Taipei Must Visit : Wulai Aboriginal Village and Hot Spring

Me and my classmates went to Wulai two weeks ago, a nice mountain village located just outside Taipei. Wulai was an impromptu trip, we planned to go to Tainan city at first, but since we planned it too late, all the bus and train tickets were sold out. Eventhough we know that we can buy the standing train ticket to Tainan, we finally decided to drop this plan and decided to explore somewhere near Taipei instead.

Like many countries, Taiwan has many aboriginal tribes too. and Wulai is a home for for one aboriginal tribes name Atayal. Wulai is the closest aboriginal tribes village from Taipei, and if you are wondering what Wulai means, it means Hot Spring in Atayal’s term.

So basically what you can do at Wulai is to soak yourself in a natural Hot Spring. But other than that, you can eat a lot of Wulai’s aboriginal snacks at the Wulai Old Street, dip your feet in the cold river, see a nice waterfall, hiking around Wulai’s mountain, and take a lot of pretty ‘classic’ pictures. haha.. Let’s go through it one by one, shall we? *grin*

– Wulai’s Entrance 

If you go by bus 849 (TWD 15) from Xin Dian MRT station (end of green line), you will stop at this small bus station after about 45-50 minutes. This bus stop is located at the very end of the bus station, so do not worry of getting lost.

– Wulai’s Old Street

After walking about 5-7 mins, you will find this bridge to enter the Old Street of Wulai. The Old street of Wulai is pretty long and narrow, with many mouthwatering snack stalls on their left and right. So basically what you can do is, buy the snacks one at a time and share it among your friends, so that you can eat more snacks. haha. Wulai is famous for their boar sausage, which is not bad.. but I personally like their suckling roast pork roll, somehow the pork is so nice, love how they do the egg roll as well (eventhough they have quite disturbing whole pig in front of their stall) haha.. And ohh.. I like their grilled mochi topped with condensed milk.. ❤

-Wulai’s Hot Spring 

After non-stop binge eating on the old street, we went straight ahead to the Wulai’s Hot Spring. But since the weather was pretty hot that day, we went to dip our feet in the cold river water instead. and it feels so refreshinggg.. wish indonesia or singapore have this kind of river.. The current was pretty fast though, so i dont think you can swim in this river.

as for the Hot Spring, you can go there for free, eventho mostly are elderly. If you want more private place for soaking yourself, they have a few bathing house as well. Just stroll the street and asked around to get the best deal.

-Wulai’s Waterfall

From the Hot-Spring place, you can walk through Lover’s Path (the walking trail) about 2 km to see this pretty waterfall, eventho not as spectacular as i expected, but it’s quite nice to see. and the walk trail to waterfall is quite pretty too.. =)

-Wulai’s Gondola

Wulai has some hiking trails and large nature park. But because of last year Typhoon, Wulai’s nature park is quite severely damaged. So after we went up by the Gondola (NTD 150), we just hiked to the aboriginal ‘village’ and just explore what they have over there. we ended up playing archery up there, and i suck a lot. haha.

Heard that the gondola fee will help the villagers to re-build their town. Hopefully they can restore the place soon. Never thought that Typhoon can really bring such a great impact to a pretty place.

Wulai is a pretty place, would love to comeback sometime for the street food and dipping my feet in the cold river, enjoying the blue sky, the warm sun rays and brezzy wind, and pondering about life. haha.