A travel vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting a day trip to hot springs and a waterfall near Wulai, Taiwan. The hosts ride public transport, sample local aboriginal foods (including bamboo-cooked rice and fish), experience public hot springs (only foot-dipping), hike to a scenic waterfall, and later try local street noodles which appear to include pig intestine soup. The tone is informal and humorous with on-camera reactions to food and local culture.
Today we are headed to some natural hot springs about an hour outside of the city. So we're going to jump on the metro, ride it all the way to the very end, and then jump on a bus for 40 minutes. But first, the 711 for coffee. Done.
I got my coffee. Now we can officially start the day.
Now to find the bus. There's a long line of people over this way. That was much easier than it normally is. Or quite the amount of people headed in the same direction as us. Hope we make this bus.
That means sharing a hot spring with them.
Just picture all of these people right here without any clothes on. Just kidding. I'm pretty sure it's common to wear bathing suits.
Darn.
We're here.
I don't think we're making this one. If I get on, you got to squeeze. We're kind of on. We still technically have.
I hope they close. Lean forward.
We're literally standing up the stairs of Mumbai.
We also have no clue how we pay.
I don't think you're gonna make it.
Apparently there's more room than we thought. Let's bring a couple more people. Oh, yeah.
The bus door almost crushed me. It just got my bag. I narrowly escaped with my.
Wow. Once again, a little car sick from another public restaurant. Falling all over the people next to you trying not to get smashed and died by the door.
It was like a workout to try to hold on on the curves.
I had no clue how much we were gonna pay for that bus ride. So when it was over, I just held my hand out. With a lot of money in it for the guy to take however much you need it. And it only cost A$45 minutes for both of us. I can see why this hot spring is not near as popular as the other one that you just drive the subway to.
This is a much different side of Taiwan.
And I really like it. This is crazy. These two streams are mixing together. This one'. Green. They're coming together right here. This town is mostly aboriginals and they're supposed to have some really unique foods. So before the hot springs, that's where we're going. I read about these bamboo things. There's rice inside of them. And I really want them.
What is that?
Oh, and none of the signs here in English. We have no idea what anything is.
And here's an entire pig.
Hey, little piggy. Coconut in there. We got this.
This.
And this.
We are now sitting in some restaurant. We thought we were ordering street food. And then we got pointed upstairs.
All right. Our full spread Is here some kind of anchovy, sardine, fried fish, a local curr that they saute in garlic and rice and some other stuff that I don't know what it is. Cooked in a piece of bamboo. We want to see Cara try the fish. Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish. I think you see the whole thing, even the tail. Yeah.
Eating this unknown fish going mouth first.
Really.
The skin's a little tough.
But the flavor is great.
Wow.
I'm just as shocked as you are. All right, you try. All right. Let's see if Nate's as tough as me.
I expected, like, the bones were really crunchy.
Yeah. There's a little bit of crunch. I feel like it's the tail.
Not bad. Not bad. All right. These are pretty good. Nate read about them.
Fantastic. Got this whole for you.
Aww, look at that.
Brunch.
Anything.
You might really taste the bamboo.
Yeah. What does bamboo taste like?
Green.
Well, finished. Everything with the fish. Just felt weird eating that many bones. Kara's still hungry.
Gonna try the vanilla cake.
Seems asian.
Ye.
Thank you. Once again. I bet people were like, yes, today they're doing something besides eating. They're going to another city and going to hot springs. Yeah. Here we are again.
The stuff on top has a good flavor.
I think it's sesame.
Wow.
Very strange consistency.
It's like.
Kind of like a jello y mashed potato consistency.
Gross. Pretty sure all those people down there at the public hot spring beside the river heading that way, we're not sure if the river is hot or cold.
Very cold.
I will not be getting in there. Not at exactly the luxury experience that we had at Monstead in Tokyo.
But it does seem like a very local thing to do.
Now. It's burning my feet. Get me out of here.
This water right here coming out of the side of the hill is smoking hot. Kara has an extremely high heat tolerance, and she has.
Her toes in.
That's about as far as I can go. Looks like everyone else is a lot better at this than us. They have their feet completely submerged.
I can't even, like, submerge my toes without them burning.
Public baths were a little crowded today, so we opted not to partake and just put our feet in. We may potentially attempt to build our own private hot spring further up river. But we'll see.
On our search for a private hot spring, we accidentally got on this trail to a waterfall.
This might be even better than the hot springs.
It's so pretty.
Look at the rainbow.
We have shot this waterfall from, like, 10 different angles because Every time we move somewhere else, like, oh, it looks even better from here.
It just keeps getting prettier.
Now we're hiking back down to the bottom to get some ice cream cream and then jump on the bus and head home.
Well, it's tallest ice cream cone. Congratulations. It's literally bigger than your head.
The plan was for both of us to get an ice cream cone, but I think this one will suffice. She did it. The whole thing.
So worth it.
The party is non stop tonight. We're gonna stay on our part of town and get some snacks on the street since they're a lot better than the night market. We went to getting some of these babies.
They're leaving.
The first night we got here, we saw this huge line outside this noodle restaurant. And so we have to try it because the line is even longer tonight.
All of these people for that noodle stand.
All right, here we go.
Hi.
Oh, wow. That was fast. Looky there.
Evidently, there's no options. You just say your size and they give it to you.
There's something in here that I don't know what it is.
Probably pig intestine.
It's looking like an intestine.
I think it might be. I think we're eating pig intestine soup right now.
Why do you think that?
Because that's what it looks like.
But I got the largest.
You don't look like you love.
Surprised me. It's a very bold flavor. A lot of the soups we've had here have been very bland.
Since we have been in Taipei, we've seen more homeless people here than anywhere else. Kara has been carrying this bowl of noodles that we didn't really like around for like 30 minutes trying to find a homeless person.
And we can't find any.
Nope.
I think we are accidentally ordered pig intestine soup. I'm pretty positive. I'm trying to confirm. I can't find it.
We need to be more careful about just jumping in big lines of people because we're learning that what everybody else thinks tastes fantastic is not so fantastic to our taste buds.
No, I'm glad we tried it though, because it is a big thing here. And apparently that's like, the most popular place to eat.
We couldn't find a homeless person, but we did find a stray dog.
Reject it.
We're throwing it away. We can't even give it away. It's supposed to be the best soup in town.
He just looked at me and walked away.
All right, let's go back home. No, let's throw it away. I feel bad.
I don't believe that just happened.
We have downgraded our search. Initially started with the homeless person, then the dog rejected the food, and now we're on the search for a trash can. It's the soup that we can't get rid of. See if the cat wants it.
Really?
Yeah. We've gone a step lower than the dog.
The cat.
Heck, I thought it was funny. Oh.
Trash can it is.
Failed our third mission at finding a trash can. So we're Gonna try the 7 11.
Check out the this bus.
Whoa. Pimp my ride. Don't get too close.
Don't judge Kara's toenails.
The hot water melted off my toenail polish and burnt my toes.
I told you that it was gonna happen.
And I still have a choco tan lines just can't on the vlog. They're just too gross. Stop recording.
I'm gonna sneak them in there.
Stop recording.
