Hot Springs and Hot Things

Hey folks, welcome to the next installment of the adventure. Guest stars in this edition include the ever adventurous and daring Gail; a conversational old man in a hot spring and an undercover English teacher on an over-crowded train.

Pictured above are Tim, Gail and Cliff soaking up the minerals in the relaxing hot springs in Danshui. After just a short time in the water your skin is truly rejuvenated and silky smooth, as is evident in this picture.

Cliff and I striking the captain pose on the hillside of Danshui. We decided to meet Gail in her new home town of Jongli, which is a short train ride from Jhubei. On arrival at the train station we were met warmly by a small group of people asking/offering "free hugs", so we happily obliged and wrote out a little greeting for them. But I am unsure what the point was?

We came across a crowd of photographers snapping pics of a not-so-innocent looking Taiwanese model. They do this thing with their lips as if to mean 'I really cannot imagine why all the guys are so desperate to take photos of me...' So this is Gail posing for us, and one of the photographers was dead keen to take a few shots of Gail too!

A truly fascinating specimen. Please note the interesting vein pattern found on this leaf. If you find yourself staring at its mysterious form,lost in time, then Clifford and yourself have a common bond.

This is something else that caught Cliffords' gaze during our afternoon activities - the back of Gails top. He did attempt on numerous occasions to snap a shot of the intriguing pattern in a clandestine manner, but Gail is a wily old fox and caught onto him in no time!

Yes, that river is in fact a warm one, and brought a truly 'peaceful' feeling to our hearts.

I am unsure what these thingies are called, but you pick em up, drop em and the way they land tells you an answer to the question you asking while doing so. I think the possible answers are: yes/no/or the gods are laughing at your question.

Gail and myself rippin it up on the basketball court in Danshui. This was in a really cool park which we arbed around a while after soaking in the hotspring.

Gail has been in Taiwan for 6 months, and she is also teaching English. She is WAY more adventurous than I am when it comes to eating - and she makes me a little nervous as I know that I am going to end up all sorts of things because of her influence...I took a bit of a chance a few days ago and pointed innocently at a chicken looking animal in a food stall and smiled lamely. Turns out I was pointing at half a duck, and a flipping hot and spicy one at that!

Cliff and the dragon.

Taking a little hmmmm time.

This is the public hot spring in Danshui. And this is the photo Cliff took moments before being told off by the ticketing woman. I think the hottest pool was 42degrees, which felt like it was burning your skin! We met an old guy in the medium heat pool, who had been to South Africa. He struck up a conversation with us, jumping right in with racial stuff from 20 years ago about how the white man must say sorry to the black man! He was quite interesting to listen to, but I was sure the conversation would be dominated with stuff from the past, and nothing about the present or the future!

We caught a local train home, which are blue, slower and a bit cheaper and this night VERY full and crowded. It was a bit complicated but Cliff and I ended up on the same carriage as Gail but standing a bit away from her. But it was FULL FULL, like no space to move at all. So Cliff and I were getting a bit bored and were just messing around a bit. Cliff is growing a "soul patch" on his chin. We had to look it up on the internet, its a little patch of facial hair under your bottom lip. Well anyway, he was twisting it and trying to put it in his mouth because it is getting a bit long, when the lady right by us (who we naturally assumed could speak no English) say out LOUD," What are you doing?!" Cliff went bright red! (I probably did too) It was hilarious! Everyone looked around to see what was going on, and then we realized she must have overhead everything we had been saying for about 20 minutes! Awkward!

Gail and this lady got off at the same stop, and she followed Gail and had a big conversation with Gail, saying how we were soooo funny! Turns out she is a High School English teacher named Rebecca. On the train Cliff and I were joking how we must stink, especially with our armpits up in peoples faces-but Rebecca kindly told Gail that we did not stink of hot spring!

Anyway, we certainly gave Gail something to laugh about.

Cheers for now, Tim