Electric Mountain Hot Spring
Blog: Snarky Tofu - 29 July 2009
By: Joshua Samuel Brown
At Grandma Nitti's in Shida about to enjoy her fine 180 NT breakfast special with a bottomless cup of coffee, sorely needed as I got to sleep around eight AM after a night spent hotspringing and hiking around the back end of Yamingshan with Dave aka HANDSOME DAVE. So this blog is a love shout out, and when I come across something worth shouting LOVE at it'll be indicated with BOLD typeface.
Hell, let's make it retroactive!
Dave and I met up at 10pm, because he and I were both on the Easy Money train until then. I got there early and bought a padded clamshell for this laptop, because it was too cheap to pass up. Taiwan is filled with cheap computer buying opportunities and I have my eye on a new Acer mini for the next leg of the journey.
A dove just landed on the picnic chair across from me.
Anyway, Dave and I caught the last 260 bus up Yamingshan, hit a Mosburger by the gates of Wenhua University, then hit the road with thumbs out. Dave was still in his teacher clothes, so he either looked respectable or like a serial killer. Anyway, there is almost no car traffic on the Taipei - Jingshan road at eleven PM on a Tuesday night in summer. Nonetheless, within ten minutes we'd been picked up by two guys who were driving around the mountains listening to Taiwanese hip-hop and smoking cigarettes, who drove us all the way to Ma Tsao hot-springs and wouldn't let us give them a fen. Hitchhiking in Taiwan is almost always like this.
Ma Tsao was almost empty, and I had a pocket full of coupons they'd given me on the last visit, so it only cost 100 NT (that's 3.35 US for those of you not in Taiwan) for the both of us to get in. It was midnight, and there were maybe six other people there. All but one of who were gone within the hour (lightweights). I noticed that the place had changed, but couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Taiwan is constantly upgrading. Everything. Always.
Dave and I hung out in the warm pool, did a sulpher mud bath, and got the crap pounded out of us by the jackhammer-like hot-spring shower pipe. At around two, I realized what it was that was different. They'd installed some sort of new stone tub. It was an unusual one, being separated into two spaces, each really only big enough for two people. Dave and I went to check it out, and one side of the tub had what appeared to be a strip of plastic molding with holes in it just under the water line. There was no movement around it, so I figured it was some sort of newfangled jet-stream jacuzzi that operated by sensor. Swell.
We got in, and I forget who vocalized it first, but something was definitely strange about this pool. It was weird. Painful. But in a good way; familiar. I had felt this sensation before.
A couple of years back I bought an item at a health supermarket in Guangzhou, a brick sized white box with a couple of knobs and switches and wires and pads coming out of the top. You were meant to wet the pads and stick 'em on various muscles, then flick the switch to shoot varying pulses of amperage into your body. On low it was interesting. On medium, intense. On high, very painful.
Standing neck deep in this pool of water, muscles twitching and jumping, It suddenly occured to me. The tub was electrified.
And you thought water and electricity didn't mix.
Dave thought it was freaky & painful. Once I got accustomed to the sensation I got into it, though I could only stand it for ten minutes.
Three different pools of sulpher water, a jackhammer hot-spring shower, a mud bath, and a view of the mountains and ocean aren't enough. We need to add an electrically charged hot-spring pool, pronto.
Constant upgrading. Taiwan rocks.
Dave and I slept on the side of the hot water pool until 4:30 and got dressed, figuring we'd catch a lift with someone on the way out. But there was no someone, no couples leaving from the private rooms, it being summer and Tuesday and all. The guy at the front counter told us there'd be a bus passing by at six thirty. We had some fried rice noodles and went back to the pools until six, when the counter guy, getting off his shift, gave us a lift into Jingshan (charged us a hundred - less than a taxi) where we caught a bus straight into Taipei.
Yes. I love Taiwan. The closer I get to leaving - even if only for a while - the more I love the place.
Hell, let's make it retroactive!
Dave and I met up at 10pm, because he and I were both on the Easy Money train until then. I got there early and bought a padded clamshell for this laptop, because it was too cheap to pass up. Taiwan is filled with cheap computer buying opportunities and I have my eye on a new Acer mini for the next leg of the journey.
A dove just landed on the picnic chair across from me.
Anyway, Dave and I caught the last 260 bus up Yamingshan, hit a Mosburger by the gates of Wenhua University, then hit the road with thumbs out. Dave was still in his teacher clothes, so he either looked respectable or like a serial killer. Anyway, there is almost no car traffic on the Taipei - Jingshan road at eleven PM on a Tuesday night in summer. Nonetheless, within ten minutes we'd been picked up by two guys who were driving around the mountains listening to Taiwanese hip-hop and smoking cigarettes, who drove us all the way to Ma Tsao hot-springs and wouldn't let us give them a fen. Hitchhiking in Taiwan is almost always like this.
Ma Tsao was almost empty, and I had a pocket full of coupons they'd given me on the last visit, so it only cost 100 NT (that's 3.35 US for those of you not in Taiwan) for the both of us to get in. It was midnight, and there were maybe six other people there. All but one of who were gone within the hour (lightweights). I noticed that the place had changed, but couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Taiwan is constantly upgrading. Everything. Always.
Dave and I hung out in the warm pool, did a sulpher mud bath, and got the crap pounded out of us by the jackhammer-like hot-spring shower pipe. At around two, I realized what it was that was different. They'd installed some sort of new stone tub. It was an unusual one, being separated into two spaces, each really only big enough for two people. Dave and I went to check it out, and one side of the tub had what appeared to be a strip of plastic molding with holes in it just under the water line. There was no movement around it, so I figured it was some sort of newfangled jet-stream jacuzzi that operated by sensor. Swell.
We got in, and I forget who vocalized it first, but something was definitely strange about this pool. It was weird. Painful. But in a good way; familiar. I had felt this sensation before.
A couple of years back I bought an item at a health supermarket in Guangzhou, a brick sized white box with a couple of knobs and switches and wires and pads coming out of the top. You were meant to wet the pads and stick 'em on various muscles, then flick the switch to shoot varying pulses of amperage into your body. On low it was interesting. On medium, intense. On high, very painful.
Standing neck deep in this pool of water, muscles twitching and jumping, It suddenly occured to me. The tub was electrified.
And you thought water and electricity didn't mix.
Dave thought it was freaky & painful. Once I got accustomed to the sensation I got into it, though I could only stand it for ten minutes.
Three different pools of sulpher water, a jackhammer hot-spring shower, a mud bath, and a view of the mountains and ocean aren't enough. We need to add an electrically charged hot-spring pool, pronto.
Constant upgrading. Taiwan rocks.
Dave and I slept on the side of the hot water pool until 4:30 and got dressed, figuring we'd catch a lift with someone on the way out. But there was no someone, no couples leaving from the private rooms, it being summer and Tuesday and all. The guy at the front counter told us there'd be a bus passing by at six thirty. We had some fried rice noodles and went back to the pools until six, when the counter guy, getting off his shift, gave us a lift into Jingshan (charged us a hundred - less than a taxi) where we caught a bus straight into Taipei.
Yes. I love Taiwan. The closer I get to leaving - even if only for a while - the more I love the place.
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