Beitou is Taipei's hot-spring district, half an hour from the city centre on the red MRT line. The Japanese built it up as a spa town in the 1900s — the Beitou Hot Spring Museum is housed in the original 1913 public bathhouse, and the Plum Garden villa nearby was the writer Yu You-jen's retreat — and the area retains a distinctly Japanese flavour, with shuttered wooden ryokan-style hotels, stone lanterns, and a continuous low smell of sulphur.
The river bed at Hell Valley (Geothermal Valley) steams visibly and reaches 90°C; the more attractive Beitou Park is a long shady strip of lawns, a stream, and the green-glazed-tile Beitou Library, an award-winning piece of modern wooden architecture. Public spas range from cheap segregated baths to expensive private rooms at the heritage hotels.