12 Days in Taiwan – Day 09 – Yangmingshan and Beitou Thermal Valley

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Apparently, the Jiufen area has been raining for nine straight days now. Several other friends and family members also shared that the Jiufen and Shifen areas in December are basically in the wet season, and they experienced the same downpours during their own visits then too. I was pretty sure that the cold and wet weather we got on Day 8 couldn’t be topped, but boy — I ate my words again on Day 9 today. We left Jiufen and headed in the direction of Taipei, and were initially relieved to see a bright sunny sky — until we were at about 600m altitude on the Yangmingshan climb when a thick layer of fog settled — so that by the time we’d reached the first stop — Qingtiangang — at about 900m altitude, visibility was down to about 10 meters ahead of you. And there was rain and wind to boot. Not again!

But that’s the sum of our Yangmingshan visit: cold, wet and miserable, and we couldn’t see a thing. Oddly, there were also few visitors about, and certainly not the busloads of tourists we saw at Yehliu/Shifen/Jiufen. There were people about, but they looked like locals hiking up the mountain — the kind of people who’d scoff at the rain, wind and fog.

The mountain itself is a short 40-minute drive from Taipei along a somewhat windy mountain road. And given its close proximity to the city itself, it’s pretty much considered an everyday playground for locals, with hikers, cyclists, families on weekends, and of course the rich and famous who probably own pricey properties offering vantage views of the city from up on the mountain.

We also learnt other interesting things about Yangmingshan as related by Checo. He shared quite a lot more about himself on this second day we had him as our driver and guide. Basically, he served as a Lieutenant in the Taiwanese Air Force for 13 years, until a crash in his T-34 trainer aircraft saw him leave the service to recover. His dad — 91 years old — was a Colonel in Chiang Kai-Shek’s army who fled from China in 1949 to Taiwan, and a lot of stories and views he has of the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are molded by the stories his father and grandfather shared with him. About Yangmingshan for instance, this mountain and its natural hot springs were a favorite holiday area exclusively for the Japanese while they were the colonial masters of Taiwan. However, as the Second World War dragged on and the pool of able-bodied Japanese men to serve rapidly dwindled, the Japanese Imperial Army replaced the voluntary programmes for the Taiwanese and Koreans with forced conscription instead, including training many to serve as their Kamikaze suicide pilots against the ships of the US Navy. Checo’s granduncle was one such conscript. After the requisite training to fly and aim their planes against American ships, the Taiwanese pilots were sent to Yangmingshan for a week-long holiday before they were sent on their one-way sojourn. When they had “fulfilled their responsibilities”, the Japanese would give the family of the deceased Taiwanese pilot a one-time compensation of 15g of rice. Fifteen grams of additional rice rations in exchange for a young man’s life. Sobering indeed!

Pictures below: you’d have to take my word for it that we were at each location! The rain kept the Sony A73 under cover, so all the outdoor pictures were taken using the Samsung Note 9. Hooray for IP68-certified waterproof phones!

This is Qingtiangang, really. Take my word for it. Our first stop, and this is what we got.
Qingtiangang is supposed to be famous for its alpine-like meadows. But the park wardens actually closed off entry into the area in view of the thick fog. Well, there’s a bit of green here and there.
At 900m, the weather station said it was 14°C, but because of the rain and wind, it felt more like 5°C. H said she’s freezing. Ling said it’s supposed to be stunning scenery but felt miserable now instead. Peter was singing Jingle Bells and the only person who looked like he was having the time of his life!
Our next stop was Lengshueikeng, the site of a lake that sits on an explosive vent, even though the Yangmingshan mountain itself is a dormant volcano. But what we saw was the same as the earlier stop: nothing but fog.
Hansa Cafe sits beside the Lengshueikeng visitor center though, so we opted to duck into the cafe for brunch and hot beverages, cookies and cake. Items are slightly pricey, but you don’t have any other options in the immediate vicinity for a quick bite besides this place. The cafe is apparently quite popular with local hikers.
Latte normally makes Ling happy. Just see her glum face now instead haha.
Lengshueikeng is also famous for its couple of hot springs, so Checo brought us to one. There were several other visitors already there — a couple who seemed determined to spend the entire day soaking their feet in it, others’ turns be damned. But other visitors kindly made way for us to dip our feet in for 10 minutes — just to strike it off our to-do list this trip. The water wasn’t hot but lukewarm: perhaps around 35 to 40°C.
This is Xiaoyoukeng, and I’ve got proof this time! See the plaque LOL. Even if we couldn’t see the volcanic crater just ahead, we could still hear the bubbling of hot liquids in the distance, alongside the distinct scent of sulphur too.
There are several volcanically-created fumaroles right near the entrance, with the usual warning signs not to go near them.
Lengshuikeng.

At about 12:30PM, we all but gave up that the fog was going to abate, so we decided to cut our trip up Yangmingshan short — we’ll come back for a revisit the next time we’re in Taiwan — and descended down the mountain. And lo and behold: just after we cleared the cloud and fog layer on the mountain, it was all bright and sunny again. Nature sure does the darnedest things!

The Beitou Thermal Valley is a small park with a small lake of emerald green colors as a result of the sulphuric steam that creates a fog layer. The lake is fenced off for obvious reasons. Checo related a story of a man who dropped an item into the lake and jumped in to retrieve it, thinking it wasn’t that hot. He instead was boiled alive and died in minutes — leading to, apparently, the creation of a fence around the lake perimeter.

Beitou Thermal Valley was pretty interesting, and the early afternoon sky was wonderfully blue and the sun out in full force — a stark and utter contrast to the gloom and fog we had at Yangmingshan. We continued on next to the seaside district of Tamsui.

The area surrounding Beitou Thermal Valley is quite built-up.

This was about an hour past noon now, so we headed out of Beitou for the drive to Tamsui next.