Tea, Strawberries and Hot spring

Spending the night at boat house was a whole new experience for me. The whole boat house kept rocking through out the night. But I guess I was too sleepy to be bothered by it.

Once morning came, I packed and left the boat house early. As there’s really nothing much I can do. The weather is too cold for canoeing or for a nice swim in the water. So I thought, may as well get back up to the shore and check out as much other things.

Once on land, went to this tea house to get some famous local tea. The guy was so friendly and seems to know a lot about tea. He was explaining about how different tea from different altitude produce different grade of tea. There were so many stories behind each grade of tea. In the end, bought some nice premium highland tea from him.

Satisfied with the tea drinking, it’s time to hit the road again. It was quite a drive out from Sun Moon Lake, before arriving at this particular town that’s famous for 2 things, Strawberries and hot spring.

The driver took us further inwards of the town to a better orchard. As soon as I stepped out from the car, there’s an elderly couple, seems like the owner of the orchard, were standing there and warmly welcome us. They are so excited about us coming over to their orchard that they brought us around to check out what they have. Other than strawberries, they have mandarin oranges, cabbages, and many others that I can’t recall. They briefed on how to pick the best berries. Didn’t know it was to technical. Was able to pick a basket full of strawberries just in time before the rain came.

The rain stopped just in time for a nice session of hot spring! Nothing beats a nice dip in the hot spring in the middle of cold winter days. Went to this public hot spring place called “rock soup” (direct translation) with only NT$200 entrance fees. They have nice open air hot spring holes with nice mountain view, and some water jets that provides good enough pressure to massage your body by being in front of its outlet. Got to learnt that different hot springs in Taiwan has different benefits due to the different content in the water. For this particular one that I went, it suppose to improved the blood circulation while rejuvenate the skin. True enough, my skin remains smooth for the next couple of days, and even weeks. Really something that you can’t miss while in Taiwan.

Left the hot spring reluctantly, and head on to the big Taipei city by night. Taipei, the exciting city. More stories to come for the next day!