Welcome to Taiwan
In the 1500s, Portuguese sailors discovered an island, dubbing it “Ilha Formosa” standing for “Beautiful Island”. Now, Taiwan is a renowned travel destination known for cities and counties like Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung and Hualien etc etc. Whether it be at sunset or sunrise, a night market or high in the mountains, Taiwan has something for everyone. Over the course of 6 days and 5 nights, we took a tour around the most premier destinations of Taiwan. Through this experience, I’ll be covering the:
- Destinations we visited
- Hotels we stayed at
- Attractions we visited at each destination
- Food we ate
There will be a link at the bottom of the blog for each day my family and I spent in Taiwan describing the day we spent in each destination. This post will help you understand how we set up the trip, what I recommend, what I suggest to avoid, what I liked, what I didn’t and what I thought of the trip in general.
Trip Itinerary
| Friday | 29/Nov/2024 | Airport – Taipei City – Yilan County | Yunoyado Onsen Hotel |
| Saturday | 30/Nov/2024 | Yilan County – New Taipei City – Taipei City – New Taipei City | La Cle Hotel |
| Sunday | 01/Dec/2024 | New Taipei City – Hsinchu County – Miaoli County | Flower Home |
| Monday | 02/Dec/2024 | Miaoli County – Nantou County | Cingjing Yishan Dancing Forest B&B |
| Tuesday | 03/Dec/2024 | Nantou County – Changhua County – Taichung City | TREEART Hotel |
| Wednesday | 04/Dec/2024 | Taichung City – New Taipei City – Taipei City – Airport | Plane |
| Thursday | 05/Dec/2024 | Overnight flight | Plane |
Travel Tips
- Be careful visiting night markets and old streets on weekends. From experience, they can be extremely crowded on these days and less on weekdays, even if there’s still a lot of people. If you’re a true Singaporean citizen who cant bear to be stuck behind a crowd, avoid these two days
- On the topic of night markets, its important to NOT STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. Unless you are queueing to purchase an item or browsing, it’s good to move quickly. For a country like Taiwan, it is important to be respectful.
- Do take into account traffic times if you intend to move around Taiwan a lot like we did. On both weekends and weekdays, there will be traffic and there will be issues which arise. This is especially important if you’re travelling without a tour guide like we were
- As for Hehuanshan, if you are going, LAYER UP. However, the thing is that, because you’re as human as me, you WILL underestimate how cold 0 degrees celcius is. You will need 2-3 layers which may not even be enough. Bring heat packs, heated water, go with a group or dont go at all. Even in general, Taiwan is a cold country so make sure you’re adequately dressed (including gloves if you have fragile artist hands)
- Some general notes. Some drinks on the side of the road will make you sick, be careful. Don’t be too hopeful if you’re going for a sealife watching expedition, you may not see anything,
Day Specific Blog Posts
As mentioned before, each day will be split into a post itself, especially since we did so much for each day. You can find the attractions we visited and didn’t visit, the hotels we stayed at, the pictures we took, the food we ate, etc. You can take our experience and use it to plan your own holiday to Taiwan or simply have a gander into Taiwan’s tourism. Enjoy
D1 – Taipei City | Yilan County
D2 – Yilan County | New Taipei City | Taipei City
D3 – New Taipei City | Hsinchu County | Miaoli County
D4 – Miaoli County | Nantou County
D5 – Nantou County | Changhua County | Taichung City
D6 – Taichung City | New Taipei City | Taipei City
Conclusion
Finally and rather importantly, having gone to Taiwan and stayed for 6 days, having had a slice of most of Taiwan’s culture and tourism, what are my thoughts? Well… I think it really depends on how you plan your trip. Whether you’re taking a public or private tour or going it alone, what you’re itinerary looks like, how you plan out your days and how you spend your time day-to-day. For a holiday as packed as our one with as many destinations as our one, to pace it out well was essential. Got back at the hotel not too late and got some sleep.
Taiwan in general is a very nice place if you pick the right places to go and are able to appreciate it for what it is. Hehuanshan looks more like something from Oceania, Gaomei Wetland is one of the best sunset viewing platforms I’ve been to recently and Jiufen and Shifen are obviously beautiful in their own ways. Is it over the Thailand road trip I went on last year? No. Will my parents take it over their trip to Yunnan? No. Its a standalone experience and something everyone can enjoy
So, if you do plan to go to Taiwan, I hope you can get a grasp of what it will look and feel like when you do take a trip there. If you’ve already been to Taiwan or just felt like reading, I hope you enjoy!