♨️🏡🌻🐢BEITOU -- Hot Springs, Museums, and more (北投)

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Travel in Taiwan 2017/11/12

5 THINGS TO DO IN BEITOU

1. Hot Springs (05:17)
On leaving MRT Xinbeitou Station, you will immediately see the entrance to Beitou Hot Spring Park across the main road, to the right. Take a walk through this long and narrow park, and check out the shallow Beitou Stream, steaming with hot-spring water. About two-thirds of the way through the park, which slopes upward from the main road, you’ll spot a beautifully restored historic building, today home to the Beitou Hot Spring Museum (hotspringmuseum.taipei). This was originally a public bathhouse, built in 1913, at the time the largest of its kind in East Asia. Here you can learn about the history of hot-spring bathing in Beitou while, among other things, viewing a restored Romanesque pool with Roman-style columns as well as a Japanese-style tatami post-bathing rest area.

There is a wide range of options in Beitou for your own hot-spring bathing, including upscale hot-spring hotels such as the Grand View Resort Beitou (www.gvrb.com.tw). If you are on a limited budget, however, and just want to experience the simple pleasures of outdoor-pool soaking together with local hot-spring lovers, head to the Beitou outdoor public hot springs, formally called the Millenium Hot Spring, a few minutes on foot west of the hot-spring museum along Zhongshan Road (open daily; tickets NT$40). For more info about hot-spring bathing options in Beitou and around Taiwan, visit www.taiwanhotspring.net.

2. Public Library (04:19)
Also located inside Beitou Hot Spring Park, between the museum and the public pools, is an interesting building that resembles a giant ark. This is the Beitou Branch of the Taipei Public Library, an ultra-efficient modern building constructed with protection of the environment in mind and offering a pleasant space for reading and studying. Opened to the public in 2006, the library is housed in an award-winning green building with such features as solar panels on the roof, rainfall capturing/storage systems, and a design that keeps power consumption to a minimum.

3. Thermal Valley (06:32)
At the far, upper end of the hot-spring park, look left and you’ll spot the entrance to Thermal Valley, the source of the park area’s sulfurous hot-spring water. Surrounded by trees, this deep, rock-strewn depression was created long ago by a volcanic burst. The sulfurous waters in the depression’s large pool bubble and spit, the steam sometimes filling the entire little valley on cool days. The Ketagalan people who once lived in the area called the valley “Patauw,” meaning “witch” or “sorceress.” “Beitou” is a bastardization of this original name.

4. Beitou Museum (8:23)
Further uphill from the hot-spring park and the thermal-spring valley, on Youya Road, is the Beitou Museum (www.beitoumuseum.org.tw), an excellent place to learn more about Beitou’s history, indigenous culture, and the Japanese colonial era – the museum building was original constructed in 1921 as a fancy hot-spring hotel for the Japanese elite – and also to taste fine cuisine (Kaiseki-style) and take in irregular cultural performances (in a spacious tatami room).

5. Xinbeitou Historic Station (00:50)
Back beside MRT Xinbeitou Station is another heritage building you don’t want to miss, the Xinbeitou Historic Station (www.xbths.taipei). Located in the small park on the southern side of the station, this important work of heritage architecture was reopened earlier this year. Originally built in 1916, the station was dismantled in 1988 to make room for the MRT station, and was then purchased, rebuilt, and displayed at the Taiwan Folk Village in Changhua County, central Taiwan, before being returned to Taipei in 2013. After being painstakingly restored once again over a period of four years, the station has now become one of the most iconic historic attractions in the city.


English and Chinese
Beitou 北投
Beitou Hot Spring Museum 北投溫泉博物館
Beitou Museum 北投文物館
Taipei Public Library, Beitou Branch 臺北市立圖書館北投分館
Thermal Valley 地熱谷
Xinbeitou Historic Station 新北投車站
Yangmingshan 陽明山