After a rather uninteresting trip at Small Swiss Garden and having some time to spare before it gets dark, we drove downhill and turn left to Lushan. We were looking for a place to do a hot spring trip ('pao tang') and found this hotel on the fly where they offer us a 2-hour room usage with a built-in hot spring tub at NT1,200 (Tip for non-locals: key word to get a an hourly-rated private room with hot spring facility is 'xiu xi') You know the part about 'visual is for illustration purpose' only? This refers to the room that was given to us. To get to the lift, we walked past a weary-looking restaurant along a dimly-lit hallway, which gave us the feeling that the hotel management was being rather skimpy on the electricity. Our room is located at the lower level. The room is pretty standard, the bathroom was indeed spacious with a sizeable hot spring tub that can fit more than 2 person, but the interior looks so old that it makes you feel like you've been transported to the 70s! There's an unmistaken creepiness about the building that we decided to leave immediately after we had enough of soaking. The hot spring in Lushan is lightly sulphuric, but with many other types of hot spring (carbonated, mud) available around Taiwan, your hot spring experience could be better elsewhere. We did wonder if anyone would really choose...After a rather uninteresting trip at Small Swiss Garden and having some time to spare before it gets dark, we drove downhill and turn left to Lushan. We were looking for a place to do a hot spring trip ('pao tang') and found this hotel on the fly where they offer us a 2-hour room usage with a built-in hot spring tub at NT1,200 (Tip for non-locals: key word to get a an hourly-rated private room with hot spring facility is 'xiu xi')

You know the part about 'visual is for illustration purpose' only? This refers to the room that was given to us. To get to the lift, we walked past a weary-looking restaurant along a dimly-lit hallway, which gave us the feeling that the hotel management was being rather skimpy on the electricity. Our room is located at the lower level. The room is pretty standard, the bathroom was indeed spacious with a sizeable hot spring tub that can fit more than 2 person, but the interior looks so old that it makes you feel like you've been transported to the 70s! There's an unmistaken creepiness about the building that we decided to leave immediately after we had enough of soaking. The hot spring in Lushan is lightly sulphuric, but with many other types of hot spring (carbonated, mud) available around Taiwan, your hot spring experience could be better elsewhere.

We did wonder if anyone would really choose to stay here if it wasn't for the hot spring. Turns out that they do have quite a number of guests staying in, mostly catering to tour groups and senior folks. Not that we would consider to return.More