Sick is no fun, thankfully, there are many hot springs in Taiwan :]

For the past month, ever since I fainted, I haven't felt well.  Right now, I'm just getting over a cold/cough.  Thankfully on Thanksgiving day, I'm actually feeling better for once.  I can't recall a time that I've been sick for a month straight.. It's crazy what a new environment and climate can do to a person's body.  Other foreigners told me, your bound to get sick.  They all told me they got sick very badly when they first got here.  But, I kept thinking no that won't happen to me; I've always been so healthy. 

So, for the past month I've been taking it pretty easy.  When I first got my cold, my whole body just ached.  I thought to myself, this might be the perfect time to check out the hot springs nearby.  So, two weekends ago on Saturday afternoon, I took the MRT to Beitou hot springs.  The hot springs in Beitou are the most popular in northern Taiwan.  The area of Beitou both the facilities and manmade attraction were established during the Japanese occupation.  Before heading into the outdoor public baths, I stopped to look at the hot spring museum right beside it.  There were many tourist looking at the historical bathhouse as it's one of the largest Japanese-style wooden buildings in Taiwan.  Looking at the Japanese style building and hot spring bath facilities in the museum, I was reminded of the ones I saw in Japan with my family.  : ) It brought back the memories of when we went into the hot springs 'nude' in Japan. 

The entrance fee to the hot springs was very cheap.  It was 40 NT, which is less than $1.50!  There were a total of 6 different soaking baths: 2 cold, 2 hot, and 2 extremely hot baths.  I was very surprised when I first saw the baths.  My first reaction was, it wasn't as beautiful as the ones I went to in Japan.  After soaking in the water for awhile and talking to some of the people there, I began to really enjoy the hot baths.  Sadly, an hour later, a whistle blows and everyone had to get out of the water and leave the baths to allow the next group to come in.  The baths are organized in a time schedule.  There are 2 1/2 hour incriminates of time allocated to each group.  If you want to stay longer, you could pay an additional 20 NT, but you still had to get out for cleaning purposes.  It's recommended not to stay longer than an hour, so I decided to leave and come back another time.  It was very nice!  For free you can check out the stream that also has the spring water. How many times do you feel a hot stream! 

After, I walked a few minutes up the road to Thermal Valley, one of the sources supplying the area's hot springs.  I read on a sign that thermal valley contains green sulfur; this type of water can be found in two places n the world, Taiwan @ Beitou and Japan! Many people were taking pictures and looking at the hot sulfur rising from the ground.  The water temperature ranges from 80-100 Celsius.  I'm glad I stopped to look, it was very cool! 

Just this last Sunday, I invited Kristin to go on a day trip with me to Jinguashi and Jiufen.  All week the forecast said, it was suppose to rain the whole day, but the night before I saw the forecast change to sunny day on Sunday.  My plan was to visit the geological park in Jinguashi and climb tea pot mountain, but the weather prevented us from doing so as it rained the entire day! Thank you forecast for making a wrong predicting.  The rain put a little damper on our trip, but we still managed to make the most out of the rainy day.  

We took the local train from Taipei to Ruifang (about an hour) and from there took a bus to Jinguashi (about 25 minutes).  The area of Jinguashi is amazing!!! You can see the sea and the mountains in one shot.  It's absolutely stunning area. I would have to say this is my new favorite destination, and it's so close to where I live. Besides, the great view, the area of Jinguashi is famous for gold-mining.  We spent the afternoon walking around the gold ecological park and looking at the numerous attractions including the gold refining building (originally a guesthouse when Taiwan was a Japanese colony), Crown Prince Chalet residence and the variety of exhibitions.  We even took a special tour of Benshal No. 5 tunnel to get a closer look at gold mining in Jinguashi.  After the tour, we climbed up a bit of stairs to see Jinguashi Shinto Shrine, as we were climbing up, we saw to the left of us tea pot mountain.  It actually looked like a tea pot : )  I'm hoping to come back and climb it!  On our way out of the park, we decided to stop and take a tour of the Japanese-style residence.  It was once a dormitory for high level Japanese company employees and now is turned into a display area for visitors to see how they lived.  The building is one of the few remaining in Taiwan and has become a popular location for filming movies as many people love the Japanese old style architecture.  Kristin, is big into history and saw on the tourist map there was a POW memorial.  We started walking towards it (actually we never made it there), but we came across Cyuanji temple that has the big bronze warrior statue.   You can see this statue from far away, so it was cool seeing it up close.  We took the bus back in the direction of Ruifang train station to Jiufen old street.  The bus ride back wasn't as beautiful as the way there with the thick gray clouds and the heavy rain.  Kristin and I enjoyed a nice dinner together in the cute old street of Jiufen that overlooked the sea and mountains.  We walked along the old street looking at the shops until it was time to catch the train back to Taipei.  It was a nice day and the views make me want to come back on a sunny day : )  

It's been three months since I've moved to Taiwan, crazy to think it's already been that long.  Just a few days ago, on my half day, I got my Taiwan bank account set up.  It took a bit of time to open my account since I had to wait for my ARC to arrive.  I feel so official now : )  After I opened up my account, I decided to climb a mountain near Yongning station.  The hike was steeper than I expected.  It was very well paved path and light poles alighted the way.  I started the climb around 4 p.m., so by the time I came down the sun had already set.  It was cool to see both the day and night view of the city from up above.  I remember before coming to Taiwan I wanted to do a lot of hiking. So far, I haven't done as much as I wanted to, but I'm hoping to do more. It's so easy to get to the mountains as they are all around Taipei. When else will I get such easy access to so many great mountains : ) 

~I am thankful for.. my family, my few close friends, the countless people I have met who have helped shape me, my home in America, my health, food and water, my job in Taiwan, my co-teachers, all the great experiences and traveling I have been fortunate to have, my education, Bradley University, the few jobs I have had, and my computer that I spend hours on ;)   

Couch Surfing: Bike Riding Events

I went to my first couch surfing event!  It was a great experience : )  The guy that organized the ride has biked around the world.  He's started about 10 years ago and has biked all through the Middle East and Asia; he is really incredible.  There were about 20 people at the event both foreigners and Taiwanese of all ages. There was one Taiwanese lady who was in her 60s, she was in great shape!  There was also a guy from Pakistan.  He was on a two week business trip and had the weekends off to enjoy the city. Another guy, who I had the pleasure of talking with during the ride started his own company in Taiwan.  Originally from Canada, he and his co-founder came with the idea of "making the ordinary, out of the ordinary." Take a look www.mohzy.com/world/en The ride was 20 kms total, 4 of which were up a steep hill overlooking Taipei 101 building.  The hill, known as Elephant mountain, goes through the biggest cemetery in Taiwan.  Most people call this path the cemetery walk.  We made a circle, starting at Gongguan MRT station, up the hill and down past Taipei zoo and along the river route and then back to Gongguan.  It was a nice easy ride with views of south Taipei.  Afterwards, most of us stayed and ate at an outdoor mexican restaurant outside Taipei water park.  It was fun chatted with the group, sharing our cultures and stories.  The couch surfing community is a great way to met so many diverse people from all over the world while sharing and learning from one another.   

 

The following Sunday, I went on my second couch surfing event, but it didn't go so well.. I fainted before we even began our ride.

Sunday, October 21st 

I woke up early, made myself a nice balanced breakfast and made perfect timing on the MRT.  I spotted the CS right away, the guy with the bike kinda gave it away ;) I introduced myself to a German girl, Finland guy and a Taiwanese.  We all began talking and getting to know each other.  The rest of the group were sitting by some benches, which we didn't see at first.  It was great to see many familiar faces from last weekend.  The people who didn't have bikes all went to rent ones.  When we got back the group had doubled in size.  We all were talking like usual.  I was standing talking to a guy I had met last weekend, originally from Africa who later moved to Australia and now has been teaching in Taiwan for almost 20 years. All of a sudden, things began to get blurry around me and in the middle of a sentence I quickly went to my bike to grab my water bottle, thinking it would help.  I drank my water and about 30 seconds later, I said to myself I think I need to sit down.  I sat down on the bench and apologize to this girl because there really wasn't any room on the bench, but I needed to sit down.  I told her I think I'm going to faint.  She said, I wasn't looking too good and to continue drinking water.  Not even a minute later, she is like yeah your not looking good.  The guy next to her said, she needs to lie down.  As he was having me lie down, I just fainted.  

I could hear the group of CS around me say, open your eyes.  But, all I wanted to do was lay their for awhile. They grabbed someone working at the train station and asked me if they should get an ambulance, but I just said to them, no I'm fine.  The sweet girl from Germany told me my face had turned purple.  We all agreed I shouldn't ride today and instead take it easy. I returned my bike with the help of the nice guy from Africa.  I was bummed I couldn't go on the ride.  But, it's better to be safe than push it even more.  So, instead I decided to at least enough the day around Xindian, where I was, and explore the area.  

As I was walking across the bridge, not to long after I left the CS group, I ran into a girl I had met through Torin (the guy I stayed with when I first arrived in Taiwan), another Hess teacher.  She was with two guys.  I hadn't seen her for awhile, so it was really nice to catch up with her.  They invited me to explore the area with them and I gladly said yes.  There was a nice trail at the other end of the bridge.  Even though I should be taking it easy, I decided to join them on a hike.  Initially, we didn't know where it was going to lead us or how intense it was going to be.  We ended up climbing up many stairs to a summit in which you could see the whole city even Taipei 101. It was stellar!  

Later that night, we were walking through the market and stopped to grab something to eat at a middle eastern vendor. A few people in back of the line called my name, it was the CS!  They had finished their bike trip and were also getting something to eat at the same vendor.  I had told them I stayed around the area and ended up going on a hike.  They were really scared for me, I tried to tell them I felt okay.  Once we got our food, we all took it back by the waterside and sat and chatted for awhile.  It was relaxing. 

That night I took a nice shower and went to bed early to recover from my day.  I woke up on Monday feeling well.  But, later that afternoon I began to get dizzy and had to take it easy.  I spoke with my co-teachers and they said I could sit down and teach my classes.  I decided to go to the hospital right after school to find out what the deal was.  It's better to be safe than sorry especially because I fainted and that never happened before.  So, immediately when I got back, I took the MRT to Far Eastern Hospital.  It was unfortunate that the clinic wasn't open that evening so I had to go to the  ER if I wanted to be seen today.  I wanted to take care of the issue that day, so I just decided to pay the extra money (basically triple in price since I still didn't have my medical card) and go to the ER.  After speaking with a doctor, we agreed I would take a blood test and have an EKG test.  I waited for over a hour for the doctor to give me my results.  He said everything was good, my blood test and my EKG.  He gave me some medicine for dizziness and said I had motion sickness.  I kept telling him I don't think it's motion sickness... But, that's what he think it is.  He said he's seen many people like me before.  

I'm thinking it might of been a combination of heat exhaustion (it was a really hot day on Sunday) and altitude sickness.  The next few days I wasn't feeling the greatest.  In the morning, I would be fine and towards the afternoon and evening, I just become dizzy : ) I took some of the medicine he gave me for two days and by Thursday I felt a lot better.  I'm not sure what it was, but I hope that doesn't happen again!