8/22/17

Day Trip: Yehliu Geopark and Jinshan



On this little day trip, you’ll see Taiwan’s most famous coastal rock formations and relax at South East Asia’s largest public hot spring. The best part is that it isn’t as crowded as some of Taipei’s other hot spots, such as Jiufen or Fulong. It is also one of the most convenient day trips you can take from Taipei, aka there’s no need to worry about finding seats on a train. Essentially, for very little effort, you get to enjoy a relaxing day on the coast and see some of Taiwan’s most iconic attractions.

Start your day at Yehliu Geological Park, stroll around, hike the little peninsula and have fun hunting for the different rock formations. The Queen’s Head (named after Queen Nefertiti) and something that looks like a whale tail are the most popular. However, my personal favorites are the dragon’s head and sand dollar fossils that are scattered all over the place. You’ll also see rocks that look like tofu, candle sticks, and one that even looks like a shoe.


Some of the formations, such as the Queen’s head are shrinking fast and won’t be around much longer before a typhoon breaks them off. In preparation for this, the park has actually created a standing replica, aptly named Queen’s Head II. They’ve got it and a few other replicas grouped together near the entrance of the park. Especially lazy tourists can just take their selfies there and leave. However, it doesn’t take long to get around the whole place: three to four hours at most.

If you get the urge to climb or even touch the queen’s head, settle for the replica instead. There’s a five million dollar fine for causing any amount of damage to the original. The park is just waiting for some Canadian tourists to come try their luck with that one. That said, the park doesn’t give visitors any excuse for bad manners, since there’s an overkill of bathrooms on the grounds. The visitor center at the park entrance offers both toilets and refreshments. There’s a second rest area within the park itself, and then there’s even a third restroom along the peninsula walk.



When you’ve finished hiking around the park, step outside to the taxi cue and catch a $400 NTD ride to Jinshan Old Street; this is where you eat. Honestly, it’s some of the best street food we’ve had in Taiwan and it’s cheap. Walk down the street and fill up on Taiwanese favorites, such as kebab sausages, chicken, potatoes, and corn. Be sure to grab a fresh pressed juice drink and maybe a milk tea as well. After having your fill, head to the Jinshan Hot Spring Gym.

It’s a 15 to 20 minute walk from the old street entrance or a $120 NTD taxi ride. If walking, step out of the old street entrance by the tunnel and hook a left (away from the 7-Eleven and McDonalds). You’ll see signs for the Jinshan Youth Center. Follow them. The hot spring gym is located within the Youth Center. Also, don’t be fooled by the words Youth Center, it’s more like a prime camping and retreat center for families from Taipei.



When you enter the grounds, you’ll see a huge institutional looking building. (You know it’s the right one when you feel the chills. The old, overgrown cemetery we passed on the way up didn’t help.) For a second, I thought we had accidentally wandered into an abandoned Nuclear Power Plant, but that’s the place or at least it’s the reception area. Step inside and a nice lady behind the counter will give you a map to the hot spring gym. It’s in a separate building, about a minute’s walk away.

The hot spring gym costs $300 NTD per person; and to enter the pools, you need to have a bathing suit, towel and cap. We forgot everything but our suits and had to buy the rest at the gym for an additional $100 NTD per person. (Apparently, it happens often.) The gym consists of several different temperature pools and has its share of waterfalls and massage jets. Basically, if you see a button, push it; water is going to come out somewhere. The outside pools offer some amazing pressurized back massaging waterfall jets, which will literally beat the acid from your muscles.

 

Once you’ve finished and showered off, head back upstairs and staff will call a taxi to take you back down to Jinshan where you can catch a bus back to Taipei. The Jinshan bus stop and ticket office are located across the street from the McDonalds. Buses come along every thirty to forty minutes and the last bus doesn’t depart until around eleven at night. Pop into the office for tickets and then kill time eating chicken nuggets or grabbing dinner on the old street.

You’ll be leaving on the same bus you came in on: the 1815. Tickets are cheap and it’s about an hour and a half ride from Taipei Main Station. Fun fact: this bus terminates at the Jinshan Youth Center, so it is possible to take it up to the hot spring gym and then back down again. You can even take it from Yehliu to Jinshan, but taxis are more convenient.

8/13/17

Scuba Diving: PADI Open Water in Taiwan



Well, that was terrifying. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t stripping out of my BCD (buoyancy control device aka vest keeping me alive) and putting it back on again while 40 feet under the water. Looking back, it makes perfect sense that this certification is supposed to be stressful since its purpose is to prep divers for worst-case scenarios in the water, such as having a regulator knocked out of your mouth or being blinded by a leaky mask😓 It was basically a massive, self-induced stress test: “Can you do ‘x’ without losing your mind? Good. Now do ‘y.’”

The first day was hell, the second was terrifying, but the third was amazing. Hell consisted of six hours of theory and seven hours of confined water practice. It was too long. After taking my BCD apart and putting it back together for the fifth time, I was a bit done and toward the end, I was even too tired to be afraid. That part of my brain just wasn’t working, so when the instructor said: “Fall backward into the water,” I said: “Bye!” I might have even waved goodbye to him on the way down. Along with testing our endurance, we learned and practiced majority of the material this day, making the rest of the classes easier.



On the second day, we did everything from the first day again, but in the ocean with fish, poor visibility and currents.  Basically, it felt like a completely different ball game and it was. Considering it was our first semi-solo dive, we did WELL. By that, I mean we didn’t panic or lose our heads when asked to do normally suicidal things like remove our air tanks and regulators while under the water. We calmly practiced: clearing face masks, locating lost regulators, removing BCDs, sharing air supplies, signaling and surfacing.

Just before being signaled to remove, hold and replace our BCDs; a current rushed the group, jostling and swinging the divers around. Obviously, these were not ideal conditions and life was a bit stressful. A fellow diver’s hand was hovering over mine and I grabbed it. We communicated our support through punctuated hand squeezes that said: “We can do this. We will do this. IT WILL BE OK.” Upon surfacing, the whole group burst out laughing for no other reason than that we were alive. #teambonding


Getting all the terrifying lessons out of the way, the third day was a breeze that reminded me why I was doing this in the first place. We were allowed to dive freely as long as we stayed close to the group. Curious divers, who strayed to look at cool starfish, would be summoned back to the school by the relentless rattle of our dive leader’s signaling device. (I never made it to the starfish😢)

This day, we mostly focused on buoyancy control and adjusting to varying pressure changes in the water, which Jeffrey, the dive center’s owner, demonstrated with meditative-like efficiency. He was with us this day, hanging around suspended in the water like a floating Buddha. No BCD, he just casually carried his air tank around between crossed legs in the middle of the water… Goals.

On this day, we also learned some flexible diving skills that are good to know, but not necessary for the certification. My boyfriend is responsible for this. He looked up a list of the skills the night before and decided he HAD to learn them. (He’s a bit of an over-achiever.) Therefore, the instructor began drilling us on: different diver tows for carrying an injured diver to safety and weight drops for fast surfacing. He also showed us how to swim 15 meters without a face mask and then replace it underwater. At this point, I sneaked up the ladder and away from danger, leaving my boyfriend to contend with his curiosity.



It was a struggle, but I’m very glad we did this. The certification has opened up a large part of the world to us that majority of people never get to experience. I know I can trust my significant other to take care of himself and not lose his head in the water. (Can you believe he used to be afraid of water?) I also know he can expect the same of me. The class was only three days, but we learned a lot, tested ourselves and are better because of it. Plus, we can swim like dolphins now😏

There are lots of locations in Taiwan to become certified and also lots of dive shops offering the certification. The three most popular places to get it done are Kenting, Green Island and Longdong Bay. Kenting and Green Island are beautiful vacation spots, whereas Longdong Bay is just convenient. It’s not very pretty and water conditions are less than ideal, but it’s only an hour’s van ride away from Taipei. If you’ve been scuba diving before and are just trying to get the certification done, it will do. However, if you’ve never been in the water before, I’d suggest Green Island. It’s Taiwan’s top diving destination and a direct contrast to Longdong Bay.

Join Diving Center


In case you’re curious, I looked at three different dive shops and reached out to two: Join Diving Center and Scuba Shop Taipei. Based on a friend’s recommendation we decided on Join Diving and couldn’t have been happier. Yes… it was torture, but they were thorough, good instructors with excellent communication skills and years of experience. We don’t speak Chinese, so there was a slight communication barrier, but they never lost patience with us, and did their absolute best to answer our many questions and make us feel comfortable. I highly recommend them, and we will use them again for future dives and possibly for getting the advanced diver certification next spring.

8/2/17

Taiwanese Beauty: The 10-Step South Korean Routine

















I’m an idiot and this blog is a correction/addition to this previous blog on beauty in Taiwan. As it turns out, there’s a definite obsession with skincare in this country. Mostly with South Korean products that make up an insane 10-step beauty routine. That’s right: 10 STEPS. Normal people agree that this is a bit excessive, but South Korean women currently have the highest life expectancy in the world, so maybe they’re on to something.

If you break it down into something more manageable, the 10 steps can be grouped into three main segments: cleanse, tone and moisturize. That's not too bad, right? These three basic steps are what most women around the world do anyway. South Koreans just complicate things by using multiple products for one step. For example, a proper South Korean regime uses three different cleansers: an oil cleanser, foam cleanser and exfoliator. Excessive much?


Popular brands can be found at Ximending, which is Taiwan’s one stop shop for South Korean beauty. The larger chains (The Face Shop, Innisfree, Skin Food, Tony Moly, Nature Republic and Etude House) all have stand-alone shops within walking distance of each other. In my opinion, Innisfree is the best of these; and they surpassed all the other companies in at-home sales for the year 2016, so they’re definitely a safe place to start.

Ximending is also home to Taipei's largest Watsons (Taiwan’s upscale CVS), which is where you can find brands like: Banilo Co, Missha and My Beauty Diary. Another popular cosmetics store located nearby is 86 Shop. This store carries cheaper brands, including Cremorlab and Neogen. In addition to finding products in store, you can also order popular brands online from PC Store (Taiwan’s version of Amazon) and Wish Trend. If you want to try Klairs or COSRX, this is where you will have to look.


With so much variety, you can definitely pick and choose what you want to try. Personally, I was overwhelmed at all the options and immediately went into research mode to find out what the interwebs had to say about all of this. It gave me such a headache, but I now have a nice little organized spreadsheet on Korean skincare. Here’s the condensed version:

Step
Top Products
1. Oil Cleanser
2. Foam Cleanser
Volcanic Pore Cleansing Foam by Innisfree
3. Exfoliator (once a week)
4. Toner
5. Essence
6. Serum
7. Sheet Mask (once a week)
8. Eye Cream
9. Face Cream/Moisturizer
10. SPF

I am NOT high maintenance enough for this, so I personalized a plan to only include some of the steps mentioned above. For example, one cleanser should do the job; and I’m going to take a page from Emma Watson’s book and only use sheet masks for special occasions. The strangest thing added to my routine is the serum. These intrigued me, because they are basically just highly concentrated mixtures of something useful for your skin, such as green tea, vitamin C or snail mucin.



After a month, I’m happy to report skin that is smoother, brighter, and more moisturized... That's it. I'm done. No really, I'M FINISHED AND HAVE THROWN MOST OF THE PRODUCTS AWAY. After doing more in-depth research on ingredients, I found that majority of these products contain harmful petroleum-based fillers, such as mineral oil, PEGs and propylene glycol. Even the most highly reviewed serums and exfoliators are not safe to use. To be fair, the safest brand seems to be Innisfree, but they're not perfect either, because they favor PEGs.

In conclusion, Asian skin care has a cult following across the world for a reason: It does make your skin look great. They might even be onto something with the crazy 10-steps, but the products are lacking and not good for long-term care. Naturally, I will NOT continue using them, but this month has not been wasted; I learned what not to put on my skin and that snails produce a highly effective natural skin cream, go figure.