Day 8

One of the things Christina wanted to do during her trip to Taiwan is to hit up the hot springs. Well, both Hweimi and I have never gone to a hot spring before, so we didn’t even know where to start. All we knew was that New Beitou is a fairly popular hot springs spot, so that’s what were aiming for.

My aunt suggested the public hotsprings since it’s only 40NT, which is a STEAL. But, swim suits are required and both Hweimi and I didn’t think of bringing up swim suits to Taiwan in the middle of winter. We almost thought of just buying some swim suits for it, until Hweimi found a lovely picture of the public hot springs that totally dissuaded us from the idea of going there.

The picture showed a REALLY crowded hot springs with LOTS AND LOTS of old people and kids. Since we were thinking on going on a Sunday, the crowded hot springs didn’t look particularly relaxing despite the traditional hot springs look it gave off… and Hweimi and I laughed for a good 30 seconds straight.

So we opted for a private room instead.

BUT FIRST, we set out for Dansui, which is kind of like the Fisherman’s Wharf of Taipei. (It’s spelled “Tamsui” nor for some reason, it was still Dansui last summer)

I remember coming here last summer on pretty much the hottest day ever.  This time though, the weather was quite bearable. I even bought ice cream! It was a combo of mango and strawberry. Christina also got a chocolate/vanilla mix, each was I think 20NT?

I’ve never tried the sausage in sausage thing in Taiwan, though lots of people have talked about it. So Hweimi and I decided to give this place a try, since it had so many flavors, each for 50NT. And damn, it’s good! It has sausage wrapped with sticky rice, and other toppings thrown in depending on what kind you order. I think mines had mustard greens, ginger, and chili sauce.

I’m pretty tired of paying 4-5 bucks for crappy calamari that’s mostly batter back home. And finding this at Dansui for 50NT, I was especially elated.

There was a lot of people holding the cool potato chip sticks walkin’ around, so we also decided to try one. It’s one continuous strip of potato! Apparently there are a whole bunch of different flavors, but we got the combo flavor… though all of them tasted pretty much the same to me.

大雞排 - Big Chicken Cutlet (55NT) From Hot Star. Yeah, “big” is an understatement.

Dansui was definitely just as festive as I remember it to be, with a bit less people on the weekdays. We went around the outer shops that were across from the water but didn’t have enough time to go through the inner alleys to try out food since we still had to head over to New Beitou for Hot Springs. Though! First, I took my friends over to the Starbucks by the water near sunset (though the sunset was obscured by the clouds, what a shame) and took a well needed break. This Starbucks features a balcony that faces the water and has a view of the sunset, so we sat there to rest. We discussed how convenient and cool it would be to be able to come by here between classes to do homework and chill with friends if we lived here. Sighhh.

New Beitou - From Beitou, there’s a MRT that takes you directly to New Beitou (at a painstakingly slow speed), which has a Hot Springs like theme to it. It quite reminded me of the Cat Bus from My Neighbor Totoro, actually.

Hot Springs was… interesting. And that is all I’m going to say. Though, we found a pretty okay place for 920NT total for the 3 of us, with a 1 hour time limit. Er. We smelled prettyyyy weird afterwards due to the sulfur.

We were pretty hungry after chillin in sulfur hot springs water for an hour so on the way back, we stopped by Shilin Nightmarket for food… ONCE AGAIN! I got another sausage in sausage thing, and my Aiyu/Tapioca drink again :) Hweimi got her fried noodles AGAIN. All in all, it was a good yet long and tiring day.

Ah, and I forgot to put the picture of the news reporters from the Shilin Nightmarket on my last blog post. Anyway I’ll just throw in the pictures from the nightmarket!