My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

Icon

Adventures in EFL

Sleeping in a museum

Yangmingshan 陽明山 is a national park just north of Taipei. It is a volcanic mountain, which means that it has a lot of hot springs. There is a hotel on the mountain which has been in operation since 1952, and it tries hard to maintain the same look and feel that it had when it first opened.

Walking into a room in the hotel is like walking back in time. The furnishings in the room are like something from a museum. It reminds me of a cross between a museum exhibit and an interpretive historical center. Also something like the Grandpa Chiang Cottage. It was pretty cool to stay there.

The most interesting thing about the hotel was the bathroom. The attraction of the hotel is the hot springs. For hot water, the hotel pumps hot spring water directly into the room. The bathtub is a concrete hole in the floor, about three feet deep.

The idea is that for a bath, you soak in a hot spring, in the comfort of your own hotel room. It’s quite comfortable, with a single exception. Hot springs have a lot of sulfur. If you’ve every been to Yellowstone National Park, and have smelled the hot springs there, you will know what the bathroom smells like.

And it isn’t just the bathroom. The sulfur smell permeates through the entire hotel. I could sleep through it, but Stacy kept having dreams about gas leaks.

It was a memorable experience, and I recommend it, but not everyone would appreciate it.

Category: Taiwan

Tagged:

Leave a Reply