Xingbeitou--Hot Spring Area Northern Taipei--ReLaXaTiOn

If you want to let go, and experience COMPLETE and TOTAL relaxion—you need to check out the hot-springs in this city!! You think you know about R & R…but trust me, you are a rookie compared to these professional hot springers.
Xingbeitou is well known for its hot springs. It is located north east of Taipei, and takes us 40 minutes to get there from our apartment. We’ve been back to Xingbeitou twice since we took a 3 day weekend there.
The mineral buried deep in the ground by the opening of the hot springs is RADIOACTIVE!! But don’t worry J by the time it reaches you, its no longer a threat…it transmutes into sulfur and other beneficial minerals before it reaches the earth’s surface. Here we are at Hell Valley. Its a very famous tourist destination-- a big open air pool of the hotspring water, you can see huge tufts of steam wafting from itThere are several free touristic points of interest in Xingbeitou; the hot spring museum (the above pic is Bert at this museum), the Xingbeitou library, the aboriginal Indian museum

Here is the outdoor public hot spring we like. It costs $1.00 USD to get in, and the scenery is great—other than the prunie old people schloping around giggle giggle (go there and you will see what I mean). Bert had to buy a Speedo the first time we went there woo hoo sexy man—no swim trunks allowed! The rules are pretty strict at hot springs here.
Bathe before entering, keep hair from touching the water, bathe yourself with the hot spring water before entering the bath, no swimming, no sitting with just your feet/legs in the water, obviously don’t drink alcohol and bathe, don’t talk loud, etc.. there is this guy with red shorts on who will blow his whistle at you if you are doing something wrong, he will also assist you in your bathing—suggest which pools to go into and when.
There are 3 temperatures of hot pools and 2 COLD pools. It feels SOOOO good to go back and forth between cold and hot. You get out of the hot—and have dense clouds of steam evaporating off of you—it’s very visible by night, especially when people are back lit. Everyone is walking around with trails of steam following them.
When you get into the cold pool, you feel your heart beat really hard. It almost feels like your heart is in your neck!! You can see ripples around you from your own heart beat. The first time I experienced this I thought I was having a mild heart attack! But then we learned it benefits your body in similar ways to exercise—your heart is working very hard pumping blood. I f you let yourself relax while in this state, you almost feel buzzed—reality is defiantly altered—you feel pure and rejuvenated.
We had our own private hot spring in our hotel room. The typical Japanese way to bathe is to submerse the entire body (up to the neck) in water until you feel uncomfortably hot—out in, out in, then dry off and rest for ½ hour under a warm blanket. In our hotel room we had a feather down comforter—I totally melted after all the bathing and knapping! We went to this famous Japanese Tea House at the top of a mountain in Xin bei tou--awesome experience-great food!!
Bert looking the expensive tea house menu over--we ended up getting unbelievably embellished and presented sushi, fruit, salad, custard, kimchie, jasmine tea, and some house black tea
administering the "bert brewing technique"

Here in Taiwan, 17 objects are necessary to brew a proper pot of tea, here I am (Megan) beginning the demonstration....are you paying attention!?!!

The outside facade of the famous mountain top tea house -- notice the cat..we were calling him over, tryig to get his attention and he disappeared behind the building, then as we took this shot he dashed out -- into the picture!!

Megan Dupuy

Relocate Taiwan

Albert Dupuy