheless.  After we showered and dressed, we could sip a complementary tea on the veranda which overlooks a deep valley.  Aaah, the country!

Kenting in December

In December, Fin and I took a trip to Kenting, the resort area in the south of Taiwan.  Her business had a meeting down there and a guest was allowed, so I got to go.  Granted, I did spend much of Saturday grading student papers, but I decided that if I HAD to grade papers, grading at a nice resort where I could use the hot tub and spa as a break wasn’t a bad idea, all in all.  We went to resort called Chateau or something like that.  Their dinner buffet was extensive, which was great, but was also overwhelmed with the “ren-nao” of a live band performing jazz classics at decibel levels that made conversation difficult.  Later the restaurant featured a group performing traditional aboriginal songs.  Granted it was a bit of forced entertainment, but I didn’t mind it all that much considering it was all free for me, and I got a little bit of culture in there.  As like most places in Taiwan, winter is the best time for me to visit due to lack of other visitors.  It’s the Seattle in me—give me a cool, overcast day with no other visitors, and that’s where I am happiest on vacation.  Maybe why I like Penghu.  Fin also likes this the best, but for her it has something to do with not being subjected to the sun.

We took the last afternoon to go to the Kenting Aquarium, one of several in Taiwan.  I have decided that aquariums are indeed one of the best ways to while away an afternoon of learning.  The only significant interruption was a group or tourists from the Mainland pushing and shoving and…well, “group-touring” their way through the aquarium.  Fortunately, they were in and out before we finished. But the fish were beautiful and the day quite romantic in all... 

The Spa Experience in Taiwan

A long overdue update commences.  Recently, I have been studying a lot and it is definitely paying off.  My listening skills have improved immensely so that I can understand a lot more of conversations, both those directed at me and those around me.  Last week and this week have been swimming weeks.  One thing that Taiwan has a fair number of are "spas"--a sort of water park, jacuzzi park, steam room, swimming pool thing all put together.  After I first got here, I went to one on Mintzu Road and really enjoyed it.  Since I have lost a little weight, I have decided to keep it off by swimming more often.  Recently, I have gone to test out Kaohsiung's other two spas, Nan-He Spa and  大肚魚水上世界      Da Du Yu Water World (Big Belly Fish).  You can buy discount tickets, so I thought I would test them out and see which I liked better.  This is the general layout of these places:  All of them have water jets of varying intensity that you can stand under and get a message.  Some are light slaps on the back, while others are painful for the first few seconds until you are used to the abrasion.  When you are done with these, your newly reddened back feels warm and toasty.  Then move on to the bubble beds.   Essentially, you lie down on a recliner in the water as bubbles burble underneath you.  Other people seem to like these a bit more than I do, but they are ok.  The feeling, depending upon the strength of the bubbles, is either one of floating in a glass of champagne or off laying in a frying pan while oil spatters all around you.  Of course, the water is usually room temperature.  Now take a break and soak for a while.  Many different jacuzzis are available.  Some are standard, some have herbs added for "health."  My favorite is the Chinese herb pool, which is usually brown in color and smells like some Chinese soups.  I always feel like a chicken when I am soaking in this one due to the odor, so it is now known to us as the "Chicken Soup Pool."  Nan-he SPA (www.nhspa.com.tw) has the largest variety of hot pools--a lemongrass pool, a rose pool, a sunflower pool, an energy pool, a Chinese herb pool, a mineral pool, and a pool with some sort of radiative heat from charcoal rocks or something.  There is also the cold pool.  Part of Chinese philosophy of good health includes balancing heat and cold, so there is always a VERY cold (5-10 degrees C) pool of water to jump into to build strength.  It's kind of like running from the sauna to the snowbank in Sweden.     Ok, on to the saunas and steam rooms, some of which have a very refreshing salt that you rub on your body while you sit in the steam room.  Finally, maybe some laps in the pool for exercise.  Also, Da Du Yu (they don't have a website) has 2 or 3 indoor water slides for the...uh, kids (yes, it is fun!) while Nan He has an outdoor swimming course that winds around and periodically dumps water on the heads of the kids as they swim under.  Finally, Nan-he (which is open 24 hours in summer!) also has a live band and karaoke.  Basically, you can spend a full 3 or 4 hours at one of these places without blinking.  It is something I really love about living here.  Every time I go, too, I think about how my family would love to spend a day at the spa.  I know my mom and dad would love the massage pools, and I can see my sisters bubbling on the bubble seats like they were in champagne, while little jackson and maddie play on the slides and in the pool with the many other screaming kids (who always have their own pool!).  One thing about the Nan-he website--you see all those girls in bikinis?  Yeah, not really.  If you stepped under one of those water jets while wearing a bikini, you would find it halfway across the pool or caught in one of the fake trees that line all the pool areas!