Savusavu Hot Springs, Vanua Levu, Fiji

From my travel photo album of Fiji I visited in May. Fiji, especially Vanua Levu Island is geothermally very active and Savusavu is most well known for hot springs in the country.

There are mainly two spots hot springs are gushing at Savusavu. One is in a small park, just off the town center. Very hot spring, around 80°C is gushing.

It's too hot to soak. Actually hot springs here aren't for soaking but for cooking. Many people come to this park to cook, steam or boil vegetables, meats and fishes.

It's a pity the "Savusavu Hot Spring Hotel" I stayed didn't supply hot springs for bathing. They said it's too hot and cooling down cost was higher than water heating.

The another spot is seashore.  Hot springs are gushing everywhere along seashore. It's very hot also here and I saw a tourist burned his foot when he tried barefoot walking.

 

 There are some small hot spring ponds at seashore and people cook here, too. These guys boiling fish for their breakfast.

Back to Onsen

After soaking in mud bath of the Sabeto Hot Springs, near Nadi International Airport, Fiji.

I'm back. Back from Fiji. Back to onsen world after stormy two and half months. Onsens had been out of my mind since the disaster, but recently I resumed onsen visits.

Some onsens were hit by the quake ant the tsunami. Indirect impacts also ovserved. Some stopped gushing, or new fountainheads emerged. Some existing onsens turned hotter, the others changed their color to milky white or transparent. Some of the affected onsens located more than 500 km away from the epicenter.

Other changes. According to some news reports, geiger counters are selling like hot cakes. Before the disaster, only limited people bought geiger counters. Many of them were onsen-goers expecting to cure their diseases, mainly cancer by radium hot springs. I mean people used to buy geiger counters to expose themselves to radiation as much as possible to get healthy, now people buy them to get away from it to stay healthy....

I visited only 27 onsens so far this year, compares to 93 same time last year. Anyway, I'm OK and my life in Tokyo got back to normal. I'll try to update this blog more often.


Also at the Sabeto Hot Springs.

Shinsegae Centum City Spaland, Busan, Korea

The Spaland located 1-3F of the glass walled building. The backside tall bldg is the Shinsegae Department Store.

Made a very short trip to Busan, the second biggest city in Korea. I stayed only 49 hours there, as a typhoon attack stopped ferries and shortened my trip, but I could visit three hot spring bath houses. Shinsagae Centum City Spaland is the newest and most recommendable.

It annexed to the Shinsegae Department Store, just next to the Centum City Station of the subway line 2. Opened in March 2009, it's spotlessly clean with gorgeous atmosphere.


The open-air baths are for ladies only.

The big bath rooms are gender separated. They supply tow types of hot springs, one is Sodium chloride, and the other is Sodium bicarbonate. There are open-air baths for ladies only (Why not for men?).

Their Jim Jil Bang or Sauna is worth visiting. There are many hot rooms and an ice room. All of them are gender mixed, you need to wear in house cloths, and you can enter any room you like. Some new bath houses in Japan are equipped with Jim Jil Bang, but its standard is far inferior to this spaland.


Enjoy sauna hopping at their huge Jim Jil Bang. This is what we don't have in Japan.

You don't have to carry cash inside. The IC-chip attached locker key records all in house expenses, and you pay the balance when you leave the spaland.


There are big foot baths out side of Jim Jil Bang space.

◆Shinsegae Centum City Spaland

Type: Gender Separated bath rooms (open-air bath for ladies only), gender mixed Jim Jil Bang (complex of sauna rooms)

Address: 1495 U-dong, Haeundae-gu, Busan, Korea

Location: 35.168046,129.12920

Telephone:　051-745-2900

Business hour: 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM (Until midnight on weekends)

Holiday: Same as Shinsegae Department Store (once a month)

Admission fee: you can stay up to four hours
12,000(weekday), 14,000(weekend and holiday)
7,000(6-8AM on weekday, and after 9PM on Sun-Thurs)
9,000 (6-8AM on weekend & holidays and after 9PM on Fri & Sat)

Access: Exit 12 of the Centum City Station, Subway Line 2

My rating (A to E): B


Why not take a nap after taking bath and Jim Jil Bang?

Wulai Hot Springs, Taipei County, Taiwan

A soaker and feet bathers. The hot springs water itself is almost transparent, looks gray after mixing with bottom sand. (photo: Mar. 2010)

Wulai（烏來） is a small town of Atayal or Tayal tribe in Taipei County, North Taiwan. It's famous for onsen as well. I made my fourth visit here with a friend of mine, and soaked ourselves in the naturally gushing hot springs on the banks of the Nanshih River the other day.

We found the place to soak at the left side of the bridge over the Nanshih River. You have to make your own soaking pond here, moving rocks to mix river water and the hot springs to make adequate temperature for soaking. Fortunately, a kind man gave his soaking space for us, so we didn't have to work hard to get a pond.


You can find readymade soaking ponds at the right side of the bridge.(photo: Mar. 2010)

The hot springs gushing from the bottom sand and very hot, more than 60°C in the sand at my visit. We had to keep stirring water around us to mix river water and hot springs. Swim suites are necessary. There are no changing rooms around there, but a nearby grocery store made us change clothe in their toilet with small money.


Primitive changing rooms are ready at the right side of the bridge.(photo: Mar. 2010)

If you go right side of the bridge, you'll find more organized (?) place for soaking with some concrete made ponds. There are four private changing rooms, and the ponds for washing and for soaking are separated.The river flows slower around here, and many people swim in the river for cooling down after soaking in the hot springs.


There are many hotels with hot springs on the both side of the river. (photo: Feb. 2009)

Of course there are hotels and resorts you can make a day visit. Don't forget to try bamboo tube rice（竹筒飯）, one of the aboriginal dishes.

Access is easy. There are frequent direct bus to Wulai from 青島西路 (Qingdao West Rd? location 25.044587,121.51858) , south side of the Taipei Railway Station, taking about one and half hours and the fare is $70 one way. Although many guidebooks recommend to go to Xindian（新店） with MTR (subway) first, then to take the bus to Wulai($40) from just behind of the tourist information center at the Xindian station to avoid traffic jam in central Taipei, this bus gets desperately crowded especially on weekends, and the road is winding. If you go with small kids and aged people, I recommend you to take the bus from central Taipei. Get off the bus at the last stop at Wulai in either case and just walk around. You will find the bridge I mentioned.


Souvenir shop looks very much like one in Japan. (photo: Feb. 2009)

Hotel Kuanzuling, Kuan Tzu Ling Hot Springs, Taiwan

One of the private baths. Overnight staying guests can take a bath here anytime, if nobody inside and the door is open. You can see how thick their mud bath is.

Kuan Tzu Ling (關子嶺, also spelled "Guan Zi Ling" and "Kuanzuling") Hot Springs located Southwest of Taiwan is one of the most impressive hot springs I've ever visited. It's gushing with mud and smells like volatile oil. I mean you can soak yourself in a mud pot with benzine-like smell. Isn't it exciting? It looks sticky, but actually it has powder-like smooth touch and it's good for your skin.

I stayed at the Hotel Kuanzuling again in early Dec. It hasn't changed much since my last visit in June 2007. The Japanese style entrance is still used as the back entrance. It has history of more than 100 years.


The present main entrance (left) . The Japanese style entrance still remaining as the back entrance (right).

I never think of staying other places at Kuan Tzu Ling. Because it's close to the fountainhead, their mud baths are thicker, and it's cheap to stay overnight (TWD 1000 for a single room on a weekday) . There are five private baths, and the bathroom attached to the guestroom also supplies mud hot springs.


The bath in the guest room also supplies hot springs.

Landmannalaugar, Iceland

Landmannalaugar located southeast of Iceland is known for a highland trekking base rather than hot springs. I made a short slideshow from my travel photo album of last August. It's two minutes long without any sound. Of course some pictures of hot springs are included.

Klambragil, near Hveragerdi, Iceland

There are some very active geothermal fields around Hveragerdi (correctly Hveragerði), about 45km southeast of Reykjavik, Iceland. A friend of mine and I enjoyed hiking to the hot spring river of Klambragil north of Hveragerdi in early August.


The hot spring was too hot to soak, we had to look for a soakable spot. We found the river water joined hot spring, and downstream of the joining point was soakable at 42 - 43°C. We met many travellers mainly from Continental Europe in the afternoon.


The entrance of the hiking trail located north of Hveragerdi. There is a car park at the entrance. You can see hot spring steams from the entrance gate. Be ware of boiling hot springs, especially if you go with your children as there are no fences arounnd the gushing spots.

We found this "Danger" signboard (even with Japanese word "危険", German and Italian?, too) in the area no hot spring was gushing. I heard the hot spring gushing points changed dramatically after the magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit the area on May 29, 2008.




The hiking trail was well marked with red & yellow painted sticks.　It's rather easy walk without sharp ascend or descend. It took around an hour to the hot spring river.


We had to cross the river on the way. I took my shoes off for walking in the river. People in the picture came from Colombia.


There was hardly any path between the hiking trail and the hot spring river, we walked too far.

Huaqing Spa Hotel, Beijing, China

 
Beijiners' family hang out for weekends. The yellowish slightly muddy hot spring has smooth touch.(photo: May 2009)

Spent my Golden Week, a Japanese spring holiday season in Beijing, China. This was my first visit to Beijing. There are some hot springs in and around Beijing, I visited four of them besides the famous tourist spots like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.

 
The giant panda wasn't so cute.

The Huaqing Spa Hotel is known for the first large scale garden-style open-air baths in Beijing. It's easy to visit for foreigners as it's within walking distance from the subway station.

I felt the admission fee of ¥89 (nearly 1300 yen) was a bit expensive compared to the other consumer prices (Usually I don't spend more than 1000yen for soaking in Japan). Hot spring soaking might be a snobbish leisure for beijiners.

 
There are also some indoor baths.

◆Huaqing Spa Hotel

Type: Gender Mixed. Swim suites necessary.

Address: No.2 Jia Linshuiqiao, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Business hour: 9:00 AM to 02:00 AM

Holiday: None

Admission fee: ¥89 (¥128 including a meal at the cafeteria)

Equipment (for day visit bathing): Open-air baths, indoor baths, a swimming pool, a cafeteria. Free Bath towels.

Access: About 10 minutes walk from the Lishuiqiao Station of the Subway Line five & thirteen.

Link: Official website of Huaqing Spa Hotel in English

My rating (out of five): 3

Ba Ian Wild Hot Spring, near Taipei, Taiwan

Just came back from Taiwan. Soaked in various type of hot springs, for example, a wild open-air bath beside a river, a free public bath mainly for local residents, a private bath at a temple, and stylish spa pools.

The most memorable was the Ba Ian Hot Spring(八煙野渓温泉) just outside of Taipei city. The sulfur hot spring is very hot, more than 50 degrees Celsius, but you can make it adequate temperature by mixing river water.

To visit there, get on the Royal Bus(皇家客運汽車) serving between south side of Taipei railway station and Jinshan, and after about an hour and half ride, get off at Ba Ian Hotspring Resort(八煙温泉會館).

Takes not more than 30 minutes on foot to reach this wonderful open-air bath from the bus stop. Swim suites necessary. If you like hot springs in wild settings, this is the place to go. Everyday many people visit there, and the foot pass is well marked. You don't have to worry about get lost. Gets crowded on weekends even it rains.

Travel Tips:
The Royal bus(皇家客運汽車) to Jinshan(金山) leaves from Gong Yuang Rd(公園路), south of Taipei Railway Station. The bus departs about every hour on weekdays, and every half hour on weekends. It takes an hour and half to Ba Ian Hotspring Resort(八煙温泉會館), costing TWD 120 or 130. Walk down the slope beside the bus stop, then not turn right to the entrance of the resort, but go straight to follow unpaved foot pass.