Where, oh where, can you ride and hide from the sizzling Taipei summer heat without leaving the city？ Taiwan is an island country, and Taipei is a city of rivers. Even along the busy city streets, you'll find facilities where water play is the theme. Perhaps the best news of all is that the 2011 Taipei Fun Water Festival (2011臺北親水節) has hit the city with a big splash at the Taipei Water Park (臺北自來水園區), complemented by a whole series of water theme fun-and-exercise classes at the city's sports centers located in each district, offering the whole family a place to escape the heat.

A Kids and Parents Water Festival Showcase

The Taipei Water Park is located in the Gongguan (公館) section of town near the banks of the Xindian River, and this is the eighth annual Fun Water Festival. The festival is one of the biggest events of the Taipei summer holiday season and certainly the biggest and most anticipated water theme extravaganza among locals, foreign residents and visitors, with over 340,000 people showing up for the H2O-frolic last year.

As always, the featured themes for the festival, which will run until August 28, are“Water”and“Amusement,”with the addition of a nifty park-tour train and all sorts of facilities for family-togetherness. There is also a program of at least 28 live performances, with dance, instrumental music, singing, magic, and variety shows highlighted, along with other edutainment attractions such as water conservation activities, DIY games, and summer-theme photography contests with big cash prizes. In late July, there will also be free preview showings of major summer blockbusters at the water park. As can be seen, your festival fun is coming in big waves, so don't miss out.

Among the most popular draws at each year's festival is the riverside concert, a romantic rendezvous that will happen on Chinese Valentine's Day (August 6) in Gongguan Riverside Plaza (公館水岸廣場) beside Yongfu Bridge (永福橋). There will be a slew of big-name pop singers hitting the stage with easy-listening tunes to wish everybody well and create a congenial, happy mood, and a splendiferous and fantabulous fireworks display that will go on at least five full minutes to cap things off with bold colors.

The Fun Water Festival is a once-a-year draw, but Taipei Water Park is also home to a number of year-round attractions such as Water Country Park (水鄉庭園), which you enter via Siyuan Street (思源街). This is a unique water-play amusement area made up to look like the piping you'd see everywhere at a water-treatment plant. Another very popular attraction is the Aqua Friendly Experiencing Area (親水體驗區), with separate admission charged, where all the facilities are designed to teach you about water velocity, pressure, and temperature; there's both an outdoor fun area and indoor spa area, with a Centrifugal Experiencing Channel, Gravity Experiencing Channel, Water Pressure Experiencing Pond, Water Circulating and Buoyancy Experiencing Pond, and outdoor manmade beach.

Once you've fully refreshed yourself with body-cooling and spirits-lifting water play, a little sightseeing is in order. Also within the Taipei Water Park is the Museum of Drinking Water (自來水博物館), a Baroque work of architecture that was once the waterworks pumping station, today a Historical Relic of the Third Rank. The Pipe Sculpture Area (管材雕塑區) is also well worth a visit, overflowing with outdoor installation artworks made with recycled materials, and you can also rent a bike and head along the dedicated bike path corridor that brings you from the park and past the dike to the nearby riverside without obstruction, where you can enjoy the city's riverside bike path networks and the expansive panoramas.

The fun times have rolled in, and a tidal wave of cool-seekers hits the park each day, so we strongly recommend you take public transportation to and from the site. Note that Exit No. 4 of MRT Gongguan Station on the Xindian Line is just seven easy minutes on foot from the park.

Every District a Sports Center — Swimming and Other Water Fun on Tap

Another great choice for safe water play in the city is the certified swimming pools at local sports centers. The city has set up a community-use sports center in each of its 12 administrative districts, each of which features massage-therapy pools, spa pools, sauna and steam-bath facilities, and other water theme facilities in addition to the swimming pools.

The most special among the centers are those in Neihu (內湖) and Shilin (士林). The former has a heated pool facility on the seventh floor, with pools for swimming, water play, and sauna use. An added bonus is the lovely, twinkling night-time views of the city. The indoor heated-pool facility at the latter is on the third floor and is liberally splashed with sunlight during the day, overlooking a calming green expanse.

During the July and August summer holidays, many of the sports centers offer intensive swimming classes, divided by age or experience. For example, the centers in Zhongshan (中山), Shilin, Songshan (松山), and other districts concentrate their efforts on helping people rid themselves of“landlubber”(旱鴨子) status. If you're just looking for a little time in the water, not for lessons, no problem: a single-entry pool ticket is just NT$110 for adults, giving you full use of the top-flight swimming facilities all day, from 6 am to 10 pm.

If you're perhaps looking for something completely new and different to do in or on the water, like canoeing, water-skiing, high-diving, and skin/scuba-diving, Songshan Sports Center is the place for you, drawing many like-minded people. This is the only facility in Taipei with a deep-water swimming pool dedicated to instruction in these activities, with numerous class options designed for you, making your thirst for the thrills that these sports bring an easy one to slake!

Note also that the Nangang (南港) center has a five-meter-deep diving pool and a schedule of classes, and also organizes lectures on diving on an irregular basis. For example, there is a lecture on ocean ecology scheduled for August 7, with details available on the center's website (ngsc.cyc.org.tw).

In the summer of 2011, the city of Taipei is by design transforming itself into a city-wide theme park where water is king. Come catch the wave. For a most“refreshing”view of this hot and busy place/throwing yourself into activities that are both the“hottest”and the“coolest”attractions in town.