Taipei runs late. The good day trips leave early.
Which northeast day trip actually reaches Yehliu before the coaches. What a lantern release on the Pingxi line costs. Whether the Taipei 101 ticket is worth the queue at sunset. Reviews of every tour you can book in Taiwan.
Jiufen, the tower, a night of eating, a tea hill.
Four bookings a first week in Taiwan tends to hang off. What each costs, and what the travellers who took it say.
01The first day outShifen, Jiufen, and Yehliu Guided Day TripYehliu, Jiufen and Shifen in one loop, with a driver who times the stops against the coach parties.
02The high viewTaipei 101 Observatory Deck Entry TicketTimed entry to the observatory. Take a slot about an hour before sunset and watch the grid switch on.
03The eating nightFood Tours w/ Top 10 Taiwan Food (Breakfast/Dinner)Ten dishes across the stalls, with someone ordering for you in Mandarin. The reason nobody cooks here.
04The tea dayThousand Island Lake and Pinglin Tea PlantationTerraced hills at Pinglin and the reservoir behind them, ninety minutes out of the city and ten degrees cooler.
Jiufen, Shifen and Yehliu: one coastline, three different days.
The stretch of coast an hour out of Taipei carries more bookings than the rest of Taiwan put together. The teahouse town, the railway where the lanterns go up, and the eroded rock field at the end of the road. Most tours stitch two or three together; the money question is which order and how long you get at each.
Taipei first, then as far down the island as your week allows.
A capital that eats all night, a teahouse town on a hillside, a rock field on the north coast, a lake in the middle of the country, a marble gorge on the east side and a harbour city in the south. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
Dinner in Taiwan is a walk, not a table.
Shilin, Raohe, Ningxia: three hundred stalls and no menu in sight. A guide is really a translator, an ordering system and a stomach-pacing service. The classes are the other half of it, the morning after.
Taipei: temples till noon, the tower at dusk, noodles at midnight.
Everything in Taipei →
A city you can cross in forty minutes on the MRT, stacked with temples, a museum holding the old imperial collection, and a food street on nearly every block. These three carry more travellers than anything else in Taipei.
Standard entry, or the priority pass
The plain observatory ticket is cheap and the queue is real at weekends. The priority pass roughly doubles the price and walks you past it. Sunset slots go first either way.
The National Palace Museum, done in two hours
Jade cabbage, bronzes, and a collection that came over in crates in 1949. The e-ticket is the cheapest thing on this site; a guide is what stops it becoming a corridor of glass cases.
A layover, spent outside the terminal
Taoyuan to the city is forty minutes each way, so a six-hour gap leaves about three on the ground. The layover runs are built round that arithmetic and hold your bags.
The days out more travellers book than any other in Taiwan.
Every Taiwanese tour we have reviewed →What earns each of them the slot, what it costs, and how long it takes out of your week.
1
Shifen, Jiufen, and Yehliu Guided Day Trip
Travel from Taipei to Shifen, Jiufen, and Yehliu Geopark on a nine-hour guided trip. Release a wish lantern, see Shifen Waterfall, explore Jiufen Old Street, and find the Queen’s Head rock. Shared tours meet at Taipei Main Station, while private tours include hotel pickup. Guides speak Chinese, English, or Japanese.
From · $31
Read our review →
2
Full-Day Private Custom Taipei City Tour
from $126
3
Yehliu, Jiufen, and Pingxi Day Tour
from $65
4
Jiufen Night View and Shifen Day Tour
from $31
5
Taipei 101 Observatory Deck Entry Ticket
from $19
6
Full-Day Private Northern Taiwan Tour from Taipei with Pickup
from $126
7
The Award-Winning Private Food Tour of Taipei: The 10 Tastings
from $90
8
Thousand Island Lake and Pinglin Tea Plantation
from $40
Three hours south of Taipei the island stops being a city.
A high-speed line runs the length of the west coast, so the middle of the country is a morning away: the lake at Nantou, the cypress forest above Chiayi, the gorge cut into the east side. Most of these run as long single days out of Taipei or Taichung, and a few as the island loop.
- 15-Day Best of Taiwan: Sun Moon Lake, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Hualienfrom $715
- 2Private Taroko Gorge Day Tour from Hualien with Local Expertfrom $75
- 35-Day Best of Round Taiwan Island Tourfrom $558
What a day out in Taiwan actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Plenty of the best days here cost less than a taxi to the airport.
Observatory tickets, museum entries, night-market walks and the shared coach out to the coast.
The full-day standards: the northeast loop with a driver, Yangmingshan, the tea hills, a cooking class.
Private cars by the day, Taroko from Hualien, and the multi-day runs around the island.
Three things that happen in Taiwan and nowhere else.
Street food and mountain scenery exist all over Asia. A paper lantern let go over a working railway line, oolong grown on a ridge an hour from a capital city, and a class that ends with you holding your own boba do not.
The Pingxi Sky Lanterns
The old coal branch line above Shifen still runs, and the shops beside the tracks sell paper lanterns in eight colours, each one standing for a different wish. You write on all four sides with a brush, the shopkeeper lights the fuel block, and the train timetable decides when you can step onto the rails to let go. Dusk is the hour worth planning for; the lanterns disappear into daylight but glow for minutes against a dark hillside.
- 1Yehliu, Jiufen, and Pingxi Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 892 reviews
- 2Small-Group: Yehliu, Jiufen & Pingxi Day Tour from Taipei★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 463 reviews
- 3Private Tour to Jiufen, Yehliu Geopark, and Pingxi★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 435 reviews
Pinglin and the Tea Ridges
Ninety minutes from central Taipei the road climbs into Pinglin, where Baozhong oolong is grown on terraces above a reservoir that supplies the capital. Farms run tastings at the kitchen table: six or seven steepings of the same leaf, each one different, poured until the flavour thins out. Maokong, up the cable car, is the version of this you can do in an afternoon.
- 1Thousand Island Lake and Pinglin Tea Plantation★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 519 reviews
- 2Thousand Island Lake and Pinglin Tea Plantation from Taipei★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 172 reviews
- 3Pinglin Tea Culture and Maokong Guided Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 104 reviews
Making Your Own Boba
Bubble tea started in a Taichung teahouse in the 1980s and the argument over which one is still going. The classes roll and boil the tapioca from scratch, which takes far longer than anyone expects, and most of them fold in xiao long bao or beef noodles while the pearls cook. You leave able to explain why the good stuff is never made from powder.
- 1Xiao Long Bao, Beef Noodles & Boba Tea Cooking Class in Taipei★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 159 reviews
- 2Xiao Long Bao, Chicken vermicelli with mushroom and sesame oil, Tofu strips salad, Bubble milk tea. Taiwan Traditional Delicacies Experience-A (Taipei Cooking Class)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 79 reviews
- 3Xiao Long Bao & Boba Tea Cooking Class in Taipei★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 28 reviews
Four Taiwanese bookings that will not wait.
Most of this island can be sorted the night before over a bowl of noodles. These four run on timed slots, fixed departures and a festival calendar that takes no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Taipei 101 Observatory Deck Entry TicketEntry is by timed slot with a cap on each one, and the hour either side of sunset is the one everybody wants.
- 02Half Day Private Tour to Jiufen, Shifen Waterfall & Pingxi Sky LanternLantern releases run to the last train back, and in the fortnight around the Lantern Festival the whole Pingxi line is booked out.
- 03Taipei Arrival Private Transfer: Taiwan Taoyuan (TPE) to HotelA private airport transfer is matched to your flight number, so it is arranged before you fly or not at all.
- 045-Day Best of Round Taiwan Island TourThe island loops leave on set dates with one vehicle and one guide. Miss the departure and the next one is days away.
Taipei gets 180 wet days a year. Plan two of them indoors.
The northeast monsoon parks over the city from November, and typhoon season closes the mountain roads outright between July and September. The answer is the same in both: keep the coast for a clear morning and spend the grey one in a kitchen, a museum or a bathhouse.
By place, north to south
By kind of day: coast, kitchen, temple or train
Taipei, the northeast coast, the lake, the gorge: the shape most first trips take.
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