Taipei - Beitou Museums

One of the nice things about the Taipei subway system is that the outskirts of Taipei are some much more accessible. It use to be an expensive taxi ride or a crazy bus ride out of Taipei. But with the subway, lots of places are possible.

The end of the Danshui line in Northern Taipei is Xin Beitou. It use to be a hot springs resort for rich people but now it's accessible to anyone with a subway Easy Access card. There is a Beitou Hot Springs Museum that documents the development of the Beitou Hot Springs during the Japanese time.

There is also the Kaidagelan Cultural Center which documents some of the Aboriginal tribes that inhabited Taiwan before the immigration from China in the 1600s. These tribes were similar to the peoples of Melanesia that we saw in the Philippines and in Bali. You can see on the map that Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan are all in the same group.

I swear some of the basketry looked like what we had just seen in Bali.

A girdle for the hips while dancing.

But life for these tribes must not have been easy. How about pants made from bark.

No washing machines, just a stone with grooves etched in it for down by the river.

But the feathered headdress looks like something from the American Indians.

I'll have to go back and get some better pictures.