Today we went to Beitou, which is a city right outside of
Taipei that is known for their hot springs. In this city there are hundreds of
hotels each with their own hot spring pool, but there is also a public one and
so we decided to try to go to that. When we got there though we found out that
only certain types of swimsuits are allowed in the hot springs. Fortunately,
all of the girls’ suits were okay; unfortunately, none of the boys’ were. The
suits needed to be a spandex material. They did sell ones that were acceptable
there for less than $10, but to buy them for all of the boys would have cost
too much. The boys need new ones anyway, but these were ones that are skin
tight and I don’t think any of them would have wanted to wear them once we got
back home. So the boys and I took a hike to Thermal Valley instead. This is the
lake that is the source for all of the hot springs in the town. It was really
cool. It is too hot to swim in (90 to 100 degrees Celsius), but it was fun just
feeling the heat and watching the steam rise from it. There was a sign there
that said that they used to let people boil their eggs in the lake, but too
many people got burns so they stopped all access to it. We did see several dead
dragon flies and could see the bubbles coming up from the bottom, so we could
tell it was really hot water. After the girls finished, we met back up and went
to a temple in Guandu. This was probably my favorite temple that we visited
while in Taiwan. We probably could have spent all day there. It was huge and
had several parts to it and even a large park area with a hill and huge statue
on top. But, since we didn’t have much time, we focused on the two caves that
the temple has. Both caves are old bomb shelters that they connected to the
temple and added statues of different gods in. They were pretty cool. The
temple seemed pretty lively too, but in a quiet worshipful sort of way. Rebecca
and I always enjoy seeing people worship at these temples because in many ways
it is very different from our beliefs, but it is still very meaning and
important to the people. It also seems like religion is a very big part of
their culture, which just isn’t the same any more in America.
At the train station for the hot spring town.
The girls getting ready to go in the hot springs.
The house of a well known calligraphy master.
The hot water. It is hard to see, but there was a lot of steam coming off of it.
At the library.
At the temple.
The entrance to the long temple tunnel with lots of different statues in it.
The children each picked out their favorite statues.
Julia said I had to get a picture with this one because it looked exactly like me.
It is hard to tell in this picture, but the roofs of the temples are always so amazing.
A second temple tunnel.
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