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We’re holding our breath and jumping headfirst into a new blog series! In “Pools & Amenities,” we tour around Kaohsiung and find places with certain “necessities” for expats. We take a tour of facilities to see what’s on offer. We talk with staff, compile prices and of course, experience the pools & amenities first-hand so we can tell you what you need to know and where you need to go.
If you know us, you know we’re opinionated. And we want to share ours with you through a scale of 1-5 suns. 🌞= can we get our money back? 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞= this place is amazing and we want everyone to know about it but we also don’t want to share. Without further ado
Fullon Hotel, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Taiwan summers are no joke. If you’re staying in the city and don’t have immediate access to a pool, check out the Fullon Hotel Kaohsiung. Their “Bali” inspired pool just screamed “lái, lái, lái” to us. They also have a small gym available as well as a sauna room with a hot and cool pool to revitalize yourself after a nice sweat sesh. Their website appealed to us enough that we called ahead to make sure we could use the pool without staying overnight. We immediately grabbed some Ubikes and headed out.
We were immediately greeted by:
Their lobby is impressively clean and bright, a welcoming change from the construction dirt just outside on the road. (Kaohsiung has many up-and-coming projects in the works in nearly all its districts. You’d be hard pressed to find a neighborhood without a swinging crane and/or jackhammer buzzing away.)
To your left you will see the front desk occupied with smiling staff who are eager to help you. Across from the front desk is the Arcadia Cafe, where you can grab a quick bite or drink from this menu. Note that the Chef’s Specials are only available within certain hours listed at the bottom. Much like many restaurants we’ve hangrily rolled into, this cafe does not serve food all day. Maybe the chef takes a midday nap?
There’s WiFi in the lobby and cafe, so if you’ve ordered at least 150 NTD, you can sit and work or relax or admire the artwork currently hanging, which was created by local schoolchildren and is for sale. Can you think of a better souvenir from your day of fun at the Fullon? We think not, except for maybe a nice tan from your poolside time.
Based on its appearance and items offered for use, we give the lobby 🌞🌞🌞.
Then we took a look around
Fullon staff member Calista treated us to our tour of their pools & amenities and although she says her English isn’t very good, she’s wrong. She was able to thoroughly explain each amenity, its cost and hours of operation. She was great! As we understood, each area costs 500 NTD per person per day.
We were most interested in the pool, which is where the tour began. Thankfully we were the only people there to swim around 1:30 PM on a Tuesday. Three tables with chairs and sun umbrellas line the pavement below the pool and would be a great spot to set up a laptop with a beer from the Arcadia. (Regretfully, we didn’t stay long enough to execute this part of the trip so I’m just hypothesizing.)
There are small male and female restrooms near the tables, where you can shimmy into your bathing suit and swim cap. (If you don’t have a swim cap, you can buy one there for 100 NTD.) Take a quick shower while you’re in there so you comply with the pool rules. The kidney-shaped pool cradles a small kiddie pool so you can let your kids float while you do laps. When we started our tour there were just two sun lounge chairs out and my competitive side wanted to leave our things on them to claim them. Luckily, my aggressiveness was unfounded, as they were still available when we came back.
Hands down, for her bravery in stepping up to conduct a tour entirely in English, Calista gets 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞.
Ways to sweat it out in the basement
We left the pool and went down a flight of stairs to check out the sauna and gym. The sauna itself was your basic cedar sweat room. It looked like it would comfortably house 4-5 people. Outside the sauna are two sitting pools, one hot and one cold for your dunking pleasure. Showers and lockers are adjacent to the sauna.
The gym has acceptable accouterments to fight off that scallion pancake you had last night but no one’s setting a weightlifting record here. However, you can bring four of your closest friends and simultaneously do cardio on their wide selection of treadmills and ellipticals.
There’s a small children’s play area at the end of the hall for the tiny expats. Drop them off and pump some iron or sit and read a magazine. This area is a regrettably long distance from the Arcadia Cafe’s beer selection but there is no extra charge to use the children’s area.
We sweated enough on the bike ride there so we skipped the sauna and indoor pools but they were so clean they get 🌞🌞🌞🌞.
Having already done our workouts for the day near home, we did not use the gym but it’s worth 🌞🌞.
We don’t have kids but the children’s area seemed like it would entertain the wildest hooligans for a good hour or two, so it gets 🌞🌞🌞🌞.
If you’re going to Garden, hope it’s a Happy one
“Happy Garden” is their hotpot restaurant on the second floor. Its menu was detailed and bilingual, which is a godsend when your stomach’s growling but you need to know exactly what kind of meat you’re ordering. Note that you need to time your hunger accordingly. Midday rest is a thing here.
We did not eat in the Happy Garden so we can’t rate the food but the English on the menu seemed promising. We’ll manifest a 🌞🌞🌞🌞experience.
Time for our relaxing dip
Calista brought us back upstairs so we could reflect on our tour of the pools & amenities and take a dip. The water was surprisingly warm, which made it less refreshing than we’d hoped for on this particularly hot day. We swam and played in the water for a little while and then retired to our sun chairs for some peace and quiet. However, we believe there’s a temple nearby, so if you want to listen to the local spiritual celebrations, Fullon is a great place for that.
Unfortunately, the warm pool gets 🌞🌞. While it was clean and well guarded – xiè xiè to the lone lifeguard they had to call to come watch us cavort in the water – the nearby temple made it impossible to really relax on this particular day.
What do I type into Google maps?
Don’t be confused by all the Fullons in Kaohsiung. ONE of us – no one’s pointing fingers – navigated us to the Fullon Poshtel and that was incorrect. The Fullon Hotel Kaohsiung is located at No. 45 Wufu 4th Road, Yancheng District. You should recognize these modest copper doors. 
We noticed that the Fullon isn’t far from the Kaohsiung Music Center (KMC) building near the Love River. If you indulged too much at Fullon’s pools & amenities, you can stretch your legs along the river walk or explore anything happening at the KMC.
