Taiwan's Hot Springs

The NY Times ran an article a couple weeks ago about Taipei's hot springs. 

 
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Yanmingshan is a great place to visit. I highly recommend it to anyone travelling to Taipei. It's easily accessible by the MRT, and has public, semiprivate, and private hotspring baths for any kind of stay, short or long.

The atmosphere is festive, with plump teenagers doing sit-ups on the raised stone sitting areas while the elderly, immersed up to their earlobes, gossip over plastic canisters of cool tea. Rule No. 9 on the wall — “It is inadvisable to spend more than 15 minutes in the hot spring” — seems to be universally ignored. “The Japanese gave us this,” said one well-wrinkled matron, referring to the highly social culture of public bathing. “They also built railroads, and schools and roads.

This is one of the more interesting aspects of the Beitou area that I learned about during my visits there. During World War II, the Japanese stationed kamikaze pilots in Beitou, giving them a steady diet of food, wine, and women while they soaked in the hot springs awaiting their ultimate mission.