Eighth stop: Beitou Hot Spring Museum
While walking, Xiao Hei told is our next main stop was the Beitou Hot Spring Museum. But there were nice places to see along the way, and he’ll show us one of them later.
Along the way, we saw some streams and wooden pathways that made the park more easier to navigate given the uneven terrain. Pleasantly clean and quiet as well. Walking to our next tour stop wasn’t a chore at all, given all these nice things to see along the way.
We soon reached an old building with red bricks on the outside. We soon learned from Xiao Hei that this was an old public hot spring bath house built during the old Japanese colonial period in Taiwan, and was restored and repurposed by local preservation efforts into a museum due to its cultural and historical significance. We arrived late into the afternoon, maybe around 3pm. We should be safe within the museum’s time of operations.
Once we were inside, the museum’s attendants instructed us to take off our shoes (socks still OK) and gave us a locker to put our shoes in. They were old lockers with wooden keys, which was very cool. I got red slippers to wear. I kind of felt like a pope. I put the big wooden key in my pocket, and proceeded with the group.
Once we were inside, Xiao Hei told us we could go on our own to tour the entirety of what the museum had to offer, we have one hour to do so, and meet him at the exit later. So we did. I went in a counterclockwise manner, as I immediately saw the exhibit near the museum stamp area, and figured I could start with there.
Shots galore then began. I had a lot more shots, but these should suffice.
There was a generous rest area at the middle, a slipper-free padded tatami mats where people can sit and admire the view outside. Slightly to its side to the north, there was a small souvenir section where people could buy some more trinkets festooned with Beitou designs. For me, I already had three earlier. But as I saw there was a booth where you could make your own button pin with a design of your own choosing, I had to get one. I think it was 50NTD per pin. I chose a small blue one with a design marking Beitou’s renown as a hot spring place (design was a bathing pail floating on water with a white towel hanging out on the side).
Going in deeper the museum displays, a lot of the things shown there intrigued me. Definitely the Japanese left their mark on this place. They are a large part of this place’s history as well, as a lot of what they left behind still remains as the town’s signature – hot spring baths.
The museum proudly displayed a lot of the old bathhouse facilities preserved inside, some were movie posters of long ago, some were old machines like cameras, some were old-timey dining stuff. But the stars of the building were the bathing house amenities. Which were very cool, by the way, no complaints. Fascinating. Clean and well-preserved. I mentally compared it to the bath houses in Japan as well, and these were not far off. The Japanese knew what they were doing way back then. They have not deviated greatly from what worked, the basics were all there at the museum as I remembered. Some of the old bathing tools and period clothing were preserved and shown as displays.
Once I toured every nook and cranny of the place, I rested for a bit at the tatami mat area. I was about 20 minutes early anyway. Best thing for my legs and feet too. 5 minutes before the meetup time, I went up to go there. But I saw the museum stamping section, which had a lot of tourist brochures. I got one in English, and had some fun stamping the back of it with two of the stamps the booth provided. There’s some sort of old-timey appeal to the stamping process that I liked.
By the way, I thought that the red slippers they provided for us were unisex and freesize, so it was around 1-and-a-half size too small for my Size 11 feet. Was kind of cumbersome to walk with, but I got used to it soon after. I was just worried I might rip it at the seams or the stitchings could get loose. But nothing happened, so that was good.
I had enough time left to collect my shoes, put then on at the entrance, and meet up with Xiao Hei at a shed near the entrance. Once the group was completed and ready, he told us the next stop was our final tour stop before we were to go back to Taipei. One more main attraction to look forward to, and I was eager to see the last one.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
Leave a comment