Thinking Allowed: More than just Taipei

Taipei is a very action packed and fun city. Although it meant more moving around we decided if we really wanted to see Taiwan we needed to leave the city. We spent a few days in the hot spring town of Jiaoxi. Unlike Japanese spa towns Jiaoxi is not the most charming town and felt rugged urban. That being said it really is well situated for a fun jumping off point into nature. We enjoyed warming (or scalding) our feet each evening in the town foot baths. Jakob and the kids spent the afternoon in a proper spa complete with a hot spring fed water slide and various coloured pools. Our hotel had its own private hot spring as well as a hot spring fed bath tub, lined in seashells, in our room. Much to our joy our toilet seemed to be hot spring fed as well. The girls and I spend half a day at a beautiful black sand beach. I insisted we go into the mountains (just behind town) to hike to a few waterfalls but was so enamoured by the nature and taken by a local passerby’s suggestion that we ended up trekking all the way up the ‘matcha mountains’ and were afforded beautiful views of hills and ocean. The kids moaned about how our 5 kms turned into 18 but they all really enjoyed being at the top and getting to scrub their shoes at the shoe scrubbing stations.

We spent a couple of days in Hualien which felt much larger than we expected and impressed us with its grandiose train station, Jade stoned sidewalks (or some other green stone?), and numerous playgrounds. Our hostel had board games so our kids were very pleased. We ate at what turned out to be one of our favourite vegetarian restaurants of our stay in Taiwan and what turned out to be one of our least favourite vegetarian restaurants in Taiwan (turns our we really don’t feel for cockroaches on the walls while we eat). While half of us went on an extensive tour of playgrounds the other half of us spent a day doing small hikes in Taroko Gorge. We saw a lot of winding river and walked through a lot of cave with our favourite spot being the Eternal spring shrine and its nearby bell tower.

We had a few more days in Taipei to really pack in our shaved ice, bubble tea consumption and non-food related sight seeing. The kids were alright walking long distances because Taipei has no lack of playgrounds. Everywhere we stopped the older men in the playgrounds would strike us up in conversation as they were impressed by our children’s strength. I get the impression that most Taiwanese children are not doing chin ups in the playground. We learned a lot about Jade by perusing the national treasures and really were smitten by the fact that the most important treasures are food related - jade cabbage and stone that looks like a piece of pork. We spent a lovely afternoon with friends we made in Japan. And then before we knew it our stay in Taiwan was done.