Visiting Taiwan for 20 days – our itinerary & experience (Part 2)

Last week I shared the first three days of our Taiwan trip with a lot of pictures to give readers an idea of what our trip was about. Taiwan is very tourist-friendly and thus is a great place to visit. 

• Visiting Taiwan for 20 days – our itinerary & experience (Part 1)

Taiwan’s central location in Asia also makes it a great home base to use for travelling around Asia.

For the first three days of the trip, we stayed in Beitou, a suburb of Taipei. 

Let’s pick up where we left off.

Day 4 Dihua Old Street, Dihua Street, Omakase

After three nights of sleep, we were finally getting adjusted to the new time zone as we woke up around 7 AM. We walked for about 10 minutes to have breakfast at the hole-in-the-wall breakfast place yet again (both kids liked the food, especially the rice sesame drinks). 

Once everyone finished breakfast, we took an Uber to check out Dihua Old Street. Dihua Old Street is one of the oldest streets in Taipei (parts existed when the Dutch occupied Taiwan in the 1600s). There were many old buildings and shops on Dihua Street. These shops have been an important centre of commerce in Taiwanese products and produce.

Both Dihua Old Street and Dihua Street (the “newer” section of the street) are a major destination before and during the Lunar New Year with a lot of people buying things to get ready for the holiday season. 

When we arrived in the morning, Dihua Old Street was relatively quiet with not too many people. However, this quickly changed when we walked toward Dihua Street.

We spent almost four hours walking around, eating and sampling the different food items along Dihua Street. After a quick late lunch in Taipei Station, we went back to the hotel to rest up a little bit. 

One of my goals for this year is to have a sushi omakase with Mrs. T again. Since omakase is a lot cheaper in Taiwan, I booked a restaurant for the two of us before the trip. I found this omakase restaurant when I was browsing Instagram one day. For 1,380 NTD + 10% service fees (~$66 CAD), it was considered one of the cheaper omakase places in Taiwan. 

Thanks to having my parents on the trip with us, they looked after both kids in the evening, allowing Mrs. T and I to have a date night and enjoy some amazing sushi.

In case you’re wondering, omakase translates to “I leave it up to you” so it’s a chief-curated meal where the chef chooses the dishes based on the freshest ingredients available. Typically you don’t know what you’re getting and often you wouldn’t even get a menu. The cool thing with omakase is that you get to interact with the chefs and they tailor the dishes based on your preferences (i.e. no wasabi, more rice, no certain fish, etc). 

The chefs are usually very attentive to details in omakase. For example, since I’m left-handed, they’d place the nigiri right to left on my plate so I could pick it up easily with my left hand or chopsticks; for a right-handed person, the nigiri would be placed left to right on the plate. 

In total, we had 15 dishes, a miso soup, and a sesame cake for dessert. We were very satisfied with this awesome omakase dinner experience.  

If you like sushi & nigiri but haven’t tried omakase, I highly recommend giving it a try! 

Day 5 Earthquake, heading to Jiaoxi 

Both Mrs. T and I got waken up by emergency alerts on our phones just past midnight. The alerts warned us about a magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Southern Taiwan. Since I have experienced multiple earthquakes while in Taiwan, I got out of bed, turned the alerts off, and then went straight to bed. But Mrs. T was scared and couldn’t fall asleep for a while. In the morning she then gave me a tough time for being nonchalant about the earthquake, leaving her feeling scared. 

Oops!

Day 5 was all about moving from Taipei to Jiaoxi, a town in Yilan famous for its hot springs. 

After a slow and relaxing morning where we ate and packed, we took the MRT from Beitou station to Taipei Station then an express train to Jiaoxi.

Once again I used Marriot Bonvoy points to book two rooms for three nights for the six of us. I booked Four Points Jiaoxi rather than Westin Jiaoxi not only because the Four Points required fewer points but because it was closer and more accessible by foot to central Jiaoxi.

I wasn’t able to get a suite upgrade due to full occupancy but the family room we got was quite nice with a big hot spring tub in the bathroom. We definitely took full advantage of the in-room hot spring during our stay.

After a relaxing afternoon where we soaked in the in-room hot spring and enjoyed the view from the patio, we went to the local market and had dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Taiwanese cuisine restaurant.

After dinner, we found a shaved-ice place for dessert that cost a fraction compared to another shaved-ice place in Vancouver.

We then walked around the market and checked out Tanweigou Hot Spring Park next to the hotel before packing it in for the night. 

Day 6 Wufengqi Waterfall & fish spa  

After a quick breakfast and a soak in the in-room hot spring, we set out for Wufengqi Waterfall. 

Wufengqi Waterfall is a popular attraction in Jiaoxi with three different waterfalls (upper, middle, and lower). Rather than calling a taxi or Uber, we decided to hike for about an hour from the hotel to the waterfall.

The hike was relatively easy with great views. While hiking, we ran into two wild monkeys on the side of the road which got all of us very excited. 

When we got to the entrance of the waterfall, we noticed that the hiking path was closed. Due to the recent earthquakes and rainfall earlier that day, the hiking path to Wufengqi Waterfall was closed for safety reasons. 

Slightly disappointed, we decided to hike up the mountains toward the Catholic Sanctuary of Our Lady of Wufengqi.

When we hiked down to go back to the hotel, we re-encountered the same two wild monkeys. One even got down to the road before climbing back up a tree. We made sure to stay far from them.

After a quick lunch and a quick rest in the hotel, we went to a nearby fish spa. By fish spa, I meant fish pedicure where you put your feet in hot spring water with fish. The fish would come to your feet and start eating dead skin off your feet. There were four different fish spas near our hotel and they were always busy with people. 

Never having been to a fish spa, we were all very curious about what it was like. But when we stuck our feet into the water and fish started to nibble on our feet, we all jumped because it was so ticklish. We thought the bigger fish would be less ticklish but it wasn’t the case at all!

Because it was so ticklish, we ended up soaking our feet in a tub without any fish. Needless to say, the fish spa was an interesting experience but we wouldn’t try it again.

After the fish spa, we walked around town for a little bit before retiring to our room for another soak in the hot spring. That night we went to the market again and had xiaolongbao and beef noodles for dinner at two different places then finished the night with shaved ice and bubble tea. 

Day 7 Yilan

On Day 7 we took the local train from Jiaoxi to Yilan. Jiaoxi is one of the towns in Yilan County and Yilan is the “big” city in Yilan County. The last time I visited Yilan was when I was still a small child, before we immigrated to Canada.  

We first checked out Diu Diu Dang Forecast Park next to Yilan Station with the cute flying train and animal statues. We then walked to Yilan Cultural and Creative Park to learn more about the Taiwanese Aboriginal people.

Because Japan occupied Taiwan for 50 years, the Japanese had a big influence on Taiwanese culture. You can still find old Japanese houses all over Taiwan. After learning about the Taiwanese Aboriginal people, we walked to the former Japanese government residence to learn a little bit of Yilan history.

We had a fun lunch at a conveyor sushi restaurant (both kids enjoyed the experience) and a shopping spree at Uniqlo (we needed some new clothes and Uniqlo clothes were cheaper in Taiwan), and we visited a ninja academy on the outskirts of Yilan. Kid 1.0 had a blast!

When we returned to the hotel from Yilan, we soaked in the hot spring, and went to more street vendors in the market for dinner and dessert. You certainly can’t complain about delicious and cheap market food dishes in Taiwan!

Day 8 Travel day

Day 8 was a travel day for us. We needed to head to Taichung from Jiaoxi to attend my nephew’s wedding the next day. Because Day 8 (January 17) coincided with Taiwan’s Lunar New Year break, public transportation was extremely busy. When I booked train tickets a couple of months prior, I could only book late-evening trains. Furthermore, because we had to take two sets of trains (an express train and then a high-speed train), I had to ensure we had enough time to get off one train and then get on another train.

Thanks to my Marriott elite status, I was able to secure a 4 PM checkout time. This allowed us to take it easy that day and enjoy the in-room hot spring one last time. We walked around Jiaoxi that morning and just chilled until it was time for the two train rides, approximately 1 hour each with a 2.5 hour connecting time in between.

We arrived in Taichung around 10:30 PM (we ended up taking an earlier high-speed train and got seats in a non-reserved cart). After a long day of waiting around and train rides, we went to bed to get ready for a long day of wedding celebration. 

Summary – Visiting Taiwan for 20 days, our itinerary & experience (Part 2)

I hope you enjoyed the trip report and all the pictures so far. 

Please stay tuned next week for Part 3 (and the final part) of our Taiwan trip report.