Notes about the metro public transportation: it has to be the cleanest in the world. Even the restrooms are clean and new looking years after the inauguration due to the fanatic dedication of the cleaning crews
Once we got to Xinbeitou we were welcomed with a very busy intersection surrounded with the standard set of KFC, Yoshinoya, Starbucks and Mcdonalds and the now widespread construction for the 2010 Taipei international expo.
This is supposed to be an historical site but the seemingly cancerous growth of over development has left an area covered with litter and haphazard construction that is still ongoing.
Our hotel, Jiabinge Hotspring Resort Hotel 北投嘉賓閣花園溫泉旅館, was more the kind of place that you would bring your mistress. Even then, it is of questionable cleanliness; a bunch of hairs in the bath and used tissues under the bed and behind the headboard.
The provided evening snacks and breakfast were however a nice touch, but overall it is not possible to have a nice experience when basics are missing.
The main site of interest, Hell's hot springs (translated to a more innocuous geothermal park ) is closed for renovations and we can only glimpse at what this was once upon a time at a distance.
This left us only the privilege for NT$40 of sharing a public bath with old locals filling the water with their old and dead diseased skins.
Xinbeitou (the "New Beitou") is a place like many others in Taiwan where the charm of the place has been destroyed by over commercialization. The only thing left are the smells of rotten eggs from the hot spring sulfur.
1 comment:
We didn't had so much time to explore Xinbeitou. I remember it wasn't exactly what we were expecting but we were coming back from Danshuei and it was very nice to drop our feet in the hot water river flowing close to the station.
Toilets in Japanese train stations are incredibly clean as well. Though recently big stations started charging for using them (like shibuya & shinjuku).
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