Although the campaign of voting for the most special place around Taiwan has finished, it doesn’t stop me from promoting Beitou-the most beautiful suburb in Taipei.
If you are new here, you must take a trip to Beitou.
If you have lived in Taipei for a while and you’ve never come here for a visit, you are TOTOALLY… (u know what I mean!)
Yang-Ming Mt. is incredibly fascinating with cherry bloosms here at this moment, which you definitely don’t want to miss.
Anyone who is interested in exploring this beautiful place and want to know more about what to do and where to go just shout!!!
Hot springing doesn’t have to have any medical value beyond making you feel relaxed and happy, and it does that. In a nice outdoor setting with multiple pools and spas it’s a bargain at the going rates of $400-600 unlimited time.
But otherwise, yeah, Beitou has too many “resort” and hotels for the supply of water. And beautiful? A few nice areas surrounded by squalor and garbage-laden ditches like every other suburb of Taipei.
Nannan, how about you and other Taiwanese stop patting yourself on the back and actual work to make this country as beautiful as the rhetoric. You certainly have the raw materials for it.
Pig, I don’t think anyone would argue that there aren’t some absolutely gorgeous facilities at Beitou. But you pay first world prices for it in an overall third world environment. Also, the fanciest hotels are always the ones that fail the health inspections and are found to be using fake hot spring water. So yeah, a scam. Not a world ending scam but a scam non-the-less.
same thing with Maokong. Went up the gondola (after a long wait) and then…its trashy up there. A few concrete boxes with unimagined settings to drink so so drinks (at least the place we went to and other places we saw).
the gondola itself is worth riding but seems its worth it to just come down again. They need to raze that 3rd worldness up there.
Taiwan, much as I love it, is a mix of third world indonesia with some bits of first world japan.
Maokong was there before the cable car. BUilt up as a small mountain enclave with trashy concrete boxes where some people feel its fun to hole up and sit around and enjoy taiwan mountain countrysideness.
I was telling my friend that , hopefully, the new generation of TWnese who are educated abroad and come home will say, hey this shit sucks, lets raze it and come up with first rate artistry and imagination here. They could make that maokong tea establishment area very artsy and very deluxe if someone would start the ball rolling.
I get something of what you are saying. But it can’t be denied that Taiwan has a unique tea drikning culture that does not exist anywhere else in the world. I’d be loathe to mess with that.
There are some really nice places up there. Next time ask tommy. One I really like is an old stone farmhouse that was gutted inside. Also has a lovely leafy outdoor area. Very bucolic. There’s also a gorgeous old Japanese era wood house but it’s a private club inside.
But yeah around the gondola there are some eyesores especially that ridiculous gangster-run food court across the street.
Yes im waiting to hear Muchamans specific recommends on which exact places to go, otherwise I am saying :
go up the gondola, purchase an advance ticket back and just sit inside the city cafe they got up there in the same building, no need to venture out. NOTHING THERE but UGH.
I liked Beitou, enjoyed walking over the steaming rivers, nice and warm in the middle of January, I went to one of these resorts up in the hills, it was expensive, $800 in but they gave us towels and stuff, which for that price I kept, I needed a towel anyway, also it was Chinese new year.
Spent the night drinking red wine watching fireworks from a red hot spring and playing drinking games with some korean teachers, good memories.
getting back on topic, I wouldn’t want to live there, due to distance from central Taipei but I thought it was nice, liked the park, the area around the MRT and mostly how the city just stops, you would get a high rise accomodation then behind it cliff with tree’s, my camera couldn’t quite capture how good that looked. Theres probably a lot of that in Taipei though, I wouldn’t know I live in Hsinchu, its all just concrete, scooters and muddy water here.
