Damn the hot springs!

Was woken up by the constant voice of my Mum.

It was a last minute thing, but my mum's cousin (I suppose I'll call just call him uncle) called to ask us along to 烏來　to go for the hot springs.

I think it's been years since I've seen this uncle, in fact, I barely know him! He's a police officer, actually the head of the area around 烏來, so he was quite familiar with the place there.

First off, we took the MRT to 新店 where we took Uncle's huge van (he borrowed it actually) to his police station where we sat down for a 'tea session' and played with his 2 year old son, who was initially very shy, but his smile just brighten up my mood, and the atmosphere! On the way there my sister and I were just sitting at the back of the van and listening to the conversation between my mum, uncle, uncle's vietnamese wife and my mum's twin sister. Quite dull, actually. But then I was listening to Uncle's vietnamese wife speaking, and surprisingly her mandarin's very good, and the best thing is that she knows how to speak 台語！ I should really reflect upon myself eh. How can a Taiwanese not know how to speak his own dialect! Shit. Ok I must really learn and read up on it. SIAN!

Ok nvm. After that we headed to the hot springs, which made my skin all itch and reddish! I think my skin's not very resistant to the 'polluted' water there. Even my mum caught a bloodshot eye. The very next day my grandfather was shocked to see the rashes on my arms and my neck, then he told us that the hot springs there aren't 'clean'. Like they actually 'recycle' the water because of the lack of pure spring water. I heard they actually categorise the hot springs into 3 levels, the top level being the cleanest, and the 3rd bottom level being filthy because of the water trickling down from the 1st level! Like OMG!

No wonder these rashes develop. Damn!

But one thing I enjoyed was the food we had at this restaurant on our way to 雲仙 to take the cable car.
(I'll post the video)

The cable car at 雲仙 was so fast, I think we got to the other station on the mountain in less than 2 minutes! The scenery was picturesque, but a pity there were mist blocking our view from the top when we got to the top of the mountain - on foot. Little did I know that was the native place of the native tribes - 泰雅族！

Some people were dancing there, some were selling their local foods - the fried small prawns were nice! Crispy and a lil salty. =D

(Picture of cable car)