Taiwan Travel Adventure: Day 3 - Yangmingshan National Park

     This was my last day in Taipei, and incidentally, this tour was just a waste of money. I should have traveled to Yangmingshan myself.  I felt cheated, really.  Not because of Yangminshan; you see, it's absolutely gorgeous and serene.  Rather, because of the tour guide who didn't show us much around the huge park.  I think we only stayed in the park for less than an hour, and the tour was supposed to be four hours! Sheesh!

     This time around, we had a new tour guide, who was also the driver, and he had a lady companion with him.  There were only three of us in the tour, a kid about 9 years old and her aunt, from Sabah, Indonesia, since the other tourists cancelled their trip.

     When we left the city, it was raining; but the rain hadn't caught up yet in the mountains.  However, the guide was so uninspired and our tour was so short, almost a rip-off.  Ah, and I wanted to visit Yangmingshan and explore those paths; I wanted to see silver grass gently swaying with the wind.  I wanted to do more...not just climb some steps and circle the park within less than a 500-meter radius.  Argh!  How I wish I had my previous tour guide with me.  And the new guide wasn't informative.  Not at all.  Well, he's kind and all, but must he wait for my tour companion to ask me if I wanted my picture taken before he shapes up and offers to take mine?  At least my aunt-and-nephew companions were pretty cool and nice; and they even pity me because I could not speak Mandarin and they could, and they knew I could not get lost by myself.

      Well, I paid more for this tour than the city tour because it came with a hot springs bath.  And the choice of hot springs was very cheap.  It was old and it was not pretty to look at in or outside, compared to its neighboring hot springs.  Again, we felt short-changed.  Then the tour guide dropped me the bomb:  I was supposed to go to the public hot springs while my companions get a private one for themselves since they're family and one's just a kid who needs adult supervision.  Gasp! Me, inside a public bath?  Yes, I love animes and such and I've always wondered how it'd feel like bathing in a public bath, but to do it?  Ha! I needed all the courage I could muster.  I was really shy.  I mean, I don't care if my boobies flash once in a while but naked? Yeah, right.  However, if I don't go inside the public bath, then my money would really come to waste.  So, I decided to make a go at it.

      I felt my hair was raising and my heartbeat rising...but when I got to the women's bath, there was only one person inside, an older lady around 40's, already washing and finishing up.  I was so happy that we're the only ones inside.  I asked her which dispenser has shampoo, and she helped me.  Thank God for helpful Taiwanese.  After 5 minutes, the lady left and I had the bath all to myself.  There were three baths of varying temperatures; two which are hot and one which has cold water.  And the water reeks of spoiled eggs because of the sulfur. Haha!  I dipped in the hot water for 15 minutes and then I'd dash for the cold water bath to tighten my skin.  I did this routine for three times or so.  We had less than an hour to take our bath.

     As for the experience, let's just say that it wasn't much different from what I usually see from animes and Japanese tv series; only the bath house was older and it looked so tired.  If I had more time, I would have opted to go to Villa 32, a hot springs resort in Beitou, reputedly one of the best in Taiwan.  I read about it in a New York Times article.

     After the bath, I saw the boy and his aunt waiting outside and we chatted for a while, and we all felt that the public bath house was not so good aesthetically.  From the deck, we could see its neighboring bath house which looked so Japanese with the wooden walls and floors, plus the decor, too.  And, the younger people were there.  We should have gone there.  I think only housewives and older people go to our bath house.  It was almost deserted.  Nonetheless, it was still an experience, right?

     Then after a while, the aunt started complaining that we've been waiting for so long already, like for almost 30 minutes now and the guide was nowhere to be found.  See, we wasted time, really.  When he came back, it was past 4:30 p.m., and we had to head back to the city.  Then it started raining.  I asked the tour guide if he could drop me off somewhere at the Taipei Main Station instead of the hotel since I wanted to buy some things from the nearby mall.  The rain was pouring hard by then and the guide felt really sorry for me, saying, oh you poor girl, over and over again.  For them, it was odd that a single lady like me would be travelling alone, and they thought I was a little young to be travelling by myself.  They thought I was around 25, tops.  You see, it's good to be taken for younger than my real age, but it's not so great to be called, poor girl.  Makes me want to feel helpless myself.  Hey, I'm much, much stronger you know.