Shimen Reservoir is a big man-made lake in the mountains outside Taoyuan City. It is a popular tourist destination known for its beautiful views of the lake and the surrounding mountains, and nowadays there are more than ten distinct tourist attractions in the area. As everyone knows, with tourists come business opportunities, and a number of hotels, restaurants and cafés have sprung up along the lake shore. In the past it was common for visitors to stay overnight but as transportation improved, especially with the construction on the No. 3 highway, the market for hotels has gone down. As a result several of the big hotel complexes have gone bankrupt over the years. With no one willing to invest in them, the buildings have become abandoned and started to deteriorate.
My friend Jean stumbled upon one of these abandoned hotels when he was in the area back in February. We have been thinking about going to check it out ever since then but there has always been other stuff in the way. Last weekend we finally decided to do it, there was just one problem, neither of us knew the exact location of the place. After a bit of searching around I found one abandoned hotel which is even marked on Google maps but it wasn’t the same as the one Jean had found. Some further research revealed that there are actually four abandoned hotels near the reservoir. So we made a plan to check out all of them, starting with the one marked on the map, Sesame Hotel.
Since it had been a while, Renegade Wife and I took my motorbike to go there. It was a really enjoyable ride on some good roads with good views. Even if you’re not into urban exploration, I can recommend Shimen Reservoir as destination for bikers. Anyway, we reached the location of the hotel, parked the bike, met up with Jean, then went on foot to check out the place. We quickly realized that there wasn’t just one abandoned hotel there but two, and both of them had big signs on the entrances saying it was forbidden to enter. This was a disappointment but Jean mentioned he had seen another one down the hill with an empty swimming pool which seemed promising. Going down the hill we realized that he had just seen the other side of the Sesame Hotel. There were no signs here so we considered jumping the fence but thought better of it when we saw people inside. We tried talking to them, thinking that they might let some curious foreigners come in and take a look, but no dice. We had to give up on that one but did at least snap a couple of photos from the outside.
The front(?) of the Sesame Hotel. You can see some of the workers who have started to renovate the place 
The gangway leading to the Sesame Hotel back door
The second hotel, called the Rice Village Hotel (don’t ask me about the name), had ‘No trespassing’ signs on it just like Sesame Hotel; however, an old man sitting at the tennis courts (that looked like they might still be in use) told us that a lot of people went inside, so we figured we couldn’t get into too much trouble. With the issue of trespassing cleared up, we set off down the path from the tennis court up to the hotel entrance and started exploring.
The look from the outside. Apparently people don’t think twice about using this area as a parking lot. 
Another view from the outside, notice the hole high up on one side. 
The area between the tennis court and the actual hotel has been overgrown over the years, this is what it looks like coming out from the bushes. 
There is this big circular entrance ramp leading up to the lobby. 
We are going in. 
The entrance, clearly there used to be stairs where that chair is
On the first floor that you enter (because of that ramp outside it’s not the ground floor) and the one above you have some big open spaces where the lobby, the restaurant and the kitchen used to be. Because of the open space, with plenty of light coming in from outside ,this part of the building doesn’t feel that creepy. On the entrance floor there is also a series of rooms that look like they used to be private dining rooms. These are more closed-in so the atmosphere is a bit heavier but enough light comes in that I still wouldn’t call it creepy.
The entrance area from above 
Some fancy looking stairs leading up to the next floor
The elevators are all stuck between the entrance floor and the one above, the doors have been removed
This bathroom is really rather creepy…I like it 
Despite how open and light filled this corridor is, there’s still something a bit creepy about it 
A big open space with panorama windows, quite possibly a dining room 
A space that quite likely used to be a kitchen 
Those fancy stairs seen from the upper floor 
A nice, wide corridor with lots of light coming in 
A similar open space with panorama windows as above. For some reason this strange looking fiberglass box is standing here 
That fiberglass box thing turned out to be a sort of single unit bathroom. None of the other bathrooms in the building are like this, I wonder what it is doing here. 
Another (very bright) kitchen.
Some random shots from the private dining rooms on the entrance floor
I like these crayons left on a shelf, a kind of reminder of happy times people have shared in one of those dining rooms 
It’s not often you see this kind of thing. I guess another explorer had to make use of one of the bathrooms.
From the third floor above the entrance and up you have all the guest rooms. It’s pretty repetitive, just long corridors and lots of similar looking rooms. It’s interesting to note that there are some differences in the decor, with different color carpets and different wallpapers. There is also a difference in the amount of vegetation growing in the rooms, the higher you get the more it seems to be. I think it’s interesting to see this kind of stuff, see how the rooms differ, what things are left behind and how much of it is broken. However, the hotel is huge and it got a bit too repetitive even for me so we skipped one or two floors on our way up.
Random images from one of the upper floors
Some more random images from the guest rooms
This wallpaper is only in some of the rooms 
In this shot the perspective almost looks warped but it really isn’t
Even more random shots
In one corner we found what looks like bar 
There’s even a small pantry with some dusty old plates
Another set of rooms and corridors. Now we are starting to see some vegetation in the rooms
Jean walking down a corridor 
Check out the network of roots in this carpet 
There’s a veritable jungle in this room 
We found someone’s old photo album in one room 
I think it’s quite beautiful how the light falls here
One more batch of photos from various room including an album of postcards, a contact book full of name cards, and an old VHS tape
Jean and Yini looking at the view 
This shot just exemplifies the mess in some of the rooms 
One last corridor
Eventually we made it up to the roof. I will have to say you get quite a view of the reservoir and surrounding mountains from there. I really don’t feel scared in this kind of place, especially not on a sunny day, but I believe Yini was relieved to be out in the open again.
Ah, feels good to be in the open again 
The panorama windows give you some idea of what the view is like 
That spiral shaped entrance ramp looks a bit like a UFO from above 
If you turn up the brightness you can actually look in to the rooms from the outside 
A small maintenance building on top of the roof 
The sign on the wall says “Death”… 
…I can see why, it’s an open elevator shaft 
It’s amazing how there’s almost no graffiti except here on the roof 
Part of the roof is covered with a kind of temporary outer roof that has started to collapse in places 
The stairs back down 
This empty elevator shaft almost looks like another corridor
From the roof we made our way back down to the entrance level. Just for curiosity’s sake I had to check out the two lower floors. It turns out they were dorms for the staff with several rooms and big shared bathrooms. Because we were so low down this part of the building was by far the creepiest.
Just a few of the rooms on the bottom floor
Shared bathroom facilities 
Exiting through the garage
When we got out from the hotel we went to a cafe a few kilometers down the road for some coffee and snacks. We were lucky enough to get seats on the terrace overlooking the lake so we could enjoy the sunset while we drank our coffee. It was a good way to end the day. Like I mentioned at the start of the post we are planning to go explore the other abandoned hotels at Shimen Reservoir. I’m not sure when we will do it, hopefully sooner rather than later, but when we do I will write Part 2 and possibly also Part 3 of this series of posts.
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