Day 3 and boy are we tired but our stay here is limited and so we’re determined to squeeze in as much as possible (we can rest back in Penang).
After an MRT train trip we reached the town of Beitou where the star attraction is the naturally occurring thermal springs and spas in the area. Our sources though had mentioned that next to the station was (surpise) another market place so off we went.
Being big spenders we almost gave an old man a fit when I started to break two bananas of a hand that he was selling. Not on! Buy the whole hand or nothing! So we started to walk away. This upset him so he broke two off for us and charged us $0.40 NTD (~2 cents).
We ate the bananas as we walked and looked at the produce. At one stand we bought a box of “Duck Rice” to share (3rd pic). I must say that Asian people must have iron constitutions when it comes to eating. The fish for sale sits out in the open and few hygene rules are applied before sale. An interesting stall had graded sizes of prawns/shrimp (orange colour) and fish (white to grey) lined up in trays on a table. On another table was the bigger catch and behind the lot a man was scaling fish we’d throw back as a tiddler.
Anyway, after satifying our hunger for food and sights we meandered along the river to the thermal spring. It was a beautiful place despite the mild smell of sulphur. Rocks were showing the yellow/green signs of sulphur condensation and steam was rising all around, even out of the rock walls enclosing the pond. It is an unusual sight in a beautiful setting and it is in amongst high rise buildings.
On the walk back to the township we encountered a man walking his dog who in turn was walking his favourite orange toy.We had decided to return to Taipei by bus because the MRT (Metro Rail Trans) goes underground and we see more by bus. Fantastic until we realised that the locals gave us wrong info and had us get the 266 bus on the opposite side of the road and we ended up at the depot not the city. Luckily our 5 day “easy ticket” allowed us unlimited travel so we changed buses and did the hour twenty trip back by road till we saw Taipei 101 and we knew we were close enough to get off and walk home.
We dumped our bags in the unit and seeing rain out on the street decided to not go far for tea. Just up the road we found a restaurant called Koriya (a play on Korea perhaps as it was Korean style eating). This turned out to be another huge ‘pigout’. There was a large pot on a burner on our table. The waiter started the gas and heated up the pot before throwing in the base of the meal being stock, onions and beef strips. It was an all-you-can-eat affair so we ordered at the urging of the waiter a bit of everything. As the base ‘soup’ in the pot boiled we added at our leisure the contents of our order which was on a tray beside the table. There were 6 types of mushroom, 4 types of beef, squid, oysters, fish, and vegetables. A very tasty and filling “hot pot”. Desert and drinks were unlimited and the whole lot cost us around $40 AUD. One final photo of ‘101’ and a nearby building in the wet and we were home and ready for bed.
What a day. Tomorrow will be another big one so watch for that post as well.