Taipei is the platform. The island is the day out.
Which Jiufen tour still reaches Shifen before the crowd. What a sky lantern costs. Reviews of every tour you can book in Taiwan.
A first four days in Taipei, booked in the right order.
The old street, the view, the night market and the tea hills. What each one costs and what the people who went say about it.
01The first day outShifen, Jiufen, and Yehliu Guided Day TripShifen waterfall, the lantern tracks and Jiufen at dusk in one run. The tour more people take than any other in Taiwan.
02The city, from aboveTaipei 101 Observatory Deck Entry TicketUp the tower for the wind damper and the grid of Taipei laid out to the river. Late slots are the quiet ones.
03The eveningShilin Night Market Walking Tour With a Private Tour Guide (2-hr)Shilin after dark with someone who orders for you, so you skip the queue that leads to the wrong stall.
04The morning outThousand Island Lake and Pinglin Tea PlantationTea terraces at Pinglin and the reservoir road above them. Half a day, and nobody else is up there.
Old streets, hoodoos, sky lanterns, hot water, marble, and dinner standing up.
Taiwan does not ask you to choose a region so much as a kind of day. Here are the six that fill most itineraries, and the best booking in each.
The north coast, the old gold town, or the branch line. Pick your day out of Taipei.
Nearly every tour on this site starts at a hotel lobby in Taipei and is back in time for the night market. Three shapes of day, what each costs to board, and where it goes.
Taipei rewards a morning plan and no plan at all after six.
Every day inside Taipei →
Temple incense before the traffic builds, the museum while the light is flat, the tower at the hour the office windows come on, then whichever night market your feet find. These three carry more travellers than anything else in Taipei.
Plain ticket, or straight past the queue
The standard ticket takes you to the 89th floor and the damper. The priority pass costs roughly double and buys back an hour on a public holiday, which is the only time it is worth it.
The National Palace Museum, done in one visit
The imperial collection came over in crates in 1948 and only a fraction is out at a time. Go for the jade and the Ru ware, take the shuttle from Shilin station, and be there at opening.
Shilin, Raohe or Ningxia, with a local ordering
Oyster omelette, pepper buns straight off the clay oven wall, stinky tofu if you are brave. A guide gets you the stall with the queue of locals rather than the one with the English menu.
Taiwan’s most-booked days out.
Every Taiwan tour we have reviewed →The tours that shift the most people in Taiwan, and the reason each one keeps doing it.
1
Shifen, Jiufen, and Yehliu Guided Day Trip
Explore Shifen, Jiufen, and Yehliu from Taipei in one scenic day, with lanterns, waterfalls, old streets, coastal rocks, and expert guidance.
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
5-Day Best of Taiwan: Sun Moon Lake, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Hualien
from $715
Taiwan eats standing up, and it eats late.
The night market is the country’s dining room. A guide is worth it for one reason: they know which stall the queue is for. Then there are the kitchens that teach you to fold a xiao long bao.
What a day out in Taiwan actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Taiwan is cheap to travel and the best day of your trip may well be the $31 one.
Shared coaches to the north coast, museum entry, temple walks and the tower ticket.
The full-day standards: Taroko, Sun Moon Lake, small-group Jiufen runs and the food walks.
Private cars with a driver, multi-day island loops and the trips that cross to the east coast.
Three things that happen in Taiwan and nowhere else.
Street food and mountain scenery exist all over Asia. A paper lantern released over a working railway line, a bathhouse fed by a sulphur creek, and a highway chiselled through marble do not.
The Sky Lanterns
The Pingxi line was built to carry coal and now carries visitors to Shifen, where the platform is the street and the shops are close enough to touch the carriages. You write a wish on four paper walls, a shopkeeper lights the wick, and the lantern goes up over the tracks between trains. Villagers collect the fallen frames for a bounty, which is the part nobody films.
- 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
The Sulphur Valley
A branch of the Taipei metro ends at a hot spring town, which is not a sentence many capital cities can offer. The water comes off Yangmingshan through Thermal Valley at close to boiling, cooled down the hill into public pools and private tubs. The mineral hokutolite, named after the town, forms in that creek bed and in one other place on earth.
- 1Beitou and Yangmingshan National Park Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 307 reviews
- 2Beitou and Yangmingshan Day Tour from Taipei★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 92 reviews
- 3Taiwan TST : Private Tour Taipei, Yangmingshan, Beitou, Tamsui★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 32 reviews
Taroko Gorge
The Liwu river cut down through marble as fast as the mountains pushed it up, so the walls are white, folded and almost vertical. The road through it was built by hand in the 1950s and the tunnels still show the chisel marks. Sections close after typhoons and earthquakes without warning, so what your driver can reach on the day is the day you get.
- 15-Day Best of Taiwan: Sun Moon Lake, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Hualien★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 578 reviews
- 2Private Taroko Gorge Day Tour from Hualien with Local Expert★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 457 reviews
- 3Private Taroko Gorge National Park Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 214 reviews
Four Taiwan bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of this island can be arranged over breakfast at your hotel. These four run on train seats, timed entry and small-group caps that fill weeks out, and none of them care what time your flight gets in.
- 01Private Taroko Gorge Day Tour from Hualien with Local ExpertThe east-coast trains carry a fixed number of seats and weekends sell out well ahead. A tour that includes the transport has already solved that for you.
- 02Taipei 101 Observatory Deck Entry TicketObservatory tickets are sold for a dated entry. On a clear evening the sunset hour goes first, and it is the hour worth having.
- 03Private 3-Day Tour to Sun Moon Lake and AlishanThe mountain railway runs to a timetable and a seat quota, and the sunrise service is the one everybody wants. Cherry blossom weeks in March book out months ahead.
- 04Xiao Long Bao, Beef Noodles & Boba Tea Cooking Class in TaipeiKitchens take six or eight people at a bench. There is no standing at the back, so a class booked on the day is usually a class you missed.
Plum rain in May, typhoons in September, drizzle in Taipei whenever it likes.
The north of the island is genuinely wet, and a grey week is not a wasted one. The answer is the same every time: go under a roof and eat, soak or look at something four hundred years old. Night markets have awnings. Hot springs are better in the rain.
Taroko is the reason people put up with the train timetable.
Hualien is three hours down the coast and the gorge starts twenty minutes inland from it. Swallow Grotto, the Eternal Spring Shrine and a tunnel of nine turns, all inside a canyon of white marble. Go with a driver: the road is narrow, parking is nonexistent and the closures change weekly.
- 15-Day Best of Taiwan: Sun Moon Lake, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Hualienfrom $715
- 2Private Taroko Gorge Day Tour from Hualien with Local Expertfrom $75
- 3Private Taroko Gorge National Park Day Tourfrom $180
By kind of day
Taipei, the north coast, the lake, the mountain, the south: the run most first trips make.
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