Last weekend, I decided to take the short 2 hour flight from Incheon to Taipei over Lunar New Year. A lot of people had warned me not to travel to Taiwan during this time because “everything will be closed.” But, I’m stubborn and tend to like to follow my own path, and decided that Lunar New Year was exactly the time I wanted to be in Taiwan. Seeing a place, its people, a culture, during the holidays brings with an understanding you cannot get any other time of the year. Plus, they can’t close everything, right?

I’m riding in the front seat of a van next to a local Taiwanese woman named Iris who is the driver for a touring group in Taroko National Park called Island Life Taiwan. She speaks perfect English, raving about the time she spent in Boston, and how her daughter still lives in America and plays violin in a famous orchestra in NYC. She tells me her daughter is year of the Pig, like me, and that why she’s so independent. She wants to know how I came to live in Asia and why I’m vacationing alone in Taiwan. And I tell her the truth. I’ve heard about how gorgeous this country is and since it was my year, I felt this deep connection with coming here at this time. I then ask her, “many people told me things would be closed this week and that it’s a bad time to travel, what do you think?” She laughs at this. “Let me tell you a secret.” She says.”Taiwanese people love money. They love any opportunity to make money. You know when they can make the most money?” I raised my eyebrows, indicating I’m not quite sure. “If they stay open on Lunar.” She continues to smile. “You will have no trouble finding things that will be open in Taipei.”

I must admit, there were a lot of things closed on Lunar. Mostly food places, where whole families had taken off. But to say everything was closed in Taipei during this time would be entirely incorrect. You just had to go searching for the places that were open; which again I admit was easier said than done. I met a friend at the hostel I was staying at, and we decided that for the day we were going to find some hot springs to lie in. We grabbed our bathing suits and headed up to Xinbeinto Station, where our hostel receptionist told us is the thermal region of Taipei. It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect lounging weather, and finding the bathing springs was a piece of cake; open, wonderful! However, the line to get in . . . not as wonderful. What was even less wonderful was the regulations for using the springs. In order to swim in the public area, you needed to have a specific swim suit. And although it only cost about $2usd to get into the pools, it cost about $20 to purchase one of the special suits. Taiwanese people love to make money. We decided it wasn’t worth it.

Instead, we ventured up the road to an area on google maps that highlighted the destination Thermal Valley as somewhere to explore. Maybe there would be hot springs here? Outside of the Thermal Valley gate there were vendors with steaming street food, cafes, and souvenirs shops open and bustling with customers. Up near the gate to the opening of the Thermal Valley was a small crowd of people. It looked like we had found a popular Lunar New Year destination. However, when we walked up to the large gate we realized that although there were lots of people in the area, the gate door was firmly locked. When looking at the directory right outside of the gate, it became evident that Thermal Valley is not open on Lunar New Year. Weird. Why were there so many people here if it was closed? Everyone had walked up to the gate and were just peering in, analyzing whether they could fit through the cracks to get inside.

Now I know what normal people do in these situations. They accept that this was not the right activity choice for the day, go home and find something else to do. But I’m known for doing kind of crazy things. On google maps it looked like there was a winding street that curved up the mountain behind it leading to Yangmingshan National Park. I was pretty sure that if we kept walking up enough we would be able to look down over Thermal Valley and see into the recreational area from above. This was just what we did. Thirty minutes later we were looking down into the Thermal Valley, watching the steam rise, accepting that as incredible as this sight was, there was no way this was a hot springs we could swim in. But there was one more place on the map we could try . . .

Going up more of the windy road, up a steep set of stairs, past a beautiful temple on a hill and down one more straight shot road we found ourselves at the edge of the National Park. Here, google maps indicated was the Sulfur Valley Recreation area. A place used as mining grounds since the 1300s but over extracted by the Japanese during their occupation of the island. Today, the grounds is abandoned, with sulfur steaming up and stinking up the air. It looks like a giant wasteland, a picturesque yet disastrous sight. Again, not somewhere we could swim . . . but what a cool place to explore! Not to mention, it’s open 24 hours.

After walking as much as we did, we were in no condition to face the steep walk back down. My hostel friend had the idea of hitchhiking, which I thought he was kidding about at first, but turns out he was entirely serious. So the end of our adventure was us in the backseat of a Taiwanese couple’s vehicle discussing in broken english how they were off to see their grandchildren for Lunar New Year dinner.

In conclusion, if you think you might want to travel to Taiwan over Lunar New Year, consider it as an adventure. Know there will be things that are closed. But also know that even Taiwanese people don’t completely know what these things will be. And ultimately, you can always find something incredible that is open.

Happy Year of the Pig 🙂