Three days in Tainan, southern Taiwan doing sightseeing and goofing around. Fun Times!
02:05 Tainan Judicial Museum 台南司法博物館
05:10 Little Secret restaurant 小覓秘麵食所
05:40 Blueprint Culture and Creative Park 藍晒圖文創園區
06:50 Old Taiwan Magistrate Residence 台南知事官邸
07:50 The Place Tainan 台南老爺
09:30 Lin Mo-Niang Park 林默娘公園
10:15 Eternal Golden Castle 億載金城
11:45 Yuguang Island 漁光島
13:15 Taijiang National Park Visitor Center 台江國家公園遊客中心
14:30 Anping Tree House 安平樹屋
15:55 Anping Fort 安平古堡
16:50 Chou’s Spring Rolls 周氏蝦捲
17:30 Jingzaijiao Tile-paved Salt Fields 井仔腳瓦盤鹽田
18:00 Vanaheim 愛莊園
24:35 Anping Canal Cruise 安平運河
29:05 Zhu Xin Ju restaurant 筑馨居
30:30 Duiyue Gate 兌悅門
30:50 Cloudy Mountain Tea Shop 雲澗茶小賣所
31:20 Fox Café 狐狸小屋
32:25 Zhengxing Street 正興街
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WHO ARE WE?
We are a small publishing company (Vision) based in Taipei. We produce an English magazine (Travel in Taiwan) introducing you to Taiwan as a travel destination. Read it! Lot of useful information. We also have a website with lots of articles about Taiwan. Visit it! We try to make a video or two every week. Let us know what you think about this channel and what you would like to see about Taiwan. All the best to you!
From Travel in Taiwan magazine 2018-5-6:
Tainan Judicial Museum
The Tainan Judicial Museum (No. 307, Sec. 1, Fuqian Rd., West Central Dist.; judicial.gov.tw/museum/; Chinese) complex, inaugurated as the Taiwan District Court in 1914, is considered one of Taiwan’s three supreme Japanese-era works of architecture.
Blueprint Culture and Creative Park
This is a narrow-lane complex of renovated simple, cement-walled dormitories originally built by the Japanese to house judicial-authority employees. The dorm buildings are today home to an attractive cluster of artisanal outlets and creative eateries.
Little Secret
The “hidden-away” Little Secret (No. 17, Ln. 689, Sec. 1, Ximen Rd., South Dist.; facebook.com/littlesecret17) restaurant is the go-to foodie haunt here. The emphasis is on bringing cultural-creative flourishes to familiar Taiwanese noodle classics, each dish celebrating a regional icon ingredient.
Old Taiwan Magistrate Residence
The Old Taiwan Magistrate Residence (No. 1, Weimin Street, East Dist.; otmr.com.tw), built in 1900, was used as a residence by visiting Japanese royals, most notably the future Emperor Hirohito during his 1923 grand Taiwan inspection.
The Place Tainan
This new boutique hotel is situated at one end of a monstrous block-style retail/entertainment/leisure complex. The contemporary-décor hotel has minimalist-theme guestrooms with strong black and white schemes. hotelroyal.com.tw/tainan
Lin Mo-Niang Park
Overlooking the south side of Anping Harbor is a giant 16m-high hilltop statue of Lin Mo-Niang located in the breezy Lin Mo-Niang Park. Lin was the young mortal maiden who became the immortal Mazu, Goddess of the Sea, protector of seafarers.
Eternal Golden Castle
This “castle,” actually a fort (No. 3, Guangzhou Rd., Anping Dist.), was built by the Chinese in the 1870s as protection against grasping colonial powers. Massive bastions are found at the ends of the four high, thick walls, with a moat making enemy access even more difficult.
Taijiang National Park Visitor Center
Taijiang National Park (tjnp.gov.tw) is a watery world of estuaries, sandbars, tidal flats, old irrigation canals and small-craft shipping channels, mangrove swamps, wetlands, and aquaculture farms. The white-walled buildings of the visitor complex, built on stilts above retired fish farms, resemble traditional fishermen dwellings and circle a faux “lagoon.”
Anping Fort
This stronghold, originally called Fort Zeelandia, was built at the north-end head of a great sometimes sandbar/sometimes silt island (at high tide) that jutted out from the mainland.
Anping Tree House
Old Tait & Company Merchant House (No. 108, Gubao St., Anping Dist.) and, directly behind, the Anping Tree House, were both built by a British trading firm after the Second Opium War forced China to open ports to Western trade in 1858. The treehouse, originally conjoined warehouses, has been completely overrun by massive banyan trees, creating a fairytale maze.
Chou’s Shrimp Rolls
This restaurant (No. 125 Anping Street, Anping Dist.) is one of the best restaurants in Anping serving shrimp rolls, a local the delicacy.
Jingzaijiao Tile-paved Salt Fields
Just south of the fishing village of Beimen are the Jingzaijiao Tile-paved Salt Fields, Taiwan’s oldest salt fields, created in 1818. This site is a showcase example of how the bottom of evaporation ponds were paved with pottery shards, producing cleaner salt and making harvesting easier.
Trip to central Taiwan's Nantou County. Among the places visited:
01:20 Beyoung Garden 竹青庭人文空間
03:00 Sky Ladder 梯子吊橋(風景區)
06:50 Le Midi Hotel Chitou 米堤大飯店
11:00 Wangyou Forest 忘憂森林
14:30 Sun-Link-Sea Forest Recreation Area 溪頭自然教育園區
15:40 - Herb and Flower Garden 草花園
17:10 - Songlong Rock Waterfall 松瀧岩瀑布
20:00 - Qinglong Waterfall 青龍瀑布
20:55 Xiaobantian 小半天
21:00- Moso bamboo forest 孟宗竹林
24:30 - Dexing Waterfall 德興瀑布
25:20 - Xiaobantian Bridge 小半天高架橋
25:50 - Qilin Lake 麒麟潭
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WHO ARE WE?
We are a small publishing company (Vision) based in Taipei. We produce an English magazine (Travel in Taiwan) introducing you to Taiwan as a travel destination. Read it! Lot of useful information. We also have a website with lots of articles about Taiwan. Visit it! We try to make a video or two every week. Let us know what you think about this channel and what you would like to see about Taiwan. All the best to you!
Travel in Taiwan 2018-1-2
Forests, Flowers, and Waterfalls
Text: Rick Charette
Sun-Link-Sea
A “forest and nature resort,” a privately operated getaway idyll (NT$250 entry fee).
At the upper end of the resort road is at Songlong Rock Waterfall. At the base of a Cinemascope-wide semi-circular cliff is a large, deep green lagoon busy with fish in the water and eye-catching birds above. Two massive mid-lagoon boulders are covered completely with vegetation, trees “impossibly” growing atop their solid-rock bed. The cliff’s base is “gone,” to a height of 30 meters and a depth of 30, a cave now where once soft sandstone was emplaced. A paved pathway takes you along the cliff base and through the gaping hole, and you emerge directly before the waterfall itself, at its base.
Sun-Link-Sea Forest and Nature Resort
Add: No. 6, Xishan Rd., Da’an Borough, Zhushan Township, Nantou County (南投縣竹山鎮大鞍里溪山路6號)
Tel: (049) 261-1217
Website:
Between Sun-Link-Sea and Xitou – Wangyou Forest
Beside County Road 95, a few kilometers from Sun-Link-Sea, you’ll see a large “Wangyou Forest” sign From there, a narrow road leaps up past tea fields, tilted at startling angles. Take the 15-minute huff-and-puff walk up to the forest-entrance path (NT$50 entry), or use one of the privately-operated shuttle vans (NT$200 return). Wangyou Forest is a section of tall-pine forest drowned when the creek that gurgles through was blocked by Taiwan’s infamous 921 Earthquake in 1999.
Le Midi Hotel Chitou
This is a veritable high-mountain hideaway oasis of regal splendor amidst a world of tall trees and rugged mountains. The owners are avid hunters of European-nobility antiques, and eager to show them off. In the lobby and other areas you are regaled with imperial-French furniture, clocks, and other curios collected on hunting forays in Europe. The guestrooms are all spacious and tastefully appointed in modernistic continental European style, with bright nature-evocative green, white, and brown tones predominant. Room rates start at NT$11,000; one dinner and breakfast included
Le Midi Hotel Chitou
Add: No. 1, Miti St., Neihu Village, Lugu Township, Nantou County
(南投縣鹿谷鄉內湖村米堤街1號)
Tel: (049) 261-2222
Website:
Xiaobantian Bridge
Opened in 2014, this is mountainous Nantou County’s highest extradosed bridge, its roadbed 60 meters up from the valley floor. Its soaring grey towers are shaped like giant bamboo stalks, just like Taipei’s famed Taipei 101 tower. Xiaobantian is home to numerous fetching waterfalls, Dexing Waterfall perhaps the best-known. On the higher reaches of a boulder-strewn Beishi River tributary stream, it has two sections, the upper, 30m high, has carved a cool, calm pool at its base perfect for wading.
Sky Ladder Scenic Area (NT$50 adults)
A well-maintained trail brings you down, down, relentlessly down to the bottom of Taiji Gorge. Moving through thick bamboo forest, among your gorge-bottom rewards will be the Sky Ladder – a suspension-bridge engineering marvel – a sheer-cliff cave-dwelling Earth God temple below it, and Qinglong Waterfall.
BeYoung Garden
On the second floor of a still-operating small inter-town bus station that looks like a set for a 1950s period movie. “Zhushan” literally means “Bamboo Mountain”; the area is renowned for bamboo cultivation and products, bamboo is a key restaurant decorative material, and the chefs make edible bamboo a prominent ingredient. Specially recommended: the “three-cups mushroom bitter-tea range chicken” and “dried bamboo with soy-braised pork” set meals.
BeYoung Garden
Add: 2F, No. 27, Caiyuan Rd., Zhongshan Borough, Zhushan Township, Nantou County
(南投縣竹山鎮中山里菜園路27號2樓)
Tel: (04) 9265-6176
Website:
#Nantou #SunLinkSea #Taiwaneverything
Short trip Sanyi Township in Miaoli County, northwestern Taiwan:
00:50 Sanyi Wood Sculpture Museum 三義木雕博物館
02:50 Sanyi Old Street 三義老街
06:10 Shengxing Railway Station 勝興車站
07:50 Shengxing Kezhan Restaurant 勝興客棧
09:40 Longteng Bridge Ruin 龍騰斷橋
10:50 Zhuo Ye Cottage 卓也小屋
13:30 Tongluo Skywalk 銅鑼天空步道
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WHO ARE WE?
We are a small publishing company (Vision) based in Taipei. We produce an English magazine (Travel in Taiwan) introducing you to Taiwan as a travel destination. Read it! Lot of useful information. We also have a website with lots of articles about Taiwan. Visit it! We try to make a video or two every week. Let us know what you think about this channel and what you would like to see about Taiwan. All the best to you!
Sanyi Wood Sculpture Museum
Add: No. 88, Guangsheng Xincheng, Guangsheng Village, Sanyi Township, Miaoli County (苗栗縣三義鄉廣盛村廣聲新城88號)
Tel: (037) 876-009
Website:
Shengxing Kezhan Restaurant
Add: No. 72, Neighborhood 14, Shengxing Village, Sanyi Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣三義鄉勝興村14鄰72號)
Tel: (037) 973-883
Website: (Chinese)
Zhuo Ye Cottage
Add: No. 1-5, Bengshan Xia, Neighborhood 13, Shuangtan Village, Sanyi Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣三義鄉雙潭村13鄰崩山下1-5號)
Tel: (037) 879-198
Website: (Chinese)
Taiwan Hakka Museum (Miaoli Hakka Culture Park)
Add: No. 6, Tongke S. Rd., Jiuhu Village, Tongluo Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣銅鑼郷九湖村銅科南路6號)
Tel: (037) 985-558
Two day trip to Miaoli County in northern/central Taiwan, visiting hot-spring hotel in Tai'an, a tea factory in Tongluo, and a brick factory in Yuanli. We had fun. :)
00:40 Dahu Wineland Resort 大湖酒莊
02:30 Wenshui Visitor Center 汶水遊客中心
04:25 Xishuikeng Tofu Street洗水坑豆腐街
07:20 Onsen Papawaqa 泰安觀止溫泉會館
08:50 Atayal Cultural Museum 泰雅文物館
10:40 Hushan Suspension Bridge 虎山吊橋
11:30 Onsen Papawaqa
12:40 Shuiyun Suspension Bridge 水雲吊橋
13:25 Onsen Papawaqa
16:05 Tongluo Skywalk 銅鑼天空步道
17:15 Tongluo Tea Factory 銅鑼茶廠
21:50 Jin Liang Shing (JLS) Brick Factory 金良興觀光磚廠
25:55 Yuanli Triangle Rush Exhibition Hall 藺草文化館
28:35 Dongli Jiafeng 東里家風古宅
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Dahu Wineland Resort (大湖酒莊)
Add: No. 2-4, Baliaowan, Fuxing Village, Dahu Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣大湖鄉富興村八寮灣2-4號)
Tel: (03) 799-4986
Onsen Papawaqa (泰安觀止溫泉會館)
Add: No. 58, Yuandun, Jinshui Village, Tai’an Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣泰安鄉錦水村圓墩58號)
Tel: (037) 941-777
Website:
Atayal Cultural Museum (泰雅文物館)
Add: No. 46-3, Neighborhood 6, Jinshui Village, Tai’an Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣泰安鄉錦水村圓墩6鄰46-3號)
Tongluo Tea Factory (銅鑼茶廠)
Add: No. 132-16, Jiuhu, Jiuhu Village, Tongluo Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣銅鑼鄉九湖村九湖132-16號)
Tel: (037) 987-358
Website: (Chinese)
Jin Liang Shing (JLS) Brick Factory (金良興觀光磚廠)
Add: No. 71-17, Jinshan, Shanjiao Borough, Yuanli Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣苑裡鎮山腳里錦山71-17號)
Tel: (037) 746-368
Website: (Chinese)
Yuanli Triangle Rush Exhibition Hall, (藺草文化館)
Add: No. 65, Weigong Rd., Yuanli Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣苑裡鎮為公路65號)
Tel: (037) 862-141
Website: (Chinese)
Dongli Jiafeng (東里家風古宅)
Add: No. 8, Neighborhood 2, Yuankeng Borough, Yuanli Township, Miaoli County
(苗栗縣苑裡鎮苑坑裡2鄰8號)
Tel: (037) 853-158
Website: (Chinese)
Onsen Papawaqa
The Onsen Papawaqa is a forceful work of modernist architecture directly overlooking the Wenshui riverbed. Its grey-hue exposed-concrete exterior walls, proudly and boldly showcased, echo the colors of the exposed cliff rock on the valley’s opposite side. Inside, two additional interior-décor elements are wood and stone, also chosen to echo the surrounding natural environment.
The key attraction here is, of course, the mineral-water soaking. Each room faces the river through floor-to-ceiling glass, with a window-side Japanese-style in-floor stone-slab tub. “The extensive public-area spa facilities are outside the main building; there are separate nude bathing areas for males and females, a non-nude mixed bathing area, and a wonderful cool-temperature narrow swimming pool that runs the entire main building’s length between building and riverside bluff-edge.” The evening starry-sky viewing is scintillating. In the midst of all this is a friendly, breezy thatch-roof open-air bar.
Both restaurants, on the 5th and 6th floors (the top floors), have eyrie-like views of the river before and mountain behind. The complimentary Chinese/Western buffet breakfast is taken in the 5th-floor Running Water Restaurant, which has a laddered spatial design evoking the river’s cascading waters. Lunch and dinner are served in the 6th-floor Flying Cloud Restaurant; the cuisine is Chinese, with strong Hakka and indigenous infusions, along with Western elements. Locally sourced ingredients are stressed. The Dongpo pork and sesame-oil chicken are especially good. (Rooms start at NT$7,500)
Gazing east from the Taiwan Hakka Museum, you can look down into the valley below and out over the hills toward the central mountains beyond. Just to the south, you’ll see row upon row of neatly spaced tea bushes. This is part of the 30ha tourist-oriented Tongluo Tea Factory operation. It’s centered on a factory/retail building of eye-catching modern design that offers a picture-perfect panorama of the valley through its east-side glass wall. Trains regularly run through the valley, through what looks like a model-train set. Patrons are helped in their train-spotting via a large signboard with run-through times and train types.
The main type of tea grown here is Dongfang Meiren (Oriental Beauty), which is primarily grown in Hakka areas in the hills of the northwest at lower altitudes (300~800m). Visitors can enjoy tea-tasting sessions, tours of the processing facilities and fields (in one interesting section, each row is dedicated to a single type of Taiwan-grown tea, with English signage), DIY picking for tour groups, and a meal. The latter consists of a traditional type of biandang (boxed lunch) eaten by Hakka tea-pickers and railroad workers. This comes wrapped in a gratis traditional bright-color Hakka-style head kerchief worn by female tea-pickers (separate payment for each option).
#Miaoli #Taiwan #Taiwaneverything
After leaving Taroko Gorge, we visited a few places in the East Rift Valley and on the Pacific Coast. We also stayed at a surprisingly nice B & B!
00:50 Liangjin Shitang Restaurant 兩津食堂
01:20 Feicui Valley 翡翠谷
04:00 Fenglin Mingxin Ice Shop 明新冰菓店
04:35 Jilitan 吉利潭
05:50 Jinlai Huilan B&B 境籟迴嵐
10:35 Butterfly Valley Resort 蝴蝶谷溫泉渡假村
16:00 Xinshe rice fields 新社稻田
17:00 Hualien Fengbin Sky Trail 花蓮豐濱天空步道
20:00 Dashibi Hill Trail 大石鼻山步道
21:50 Jiqi Beach 磯崎海水浴場
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WHO ARE WE?
We are a small publishing company (Vision) based in Taipei. We produce an English magazine (Travel in Taiwan) introducing you to Taiwan as a travel destination. Read it! Lot of useful information. We also have a website with lots of articles about Taiwan. Visit it! We try to make a video or two every week. Let us know what you think about this channel and what you would like to see about Taiwan. All the best to you!
From Travel in Taiwan magazine 2018-7-8:
Feicui Valley
The pathway is less than 1km long and takes you upriver along the Mugua, through an old tunnel with dozing ceiling-clinging bats, and along an up-and-down au naturel exposed-root section to a tributary-stream waterfall with a wadeable rock pool at its base. This is the bottom of the narrow Feicui (Emerald) Valley, increasingly popular with river tracers.
Jilitan
Up a tributary stream just inside the mouth you’ll find the placid Jilitan (Jili Pond). It was created by the Japanese as a log pond, and is now cleared. It’s the centerpiece of a new breeze-brushed park with walking paths, Chinese imperial-style arch bridges, and foot-soak facilities.
Jinlai Huilan B&B
Located north of Ruisui town on Highway 9, the Jinlai Huilan B&B is run by a delightfully warm and young husband/wife team who not long ago decided to opt out of big-city living. Its layout is motel-like. Meals are taken in the main entrance area, and the five simple, tastefully appointed rooms, in the rear and along one side, are entered directly from outside. The tableau seen from the rooms is blissfully quaint – across valley-floor farms into the Butterfly Valley, trains drumming along with percussion-like rhythm in the distance. The meals are another soothing satisfaction. The husband has international-cuisine culinary-arts training, and clearly studied well.
(Rooms start at NT$2,200)
Jinlai Huilan B&B (境籟迴嵐)
Add: No. 226, Sec. 3, Zhongzheng N. Rd., Ruisui Township, Hualien County (花蓮縣瑞穗鄉中正北路三段226號)
Tel: 0960-667-286
Website: (Chinese)
Butterfly Valley Resort
The Fuyuan National Forest Recreation Area is in yet another central-range valley. The park is between the towns of Guangfu and Ruisui. The focus here is eco-tourism. The Butterfly Valley Resort ( is managed by a commissioned private enterprise, and most of its amenities are just inside the park entrance. This is near Fuyuan Stream’s lower reaches, where the terrain is less steep. The resort’s amenities include a small upscale hotel, landscaped gardens, a butterfly museum, and an outdoor hot-spring spa. Guided eco-tours are available. These last 1.5 hours and take you through the gardens, along lower-area trails, and into the more rugged upper area. The upper area offers misty waterfalls, suspension bridges, and a broad camphor-tree stand. A fee is charged for non-hotel guests.
Coastal Skywalk
The new Hualien Fengbin Sky Trail is a double-thrill attraction. The “sky trail” is a 150m cliff-clinging skywalk that hangs you right out over the ocean, breakers and shore fishermen at your feet. A 20m section is transparent. The trail follows a narrow old path hacked from the cliff face, which connected local villages during the Japanese period. The second thrill is that your access walk is along a retired cliff-edge section of Highway 11. Your skywalk return is through an old highway tunnel, today filled with gift and snack stands.
Dashibi Hill
The hill on the south side of Jiqi Beach is easily ascended. It juts out into the sea, and the highway curves around it inland. The wood-stair pathway to the top, the Dashibi Hill Trail, starts at a highway-side parking lot and takes about 15 easy minutes to conquer. Your reward is splendid views of the rugged coastline north and south, local fishing craft out at sea, and the highway-side indigenous village inland.
Jiqi Beach
Jiqi Beach offers 3km of soft sandy shoreline in a shallow bay surrounded by mountain on three sides. This is the first good swimming beach south of Hualien City. On the south end is a resort with water- and beach-fun equipment, a snack shop, a retail/gift shop, and a camping area with covered wooden platforms.
#Hualien #Taiwan #Taiwaneverything
How to conquer your fear in HEIGHTS? Try Sky Bridge in Taiwan
The glass bridge is famous in China while sky bridge is known in Taiwan. It was in the afternoon when we visit the sky bridge in nantou taiwan. It is one of the things to do in taiwan.
There's a lot of people visiting the place and it will cost 50 NTD for the entrance. There's a lot of food around the area and at the end of the bridge you enjoy some games there.
Music credit:
Minstrel Guild Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Heroes Tonight
Janji-feat.Johnning
Tobu-Roots
The edge-Electro Light feat. Kathryn Maclean
Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan - Full Tour HD (2017)
Sun Moon Lake (Chinese: 日月潭; pinyin: Rìyuè tán; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ji̍t-goa̍t-thâm; Thao: Zintun) is the largest body of water in Taiwan as well as a tourist attraction. Located in Yuchi Township, Nantou County, the area around the Sun Moon Lake is home to the Thao tribe, one of aboriginal tribes of Taiwan. Sun Moon Lake surrounds a tiny island called Lalu. The east side of the lake resembles a sun while the west side resembles a moon, hence the name.
Sun Moon Lake is located 748 m (2,454 ft) above sea level. It is 27 m (89 ft) deep and has a surface area of approximately 7.93 km2 (3.06 sq mi). The area surrounding the lake has many trails for hiking.
While swimming in Sun Moon Lake is usually not permitted, there is an annual 3-km race called the Swimming Carnival of Sun Moon Lake held around the Mid-Autumn Festival each year. In recent years the participants have numbered in the tens of thousands. Other festivities held at the same time include fireworks, laser shows, and concerts.
The lake and its surrounding countryside have been designated one of thirteen national scenic areas in Taiwan. Wen Wu Temple was built after rising water levels from building a dam forced several smaller temples to be removed. Ci En Pagoda (慈恩塔; Cí'ēn Tǎ) was built by late President Chiang Kai-shek in 1971 in memory of his mother. Other temples of note include Jianjing Temple, Syuentzang Temple (玄奘寺; Xuánzàng Sì) and Syuanguang Temple (玄光寺; Xuánguāng Sì).
At the western end of Taroko Gorge is the tiny village of Tianxiang where we stayed a night at the Silks Place Taroko. The next day we walked the scenic Baiyang Trail.
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01:20 Silks Place Taroko
10:30 Tianfeng Pagoda and Xiangde Temple
16:15 Baiyang Trail
WHO ARE WE?
We are a small publishing company (Vision) based in Taipei. We produce an English magazine (Travel in Taiwan) introducing you to Taiwan as a travel destination. Read it! Lot of useful information. We also have a website with lots of articles about Taiwan. Visit it! We try to make a video or two every week. Let us know what you think about this channel and what you would like to see about Taiwan. All the best to you!
From Travel in Taiwan magazine 2018-7-8:
Silks Place Taroko
A sumptuous place to spend a Taroko Gorge night is at the refined Silks Place Taroko hotel, where dark-stain wood is the dominant interior theme, smartly complementing the marble-white facade. It’s located at the edge of Tianxiang on a picturesque perch – atop the low-plateau point where the Liwu and Dasha rivers meet before the combined waters rush through the inner gorge for more forceful rock-sculpting. The riverbed here is strewn with massive boulders of widely differing striated artwork – including one of pure marble – and macaques make their way down the steep wooded slopes for a drink in the morning. Though deep in a gorge that is a Mother Nature aesthetic tour de force, a stay at this hotel is time spent in the lap of manmade luxury.
The range of amenities and special activities is too sweeping to cover fully, but a number stand out. There is a full spa, along with two superb pools, one indoor and one outdoor. The latter is on the roof, beside it a Jacuzzi, with both offering a wonderful 360-degree panorama. Indoor and outdoor activities oriented toward both kids and adults are offered. Of special note are the guided tours, Truku-theme weaving sessions, nighttime indigenous dance shows in the lovely inner courtyard and mini-concerts by the rooftop poolside fireplace, and Moonlight Cinema showings by the rooftop pool, with patio loungers as seating.
The restaurant dinner and breakfast buffets have a delicious range of international and Chinese choices, and Retreat Floor (VIP) guests can choose to take breakfast in the sun-drenched rooftop Retreat Lounge, with Eastern/Western set meals. (Rooms, all very large, start at NT$8,000)
Silks Place Taroko (太魯閣晶英酒店)
Add: No. 18, Tianxiang Rd., Xiulin Township, Hualien County
(花蓮縣秀林鄉天祥路18號)
Tel: (03) 869-1155
Website:
Baiyang Trail
The Baiyang Trail begins with a dramatic human-engineering flourish. You dive directly from the roadside into a straight-as-an-arrow 380m-long tunnel (bring a flashlight!) that pierces a mountain from the main gorge to a secondary gorge. At the end of the even-grade 2km section of the trail is a golden prize, which bursts into view upon exiting a tunnel. At a footbridge leaping a deep-cut cleft carved by a waterway seemingly too modest for the task, a lofty twin cataract plunges ethereally downward from vertigo-inducing heights. The trail was constructed as a narrow cliff-hugging road by the Taiwan Power Company in 1984 for use in a later-cancelled hydropower project. There is in fact a further section beyond the present trail, currently closed for safety reasons.
#Taroko Gorge #Baiyang Trail #Hualien
Last week we went to the southern tip of Taiwan for a four day trip to Kending (Kenting). Here is the second video, showing you places on the southern side of the Hengchun Peninsula.
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Smokey Joe's
Chateau Beach Resort
Add: No. 2, Kengding Rd., Hengchun Township, Pingtung County (屏東縣恆春鎮墾丁路2號)
Tel: (08) 886-2222
Website:
Howard Beach Resort Kenting
Add: No. 451, Kengding Rd., Hengchun Township, Pingtung County (屏東縣恆春鎮墾丁路451號)
Tel: (08) 886-2323
Website:
Piccolo Polpo (迷路小章魚)
Add: No. 68 Nanwan Rd., Hengchun Township, Pingtung County (屏東縣恆春鎮南灣路68號)
Tel: (08) 888-2822
Website:
Ocean Blue (海餐廳)
Add: No. 111, Kending Rd., Hengchun Township, Pingtung County (屏東縣恆春鎮墾丁路111號)
Tel: (08) 886-2800
Website: ocean-blue-kenting.com (Chinese)
Banana Bay香蕉灣
Eluanbi鵝鑾鼻
Hengchun Peninsula恆春半島
Jialeshui 佳樂水
Kenting National Park墾丁國家公園
Nanwan南灣
Sail Rock船帆石
Southernmost Point of Taiwan台灣最南點
Xiaowan小灣
Gear used for this video
Camera:
Panasonic Lumix GH4:
Lenses:
PANASONIC LUMIX G X Vario Lens, 12-35mm:
PANASONIC LUMIX G Vario Lens, 100-300mm:
Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8:
Panasonic DMW-MS2:
GoPro Session 4 & 5
Travel in Taiwan magazine Jul./Aug. 2017:
South Coast
Between the Maobitou peninsula on the west and Eluanbi peninsula on the east, this is Kenting’s most popular tourist area, with a high concentration of beaches and resorts as well as restaurants, bars, cafes, and boutiques.
Nanwan, or South Bay, is in the crook where Maobitou and the main body of the Hengchun Peninula meet. This is the best and most popular locale for inshore frolicking—swimming, windsurfing, jet-skiing, kayaking, banana-boating, skin-diving, snorkeling, what have you. There are change rooms, showers, and shops renting all necessary gear/toys. Adding to Nanwan’s allure is the fact it is second only to nearby Kending town, which we visit next, for restaurants and watering holes.
Kending is fun-central in the park. This is where all the action happens at night. Highway 26 does double-duty as the town’s main street, and as the sun retires over the western horizon each day local residents don vendors’ hats and line both sides with food stalls. Backing them are scores of bricks-and-mortar enticements, with everything from cafes, bars, and restaurants to indie-designer jewelry and crafts shops. On the town’s eastern edge are some especially entertaining sights – small lorries which, once the shutters on the back cabins are lowered, magically become bars and pizzerias. Owners set up seating alongside. The former are stocked to “the rafters” with famous spirits brands, and the latter have flatbed-mounted brick pizza ovens.
Off Kending’s eastern end, in a pretty sheltered cove, is the Xiaowan (“Small Bay”) beach, directly across Highway 26 from two of the park’s resort-hotel queens, one of these the Howard Beach Resort (see Box). During the day a wide range of watersports equipment is available for rent at the beach. At night, after the water-focused fun ceases, the wide-deck wood-theme café/eatery here transforms into a mellow open-air bar, ’70s rock complementing the soothing music of arriving waves.
East of Kending is Banana Bay, site of a miniscule fishing harbor. On either side of its cement breakwater walls is easily accessible upraised-coral shoreline, beyond which is an underwater world popular with divers.
Nearby iconic park attractions are Shadao and Sail Rock. The first is a magnificent 300m stretch of protected beach that actually shines. In the on-site exhibition hall, it’s said this is Taiwan’s purest shell-sand; the coast makes a dramatic 90-degree turn here, meaning materials are washed in and churned but not easily washed out. Sail Rock is a towering 18m-high slab of exposed coral offshore said either to resemble a Chinese imperial war junk or US President Richard Nixon’s profile. But what I see is a Kenting angelfish.
Adventures in Taiwan: A Saturday in Changhua
Follow a young man on his trek to a four-faced Buddha in Changhua, Taiwan.