Butterflies and Mud Baths

As we all know from the extensive coverage of Asian history in school, Taiwan is a former colony of Japan. Before that it was a colony or there were attempts to make it a colony of a) Portugal, b) The Netherlands, c) Spain. And on top of these the Chinese, who considered it a part of China. However back to Japan, which had control over Taiwan from 1895 until 1945. The one good thing they left behind are hot spas. The place I am now is one example. After a day of temple hopping in Tainan I got on a bus and ended up in the mountains in Guanziling. Renowned as one of the only three places in the world, where they have natural mud hot springs. How could a hot spring aficionado such as myself miss out? 

Guanziling itself is just a few ugly spas huddled against the main road, with one pretty park (built by the Japanese) thrown in. But the mountainsides around are green with life, flowers are blooming!

And life is blooming! Check out this green caterpillar trying to camoflage itself around the flower bud in the picture above. And butterflies. What butterflies! Beautiful, colourful and huge. Swallowtail butterflies are the most stunning, the size of my palm, they flit around in nervous darts as fast as their namesakes and are impossible to take a picture of - at least with an iPad. Then there's these beautiful sky blue dotted fellows,  

these orange guys,

unassuming black and white fellows,

and lots of brilliant cobolt blue ones and spring green ones I couldn't catch on film. Oh the joy of just seeing in colour - unlike in the monochrome of Finland in the winter!

Having missed my breakfast and spent half the day getting here, I was ravenous on arrival. How come there's never a Chinese dumpling place around when you need one? So I had to make do with roast chicken, since that seemed to be the only thing any restaurant served. Damned good chicken it was, I have to admit! Right up there on "the best chicken I've ever eaten" chart. They must be feeding these birds some mountain herbs or massaging them or something. Problem was, half a chicken was the smallest portion. Since the birdie was so good I thought of all the starving children in China and tucked in.

So feeling a little tight around the mid-drift I waddled up the road to the King's Garden Villa with its 15 stone and wood pools. My visions of the boiling mud of Iceland however were diluted when I got to the scene. Mud comes into it only in the colour of the water - it's just water that has gotten a gray tone rising through the local minerals, not thick,slick, shiny mud. Though reportedly the water is awfully good for the skin none the less. And there was also real mud available for making mud masks, or full body mud armour if that's more your thing.

I also experimented with another provided facial mask, which looked like watery porridge and smelled like grass. No photo provided, since it looked like a baby had thrown up on my face.

Apart from the pools, there was a spa with different water stream massage faucets, a steam sauna, regular sauna, a fish-nibbling-dead-skin-off-your-feet pool and a weird gym hall, full of equipment that shook your wobbly bits around - presumeably aiming at deep relaxation.

After four hours of rotating from hot pool to slightly hotter pool to cool pool to steam sauna I am feeling ve-ry relaxed right now. My sister informs me Finland is having its warmest December in history and loads of rain, effectively turning part of the country, including her garden, into a mud pool. But it's not quite the same thing, is it?