Hong Kong & Taiwan 2025

[DurhamGirl]

Day 7: THSR to Kaohsiung
I’m not great in the mornings and usually need to be up a minimum of an hour to face breakfast (full fat yoghurt, seeds & fruit), so I do struggle on holiday especially when we like an early start.
In addition to bread, pastries, cereals & yoghurt, the Doubletree has a choice of Western or Japanese/ Chinese style for Breakfast. We have tried both.

Neither appealed to me this morning, so I just had fruit & yoghurt and coffee and croissant in the station 😀

We took a taxi to the HSR as it was raining heavily and we had one of the suitcases. I’d pre-ordered train tickets from Klook (on a 2 for 1 tourist offer) and booked reservations on the HSR website but we still needed to pick up the actual tickets from the ticket office. The ticket agent found the tickets for today’s journey & also gave us the ones I’d booked for tomorrow & Monday.

The train was full (tickets sell out quickly) and boarding was very organised with the carriages clearly labelled on the platform. Plenty of space and legroom in the seats.

The free WiFi was a bit flaky - wasn’t an issue as we both have E-SIMs.

The train reaches a top speed of 300km/h .. unfortunately passed by before I could get a clear photo - did capture 296 km/h🚝.

We departed and arrived on time.

We are staying at the Kindness Hotel near Kaohsiung Main Station.

I was a bit apprehensive as I’d booked a cheap hotel (as we are massively over budget for the holiday). I’d read reports that hotels were very strict about 4pm checkin time, so when we arrived at 2:30 we were expecting to have to wait. The receptionists were very friendly, found our reservation straight away & handed over the key with a voucher for a free beer. We have no complaints about the room, simply furnished, spotlessly clean, Japanese toilet, large shower, free slippers. There are free tea/coffee and snacks and ice cream in the foyer and free breakfast in the morning .. not bad for £42!

After leaving the suitcase in the room, we walked down to the Formosa Boulevard Station. A must do place to visit in Kaohsiung. Many of the MRT stations have modern and unusual exit/entrances.

This one also has a fabulous interior.

As we were leaving the station, we noticed an unusual street name on one of the exits, so decided to investigate

Lots of shops selling Wedding Cake .. not the Western style design , but some looked very glamorous

We explored further and found a temple near the River

We headed back to the hotel for a quick change before an early dinner.
We decided to visit Din Tai Fung the same chain restaurant we’d been to a couple of nights earlier in Taipei. I did take some photos this time!

And for dessert …

Then back to the hotel, where I’m writing this post while enjoying my free beer

Tomorrow Dragon & Tiger Pagodas before the train to Tainan…

Thanks for reading this far .. Yvonne

[DurhamGirl]

Day 8: Morning - Lotus Pond
Scenic Area.
My main reason for visiting Kaohsiung was to visit the Dragon & Tiger Pagodas (shown on my Pre-Trip Report). We took the local train to Zuoying and walked about 0.75 miles to the entrance of the Dragon & Tiger Pagodas. The shutters were down, so we assumed that we’d arrived to early (was around 9:15), so decided to have a look at the other tourist sites around the pond.

The Chiji Temple

TheZuoying Chiming Temple

Spring & Autumn Pavilions and Temple to Goddess Guanyin

Beijing Xuantian Shang Di Pavilion, with Emperor of the Dark Heaven.

By this time it was very hot & humid and we were only about half way round the lake, so we decided to head back to the Dragon & Tiger Pavilions to see if they had opened. Unfortunately the shutters were still down. Still a magnificent sight but we had hoped to enter through the dragon mouth and exit through the tiger (leaving behind evils spirits & leaving with good luck &#128512

We had a quick lunch & headed back to the hotel to pick up our suitcase and go back to the station for the train to Tainan. I’ve been following a FB group that had mentioned a Pokémon 7/11 near the station & as we had a bit of time to spare, thought we would check it out!

You could spend an entire trip in Taiwan visiting themed 7/11s…

Took HSR & local train to Tainan station, within a few minutes walk of our hotel - The Grand Banyon Hotel, near a couple of interesting post boxes

Checked into the hotel and headed to our room, which looks remarkably like the Doubletree in Taipei

We were both tired after a long day, so ended up having deep fried pork chops for dinner.. & then booked a Michelin Vegetarian restaurant for the next day

I’m running a day behind & will try and do Tainan (both days tomorrow)

[DurhamGirl]

Day 9 & 10: Tainan

Day 9:

We took a free walking tour (need to Tip) in the morning leaving from outside the Chihkan Tower. Unfortunately, it’s being renovated at the moment & much of the outside is covered over.

We walked to the xxxx Temple

.

This temple is dedicated to the Sea God/ Goddess key to the Taoist religion prevalent in Taiwan. Interestingly, in the same building there is also a Buddhist temple.

We had a wander around Hayashi department store on our lunch stop.

There are quite a few narrow streets in Tainan .. this one is the narrowest

We had to walk through it to come out into a small courtyard (with yet another temple) which led onto xxxx (very popular area on an evening for street food) Fuzhong Street.

Then into the Confucius temple area.

From there we moved on to some more modern Architecture at the Art Museum 2.

We walked past the old police station, now Art Museum 1 - (didn’t take any photos) where the 2.5 hr tour finished. We found out some interesting facts about Tainan and would definitely recommend (Let’s Go Formosa).

We decided to go back to the Confucius temple as we didn’t pay to go inside and wanted to spend more time there.

We have struggled a bit with finding something to eat on an evening as we don’t eat much meat at home. We are not fans of street food (& Tainan is well known for great street food ). So we booked a Michelin recommended vegetarian restaurant.

We had the set menu for 2, which included 2 free non-alcoholic drinks. My DH only drinks water & espresso! & initially declined the free drink. The waiter insisted he have something, so with a bit of a language barrier & in an effort to not offend the waiter, he picked a random drink off the menu. This is what arrived
😆. We think it was honey & lemon based - tasted better than it was presented.

We ate: Pickled mushrooms, Japanese omelette, deep fried spicy tofu, vegetable stir fry & dessert of the day.

We enjoyed everything everything except the dessert, which was a thin rice pudding with grapes & some spice we couldn’t place.

I had try to order a glass of wine at the start (again lost in translation and it didn’t appear during the meal. Just as we were leaving I was presented with

It was packaged to take away. Not 100% sure what it was but think it was a variation of DH drink with gin 😀

Day 10.

We took an UBER to Anping to see Fort Zeelandia a fortress built by the Dutch, who were the first country to occupy Formosa (as named by the Portuguese). Not much remains of the original fort but some recent excavations have uncovered parts of the original building.

Starting to be a bit late in the season but we did see some cherry trees still blossoming

There is also a night market in Anping which is popular in the evenings but we needed to head back for our train back to Taipei

.. Alishan & Sun Moon lake .. next

[DurhamGirl]

Day 11: Alishan

We had a sunny but cool day yesterday & was hoping for the same today. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for the Alishan area is a high of 5C. 🥶 So, we wrapped up well for the trip. We have booked a private tour for the next 4 days and our guide Chester met us at the hotel at 8:30 this morning.
It was back on another HSR train, this time getting off at Chiayi where we were met by our driver. It was 1.5hr in the car on a very winding road (reminiscent of NZ) but wet, & foggy. The views were hampered by low cloud and torrential rain. We stopped at Fenchi where we ate a typical meal of chicken, pork & rice & vegetables served and eaten from a tin.

There is a small selection of shops in a tiny street next to the station.

We continued for another 30 mins until we reached the
Alishan National Forest Recreation Area - at 2100m above sea level. Cars are not allowed within this area and guests are transferred to hotels via minibuses.

We dropped our bags off and walked down to the train station. On the way we passed 1000+ years old Formosan Cypress trees and spotted another Temple before arriving for the train. Impossible to take photos as too many umbrellas in the way !

We are staying at Alishan House in the older original building, which has just been modernised. If the weather was better, the view would be fabulous. Hope it’s stopped raining in the morning.

Buffet dinner tonight in Hotel and late start at 10am tomorrow for our trip to Sun Moon Lake.

[DurhamGirl]

Day12: Sun Moon Lake

We left Alishan in the morning. The rain had cleared up and we did see some cherry blossom.

However the views were still not good enough to get a decent view the low lying clouds. We did see some in the car but not great photos.

We stopped at a tea farm to sample some of the teas only grown in the Alishan region

. We purchased a selection of teas grown on the farm to take home.

We couldn’t take the mountain road to Sub Moon Lake as the weather the previous day & frost overnight had made the roads to dangerous, so we had to take the freeway.

We arrived at the Lalu hotel around 3:30 and were greeted by lovely hotel staff who brought us tea, gave us a tour of the hotel and took us to our room. We weren’t disappointed, the view from the room is stunning

And the grounds are fabulous

We had dinner in the Japanese Restaurant - a set menu which included teriyaki style filet cooked in front of us

Then finishing the evening with a cocktail in the bar 😀

Tomorrow .. exploring round the lake

[DurhamGirl]

Day13: Sun Moon Lake

We took a short private boat trip around Sun moon lake.

on the other side of the lake, we visited the village of Thao, home to a small native Taiwanese tribe.

And another interesting post box !

We were picked up in the car and visited the
Xuanguang Temple

We finished the trip at the Wen Wu temple, which is on several different levels. We started at the very top, walking through the gates and then down to the different levels

[DurhamGirl]

Day 14: Great Buddha & Lukang

It was the final day of our private trip and we were sorry to leave the LaLu & Sun Moon lake.

On the way back to Taipei, we stopped at Mt. Bagua Great Buddha, in Changhua near Taichung

We then went to Lukang, a small historical town. This place wasn’t on our radar, so we’d have missed a gem if our guide hasn’t taken us there. We visited the Lung-shan temple dating back to the 17th century and with many remaining original features.

At the back of the temple, there is a small water garden

Lukang is also known for its tiny narrow streets of historical buildings, many still. Being used as local shops

Finally saying our goodbyes to our guide and driver as they dropped us back at the Doubletree in Taipei

[DurhamGirl]

Day 15

We spent the morning at the National Palace museum. Not the easiest pls e to get to, MRT then a 20 min bus journey.

You could spend the day there .. lots of interesting artefacts and exhibitions, including jade, porcelain, paintings, clocks, literature. With hindsight we’d have booked an English tour (they need to be booked in advance & only 2 tours a day). Don’t bother with the audio guides .. more than enough info on the exhibits themselves.

Had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant (Little Tree Food, Michelin Recommended) in the trendy Da’an district.

Tomorrow .. the Pingxi Line

[Melbatb]

The weather seems to have improved! What a fabulous lots trip you are having! Thanks for sharing!

[DurhamGirl]

Originally Posted by Melbatb

The weather seems to have improved! What a fabulous lots trip you are having! Thanks for sharing!

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Yes ..thank you - I think I maybe able to put shorts on for our trip to Disney today 😀I’ve read your 1day HK Disney trip report .. will be hoping to do something similar.
Struggled with issues accessing the Dibb Website when my Taiwan SIM card finished .. Hoping to finish catching up to date with the rest of my report this evening.