We had originally intended to spend the night in Taitung, but after we got there, we realised there wasn’t really much to do in this rather sleepy city. Consulting the Lonely Planet, we decided to head to Chihben 知本 instead, a hotspring town about half an hour’s drive away.
There are many hotspring hotels there, but we decided to splurge for that one night by going to the most expensive one there called Hotel Royal Chihpen. The room rate included a buffet dinner for the three of us.


Our nice bathroom that includes an indoor hotspring.


Comfy beds for the night


Steam rising up from the pump room. There’s a Japanese-style hotspring where you’ll have to strip naked and also the other hotspring pools where there are different ‘flavoured’ pools with lavender oil, peppermint oil, herbal tea etc. I preferred the Japanese-style hotsprings though, and went twice – after dinner and early the next morning. I got my money’s worth. 🙂


There was also a dance performance by a Taiwanese aboriginal dance group, whom I think double up as hotel employees in the day. The east coast of Taiwan is where the Taiwanese aboriginals lived and many of their descendants still live there to this day.