Baolai Hot Springs

Clear and odorless, neutral sodium bicarbonate hot springs is what Kaohsiung��s Baolai is best known for.

The ambience is great, the view is nice and the air is clean. After a soak, your skin is nice too. After typhoon Morakot, the roads were all blocked, but now they��re OK, and this place is beautiful again.
The air here is good, and it��s good for health to be in the mountains. We decided to come here and show some support after it was rebuilt.

Baolai hot spring is fantastic!

Michella Jade Weng, Presenter:
There are three foods you can try when you come to Baolai. In the summer, there��s mango and towards the end of the year, there are fig jelly and plum, sour plum.

Jhong Siang-guei,Plums Expert:
You have to pick the plums when it��s not yet ripe. First we deseed it, then juice it and cook it until it turns from green to black until it is a paste, and it takes about 48 hours.

Because of its strong alkaline characteristic, some people take this as a health supplement. But boy, it is really sour!

On the way to Baolai, you probably passed Meinong, a Hakka town famous for its paper umbrellas. You might want to stop by on the way back.

The paper umbrella industry here started about a century ago and the local economy heavily depended on it.

But today, handmade paper umbrellas, even though still fully functional, are more of a novelty, and craftsmen continue to make them mostly to keep the tradition alive.

The umbrella is made of bamboo and cotton paper. Persimmon juice binds them together.

Wu Jian-ying, Umbrella Maker:
That��s persimmon juice. The persimmons we eat are red, right? Well we use green persimmons for this. In the old days, persimmon juice was a glue and dye. Completely natural.

After typhoon Morakot, the roads to, from and thru Baolai and Meinong were heavily damaged, but are now restored, making this area once again open to tourists.