If there was ever a ‘right’ place to experience a Taiwanese typhoon, it’s from a hill-top, hot-spring spa while overlooking the mountainous district of Beitou.
While central Taipei is full of things to do, the surrounding city suburbs, especially Maokong and Beitou, certainly deserve some of your attention. We took the MRT subway to Beitou, the home of open-air hot springs in Northern Taipei, and spent the afternoon exploring Thermal Valley and sheltering from a typhoon inside a private hot-spring spa.
In Search of Thermal Valley
When the Japanese ruled Taiwan between 1895 to 1945, Beitou’s geothermal valley was one of the country’s scenic wonders, so I was keen to check it out. From the word ‘valley’, you would expect to stumble into a sprawling area of the city, but this is more of a small park hidden among the surrounding trees and buildings. It’s always important to manage expectations.
The sight of the steam rising from the green sulphuric waters is pretty surreal; it’s a hot, misty blanket of steam (with a distinct smell) that gets blown across the basin by the breeze. The water reaches temperatures of up to 100 degrees (celsius), so the walk around the edge of the basin is similar to a sauna experience – with the exception that it is outdoors and you are surrounded by rocks and park foliage. You’ll only be there for 20 minutes or so, any longer than that and you’ll be dripping in sulphur residue.
A typhoon trek to a hot spring spa
While in Taiwan, we were relatively lucky with the weather – until we left Thermal Valley and went in search of the Former Residence of Marshall Zhang, the hill-top grounds where the he was held under house arrest for 40 years. That’s when the skies opened and soaked not only us, but everything that was inside my little red backpack. – including my camera bag.
We followed the road out of central Beitou and we walked – and walked some more – getting crankier the harder the rain fell. At one stage, with our shoes literally squelching with every step, we decided that this hot spring spa must have closed down because, well, how had we not found it already?! Cue crankiness. A few minutes later, having continued to trudge through the downpour, we arrived at the hill-top sanctuary and the rest of the afternoon was glorious… until, of course, we had to put back on our soaked-through clothes and shoes to head back to central Taipei a couple of hours later.
When I say that this place was a sanctuary, I mean it. You get a private room with a hot spring bath and big open bay-windows that look across the entire district. It’s a switch-off from the city bustle, and the only thing that could have made it better would have been to bring a bottle of champagne in my backpack for a glass of bubbles while enjoying the hot spring bath.
Beitou’s hot springs & Taiwanese Beer
Beitou’s hot spring spa experience cost approximately 1500 Taiwan Dollars (approx. 175 dirham or just over 45 euro for two people), which is pricey enough for Taiwan, but cheap when compared to UAE spas that definitely don’t bring the natural hot springs into a private spa suite.
Once the experience was over (and we had attempted blowdrying our clothes from the journey to the spa), we headed back out to the wooden Tea House where we sat for snacks and beer; it was a cosy place to watch the storm rolling over the region – until it became clear that the storm was not going away anytime soon. At which time, we took a taxi down to Beitou train station and headed back to our hotel for a change of clothes before our last night in Taipei.
Another hidden gem on the outskirts of Taipei is the mountainous tea region of Maokong; check out its scenic gondolas, YaoYue Tea House and epic sunset views.
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