I went on a two day tour of Northern Taiwan last October 2013.
The aim of this tour’s host is to encourage travel to these small towns that are not usually part of the typical traveler’s route around Taiwan.
Note- all place names will be written in English because my WordPress blog can’t display Chinese text for some reason, probably the MySQL database isn’t set up to display UTF-8, which is too complicated for me to do.
Click here for Day 2.
We all met up at the Taipei Main Station and boarded our mini van early in the morning.
Our first stop was Su Ao, where we hit up the port and a huge temple there, where a mackerel festival is underway.
While still in Su Ao, we checked out a small Coral Museum that housed a lot of corals turned into sculptures.
Then came the Su Ao cold springs, where the water temperature is supposedly 25C all year round.
We then drove to Jingtong old street, checked out an old coal mine museum, its still-functional old train station, and supposedly one of the oldest mailboxes in Taiwan.
Japanese era mailbox
Next up is the historic street of Pingsi, which wasn’t far from Jingtong.
We went to yet another coal mine museum, where we took a bumpy ride on a former coal transporting mini freight train that still runs on the old tracks. This lady was the train driver.
Our final small town for Day 1 was Shi Fen Old Street, where we wrote on paper lanterns, lit them up beside the tracks of yet another ancient train station, and set them loose into the sky.
We slept at the Loauchu bed and breakfast, built in 1922.
Click here for Day 2.
Route map:
