He TIRED!!, I’m tired. It’s been an eventful few days, and I’m so excited, my birthday’s coming up, so I’ve actually been more out of the house, out of the apartment, and exploring and seeing things, and taking time away from the computer as well. Just to enjoy my birthday, and just to enjoy my time here, because I’ve never been to a place like this. It’s really wonderful to be able to come here, and not to be rushed. Not to have anybody tell you too much, and the work that I have with the contract, it’s fine, it’s not even that much per hours, per day, that I really need to be on the computer. You need to be available for meetings or anything like that. It gives me an opportunity to really explore, to really be here, to get to enjoy lunches, to get to enjoy dinners, hot pot—I had hot pot again.
I walked around afterward; it gives me a chance to relax, to be more leisure-like, and that opportunity to be more leisure-like, it’s really unmatched if you think about it, because when you’re leisurely, when you take your time, when you do things on the schedule that you’d like, it makes a very big difference in how you can approach things, and how you’re able to process things, and just enjoy things, because you’re not being rushed, you can enjoy something, you can say, oh, you know, let me see what this little night market has, because you’re not rushing off to work, or rushing back home, because you need to be up for work in the morning, or you need to be somewhere, and that’s the thing, you always need to be somewhere.
Life in New York City, sometimes that’s exactly how it feels, it feels like you need to be somewhere, but all the time, you just always need to be somewhere. Here, I don’t need to be anywhere, in fact, I’m just going to places where I want to be, and it makes a very big difference, it makes such a huge difference. I want to tell you about an experience, so I want to really bring you into this experience.
It’s a little chilly here, it’s December, my birthday’s coming up, right? And I talked to my friend, he was like, oh, are you not going to the hot springs? And I was like, wait, what do you mean? He said to me that there are hot springs, the Beitu Hot Springs, they’re very famous hot springs here in Taiwan, or in Taipei, specifically. So, I decided to venture out there, he couldn’t accompany me, so I had to do this all on my own. It was another adventure in being a nomad and finding my way to somewhere where I surely had no way to know that I was going to find my way there correctly or easily, but that’s a lot of the adventure of being a nomad, a lot of the adventure of being a traveler, is going and seeing these things, right? So, I got the directions, I got the subway map, and I set out.
You have to take the train or the metro from where I was, which is the green line, to the red line, to Tamsui, and then from Tamsui, there’s another train that you take that goes specifically just from Tamsui to Beitou. And then at Beitou, you get off, and then you take the number 20 bus. This sounds a lot complicated, but I assure you, it really wasn’t so hard.
Once you have, like, Google Maps or you have a navigation system, and that’s what’s so wonderful about having Google Maps and having the ability to navigate with these things, with these tools, I don’t know how people… Well, I do know how people did it before, but it would have been so much more difficult to navigate with not having turn-by-turn or the ability to recognize that you’ve made a wrong turn because you’re not on the path that the navigation is telling you to be on. The entrance isn’t very clear-cut, and I went later in the evening, so it also wasn’t so easy to see. But once I used, again, the map and figured out my geolocation and seeing where on the street it was, because I did get off at the right bus stop, I found the entrance. By the entrance, there are a few rules, there are lockers for you to put your stuff up in case you don’t want to take it inside, which is very convenient. I would make use of those. I didn’t really bring anything, actually, to lock up in the lockers outside.
All I brought was a pair of swim trunks that I could not use. When you go in, part of the rules of the hot springs is that you have to wear special hot spring pants. You’re not supposed to have anything on you in terms of sunblock or lotion or anything like that to contaminate the natural springs, because all of this is natural. It’s coming from the mountains, and the hot springs are flowing down in a cascading way down the mountain. So the hot springs, when they flow in, they also flow out to lower hot springs, and that’s how it’s tiered up. So when you go in, when you first enter, you have to pay your money.
I think that I bought the swim trunks. If you don’t buy the swim trunks, I think it’s only $200, but it’s nothing much. You get your hot pants or your hot spring pants, and you can go— they advise you to take a shower first before you go in, and it’s customary to do so. You go in, you take a shower, there are lockers, there’s a locker room, a men’s locker room. It’s also a women’s locker room for you to change into your swimwear or your hot spring pants.
You go in, you change, you take a shower, and you can go to the hot springs. When you go to the hot springs, at the top, they’re the hotter ones, because I think it’s just coming out of the source. And as you go down, some of them are more concrete, more or less—they’re less stone.
Some of them are like—you can tell that they’re stone, and they’ve been carved out, and they’ve been meticulously handmade. And then there are others lower down, or slab, like concrete. I think that maybe they just created it after because of the people that wanted to come. To add more capacity. Why not? But the ones at the top are very hot.
They tell you not to put the water in your mouth, not to drink it, obviously, but not to really get it in your face or anything, because there are lots of natural microbes in there that you really shouldn’t be getting too much into your eyes or anything like that. So be careful around that. But when you go into the top of the hot spring, right, when you put your toe in, it’s not boiling. It’s this really warm, comfortable temperature. And then there’s this aroma that you get. It’s not eucalyptus or anything like that, but it’s a nice aroma that kind of keeps you more relaxed.
It really does relax you. And even when you sit down, you’re more relaxed. But as you’re dipping your feet in, you really feel the surrounding warmth. I’m not sure what type of minerals there are in the water, but it feels so relaxed and so soothing to sit there. And the closer you sit to the little springs or places where the hot spring or hot water comes out, it’s the hotter it is. So you can even temper yourself within one pool by the temperature of where the water is coming out versus where it’s going away into the next source of hot spring or the next below.
It’s really a cool experience to be able to temper yourself and to sit there and to feel it. It relaxes you so much. I was so relaxed by the time that I was finished with those hot springs. It’s an experience to go to the Beitou Hot Springs. Unfortunately for me, by the time I got back down the mountain, I was a little bit cool. And it was a little bit later than the stores were open.
I didn’t get to experience the hot pot there as well. So I was trying to time it, but it didn’t quite work out with that timing for me, unfortunately. I would definitely suggest going to Beitou Hot Springs and immerse yourself in that water. Just feel it, let it wash over you. It’s a very good winter experience for the Taiwanese. And to experience that with some of the locals there, a lot of the people that were there were older gentlemen, it seemed, at that time. I had a good time sitting there. I said hello to a few that did speak English. And I got to hang out with the locals at their hot spring, their hot spring place.
The other days were spent walking around. I went to the museum, I went to MOCA. It was such a wonderful… It was so wonderful seeing those exhibits there. Some of the artists are really very creative. And a lot of it was in English to read. But one of the things that really stood out was the exhibit on the indigenous people of Taiwan Island. The Taiwan Island, Formosa, was home to a group of indigenous people that were dark-skinned. I would never have known this. I was like, wait, are you serious? I kid you not.
Go to the museum, you will find this out. This is one of another great things about going into a country and being there on more of a leisurely scale. You can go to a museum and experience an exhibit that isn’t necessarily about their history, but about the culture. They did put a few dates in there, but it was more about understanding that there was a culture on Formosa Island before. And then the Japanese that came there, and the Chinese that came. And the occupation of certain groups of the armies. Then there was splintering of the groups. Because now, obviously, Taiwan is an island where both of those groups exist. And they have their own rich cultural history.
At the same time, it’s not exactly the same. They’re not exactly the same. They are a mixing of those two cultures in a way. So, to see that exhibit was quite outstanding of an experience. I can’t speak more highly of going to that museum and seeing that exhibit. Because it really told the story. When you’re thinking about Pocahontas, that’s like the quintessential American story of how the Native Americans came, and the white man came, and this, this, and that. This is pretty much that same story. And to see it mirrored in a culture here, all the way on the other side of the world.
This little black boy is so… I’m stunned. I’m so excited and so happy to have experienced that. To know that—learn that about a different culture. See the differences and such stark similarities between our different cultures and our different nations. It’s really quite interesting. You have to go and see the museum.
Taipei has a lot of interesting things. I also went to the underground mall. I went to the calligraphy writing. I saw the modern art museum as well. It was really cool. It’s been quite a few packed in days, the last few days. Just trying my best to see all the things I can. Because I gave myself this leisure time. I wanted to make sure, explore. It makes no sense to come all the way over to the other side of the world, all the way to Taiwan, and not explore. Not to see the world, not to see things, not to be a part of things.
That’s that. Signing off. Later.
-Tall Black Nomad