After work on Wednesday, Maggie took me and Jen to Beitou. The point of the trip was to have Taipei’s famous beef noodles and check out the famous hot springs. As we already tried beef noodles, we told Maggie we’d go anywhere she thought was good. She took us to a small, popular Japanese spot. She was surprised we didn’t have to wait for a table. The dinner itself was similar to local noodle in broth dishes (she got seafood and it had every little creature you could think of. I was not that daring) but when the waitress took our order, she attached it to a little tube that was on a wire hung from the ceiling into the kitchen. At the other end were four little bells. She then fired the tube down the line which alerted the kitchen. It was pretty neat. Jen gave it a go but it didn’t make it the whole way; it was harder than it looks! Oh the power of friction!
At dinner, I asked Maggie a burning question: what is the relationship between Taiwan and China? The answer took the rest of the dinner conversation. In a nutshell, Taiwan used to belong to mainland China. Japan and China have always been historically at odds and after a lost battle, China was forced to give up Taiwan to Japan. Japan ruled over Taiwan until the end of World War II and because of Japan’s loss, they had to give Taiwan back to China. As this didn’t happen until about 50 years ago, a vast majority of Taiwanese do not feel any affiliation to China. Taiwan has its own history, own currency, own president; they do not feel that they need another (that said, there are some that do, just not the majority). All that said, because Japan had such a stake in Taiwan’s history for so long, there are some major influences here. One was the restaurant we went to. One is the architecture (round windows, etc.). One is the hot springs.
Japan is HUGE on hot springs. When they discovered natural hot springs in the Beitou area (a suburb of Taipei), they maximized on it. Maggie presented us with three hot spring options: the traditional, most common option (communal and NAKED!!), a more intimate option (rent out a private one in a spa) and a modern twist on the traditional (communal but with bathing suits). I’ll give you one guess as to which one we went for! That’s right; communal and NAKED!!!
Did I getcha? I had a hard enough time putting my glowing white belly into a bikini! We got to the bath 20 minutes before it opened and waited in a big, eager line. We paid our $1.70 and got changed. The facility had 5 pools; three larger tiered ones and two smaller, round ones off to the side. We had no idea what the difference was so we went to the middle tier. A man was sitting at the entrance to that one and motioned for me to put my hair in a bun and then for us to pour water from the spring onto our feet from a bucket onto our feet. Once complete, we found two spots on the edge of the pool. MAN it was hot. I’ve only recently started sitting in hot tubs so I was pretty uncomfortable. We quickly met an American whose parents came from Taiwan who was in town to visit his Grandparents and we spent the majority of our stay with him and talking to a group of North Americans who were military wives living in Japan.
I have been to hot springs before and I expected them to smell like sulfur but they didn’t at all. Score!
It turns out that the hottest pool is at the top (48 degrees!), the 45 degree pool in the middle and another hot one at the bottom. The two off to the sides were freezing cold. We bopped between hot and cold (two very intense extremes) a few times before calling it a night and heading back to school to prep for the next day’s trip (we did stop at a supermarket on the way home and loaded up on goodies we couldn’t get in Bali: CHEESE, peanut butter, fresh fruit…. )! It was a fantastic experience to knock off the list!
At dinner, I asked Maggie a burning question: what is the relationship between Taiwan and China? The answer took the rest of the dinner conversation. In a nutshell, Taiwan used to belong to mainland China. Japan and China have always been historically at odds and after a lost battle, China was forced to give up Taiwan to Japan. Japan ruled over Taiwan until the end of World War II and because of Japan’s loss, they had to give Taiwan back to China. As this didn’t happen until about 50 years ago, a vast majority of Taiwanese do not feel any affiliation to China. Taiwan has its own history, own currency, own president; they do not feel that they need another (that said, there are some that do, just not the majority). All that said, because Japan had such a stake in Taiwan’s history for so long, there are some major influences here. One was the restaurant we went to. One is the architecture (round windows, etc.). One is the hot springs.
Japan is HUGE on hot springs. When they discovered natural hot springs in the Beitou area (a suburb of Taipei), they maximized on it. Maggie presented us with three hot spring options: the traditional, most common option (communal and NAKED!!), a more intimate option (rent out a private one in a spa) and a modern twist on the traditional (communal but with bathing suits). I’ll give you one guess as to which one we went for! That’s right; communal and NAKED!!!
Did I getcha? I had a hard enough time putting my glowing white belly into a bikini! We got to the bath 20 minutes before it opened and waited in a big, eager line. We paid our $1.70 and got changed. The facility had 5 pools; three larger tiered ones and two smaller, round ones off to the side. We had no idea what the difference was so we went to the middle tier. A man was sitting at the entrance to that one and motioned for me to put my hair in a bun and then for us to pour water from the spring onto our feet from a bucket onto our feet. Once complete, we found two spots on the edge of the pool. MAN it was hot. I’ve only recently started sitting in hot tubs so I was pretty uncomfortable. We quickly met an American whose parents came from Taiwan who was in town to visit his Grandparents and we spent the majority of our stay with him and talking to a group of North Americans who were military wives living in Japan.
I have been to hot springs before and I expected them to smell like sulfur but they didn’t at all. Score!
It turns out that the hottest pool is at the top (48 degrees!), the 45 degree pool in the middle and another hot one at the bottom. The two off to the sides were freezing cold. We bopped between hot and cold (two very intense extremes) a few times before calling it a night and heading back to school to prep for the next day’s trip (we did stop at a supermarket on the way home and loaded up on goodies we couldn’t get in Bali: CHEESE, peanut butter, fresh fruit…. )! It was a fantastic experience to knock off the list!