Mysterious Acala Rock Cave

On January 16, we, members of ETGBC, gathered together in Emily Kitchen for lunch party.  Before lunch, Vicky had brought some board games to play with some members in the Beitou Park.  The board games were very interesting.  We took delicious food and chatted a lot in the restaurant.  We left the restaurant about 1:30 pm to begin our visiting to Acala Temple.  The visiting was organized by Yvonne. She leaded us to visit through some secret routes.

Acala is also known as Fudo Myo(不動明王).  Japanese believe that Fudo Myo can avoid the fire and guard the hot springs, so many Fudo Myo temples were built in the hot spring area of Taiwan during the rule of Japan.  Fudo Myo temple in Beitou was originally built by the owner of Yitsun Hotel(逸邨) for praying business prosperity.

Yvonne showed us a secret route to the Fudo Myo temple.  We passed through some ruins.  From the pieces and the parts remained in the ruins, we can image how splendid they were in their age.  Yvonne told us that these houses could be the private houses of some old hot spring hotel owners.  There are some small houses around the ruins to form a small village.  These houses could be for the employees of the old hot spring hotels.  A castle still stands but the people were disappeared.  A little bit sad, isn’t it?

Then, we reached the Fudo Myo temple.  In fact, the temple was built along the rock shape, so we can also call it the Fudo Myo rock cave.  We stayed there for a while to listen to Yvonne talking about the details of the temple.  She also showed us how to avoid the attack of the wild dogs.  It is very useful while we walk in the mountain routes.

After that, we followed Yvonne to another secret route down to the end of Wenquan Road(溫泉路).  On the Wenquan Road, there are some grand houses left, beautiful but desolate.  Maybe we can try to find the real history of these grand houses to make them alive again.  Finally, we came to the Thermal Valley and terminate the interesting secret visiting today.