Editorial Team
Research & Destination Guides
SpringsAtlas Editorial is the research team behind our destination guides. Where a guide is not written from a contributor's personal travels, it is researched and written by the editorial team and published under this byline.
Our guides draw on national and regional tourism information, historical records, geological and geothermal references, and the SpringsAtlas listings database, which catalogues hot springs with temperature, mineral, access, and location data compiled from public sources. We cite sources for factual and historical claims so readers can check the record themselves.
Personal, first-hand travel pieces are published under the name of the contributor who took the trip. Anything under the SpringsAtlas Editorial byline is researched rather than a first-person account.
The same chain of volcanoes that makes the Pacific Rim shake also heats some of the best hot springs on earth. Here is how soaking culture differs across four volcanic countries, and what each one does best.
Beitou is the famous one, but Taiwan's best soaking is spread across the island. From the forest gorge of Wulai to the clear beauty waters of Jiaoxi and the wild springs of the east coast, here is where to go beyond Taipei.
Taiwan has one of Asia's richest hot spring cultures, and much of it traces back to the Japanese colonial era. Here is how the soaking tradition arrived, took root, and became something distinctly Taiwanese.
Iceland is one of the most expensive countries on earth. But it has seven completely free hot springs. No entrance gate. No queue. Just geothermal water rising from the earth, waiting for anyone willing to walk to it.
