hotpot, hot springs and hot photos

So last weekend I have been to a hotpot restaurant with my Taiwanese friend Bonita and two other of her friends. As the name might indicate, you get a pot with boiling water in the middle of your table and then massive loads of food, that you can then put in the boiling water! It was a bit spicy for me, but as I'm planning to go to India as my next big travel project and heard that the food there is crazily spicy, I usually feel that I should go for all the spicy stuff as a kind of preparation :D And you know, "pain is just weakness leaving the body!"


Same night I also went to a Karaoke place again, what was really funny. I was completely sober (recently I seriously think about completely stopping drinking alcohol...) but the guy next to me was drunk as hell and just watching him, eating some melon or a chicken leg - closed eyes, 100% focus on this one task - was really entertaining. The two of us also ended up singing the Beatles "Yesterday" three times together! And over time I can tell our singing improved from a really, really horrible level to a really horrible level if not even more :D


And to hot springs I've even been twice recently. Last weekend I went to Wulai, a place not too far from Taipei, thereby having my first scooter drive here in Taiwan (yay!). For my friend this was probably also his first scooterride having armrests (my legs at his side) -.-

Wulai

There, as my Taiwanese friend Lee Johann Gemüsemann told me, some pensioners, nothing to do all day long, had decided to build up a hotspring area which is free. In contrast to all the other commercial hotspring places I'd been to so far, this place it seemed was build with the stuff the old people had found in there garages - and with lots of creativity. The sauna for example, looked like one of those slum buildings, made of plastic covers and inside people were splashing some hot spring water on the walls so that the evaporating steam made up the sauna. Awesome!

the thing on the right is the sauna!

An other interesting attraction was a pool, located right between the river (cold) and a natural hotspring (extremely hot) and connected to both. So depending on the streaming water, the temperature in this pool was a gamble, changing every moment from "a bit cold", to "aaaw - perfect", to "FUCK THIS IS HOT!!!". In the last case, the only thing you could do was to stir the water with your hands like a manic to mix the hot one with the cold water from the river.

This one! hotspring on the right, river on the left

Me and someone drowning in the background ;-)

An other weird situation there was when I bought a package of ready-cut pineapples from a local streetvendor. Taking in the first slice though, I found that it tasted pretty salty and eventually got to know that Taiwanese vendors sometimes use to wash the cut slices in saltwater to stop the oxidation process and to preserv the fresh color... seriously?! :-/

Waterfall in Wulai, one of many

Now I've covered hotpot and hot springs and with "hot photos" I'm just refering to a pretty cool National Geographic exhibition that I had been to with Anker. Not what you might think, pervert!
(just wanted a third term that begins with hot...)

one of their most famous photographs

The exhibiton was really cool, some stunning photographs deeply moving me. Live on earth can be just so beautiful.
The area where the exhibiton took place, was like a little Berlin actually. With lots of arts stuff, tiny cafes and creative shops.

What is going on here? I know, but I don't tell you! :-P

Finally on Wednesday I've been clubbing again. And this time even to two clubs in one night - Lihong in beastmode!
(This one was for you, Jiaxiasha!)
And I just thought that so far I haven't really written about the actual clubbing experience here in Taiwan compared to Germany - so thats what I'm gonna do now:
Firstly the clubs I've been to were rather fancy and expensive with cover charges around 15€. While the general clubbing experience is not so different to Germany (dancing people, music too loud...) whats different though is that here the female guests show active interest in me :D
For example on Wednesday: I just arrived at the club with some friends, walked to the dance floor area where immediately a girl approaches me "Hey, you've also been at Myst (a club) last week, right? Whats your name?", while from the other side a girl is touching my arm to softly pull me to the circle of her friends. Awesome!
However, all this usually makes me become a bit overconfident and then I usually end up going home alone
Maybe there's some flaw in my strategy... :D
However, some of the other guys here in the dorm are really... well let's use the neutral term "going for it" ;-)
For example this badass:

just kidding, Katha ;-)

And yesterday I went hiking with Lee Johann again at Yangmingshan. He had told me that for the hike we could meet up with some friends of him and this turned out to be a 30 man travel club :D
Unfortunately, I had done lots of sports just the day before after not exercising in the last weeks, so that my muscels were soring really badly. Moreover I was somehow super tired and therefore could't enjoy the hike too much... BUT afterwards we went to a local hotspring place which was aaawesome! Lots of different pools of varying temperature, water jets for massaging your back and very shallow pools for lying/sleeping there. Soooo relaxing!

steam from a natural hot spring

my hiking group

So, thats it!