Taipei is the base. The island is the trip.
Which Jiufen run actually stops long enough. Where the sky lanterns go up. What a private driver costs once you leave the city. Every tour in Taiwan, reviewed and ranked.
One road out of Taipei does most of the work.
Yehliu, Jiufen, Houtong, Shifen, Pingxi. Nearly every day trip sold in Taipei is some combination of these five, in some order, at some pace. The differences are what you are actually choosing between.
Yehliu
Jiufen
Houtong
PingxiWhat a first week in Taiwan actually looks like.
A lantern night, a food tour you regret nothing about, a geopark, a cooking class, a lake in the mountains and an afternoon in the sulphur steam. Six days most trips are built from, and the best way to book each.
Taiwan runs cheap until you hire the car.
Tickets and street food cost almost nothing here. A driver for a week does not. Every tour on the site, sorted by what it actually costs.
Observatory tickets, museum entry, transit passes and the tip-based walking tours. Taipei is generous at this end.
The shared coach day out: the north-coast circuit, night-market food walks, a cooking class with lunch in it.
Your own car and guide for a day, or a small group that stops where you ask it to.
Multi-day private tours: Sun Moon Lake and Alishan, the south, or the full loop around the island.
Taipei does not close. It just moves outdoors.
Shilin, Raohe, Ningxia: the food that defines this city is cooked on a folding table after sunset and eaten standing up. Go with someone who knows which stall in the row is the one worth queueing at.
Taiwan’s most-booked days, ranked by the people who went.
Every review →More travellers take these than anything else on the island — and what makes each one worth the day it costs you.
1
Shifen, Jiufen, and Yehliu Guided Day Trip
A 9-hour guided loop from Taipei to Shifen, Jiufen, and Yehliu Geopark, with sky lanterns, old-street wandering, and a Queen’s Head stop.
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
Jiufen was a gold town before it was a view.
Gold was worked in these hills, and coal at Houtong and along the Pingxi line, through decades of Japanese colonial administration and the hard, badly-paid years after it. The teahouses and the red lanterns came later, once the seams were finished. Both things are true at once, and the better guides say so on the way up.
All 43 Jiufen day trips →
Sky lanterns, sulphur valleys and oolong: the Taiwanese specifics.
Night markets and temple days you can find across the region. These three are Taiwan being precisely itself.
The Sky Lantern
The Pingxi line was built to carry coal out of these valleys; the last mines closed and the little diesel train kept running for everyone else. Now you write on a paper lantern in ink, hold it while it fills with hot air, and let it go over the track. It is touristic and it is also genuinely lovely, and the good operators bring you at dusk when you can actually see it climb.
- 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
Beitou sits on the flank of a dormant volcano at the top of the red metro line, which makes Taipei one of very few capitals with a proper hot-spring quarter inside the city. Thermal Valley itself runs near boiling and is for looking at, not bathing in; the bathhouses below it are the point. The sulphur smell is not a fault, it is the water working.
- 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
Oolong Country
Pinglin and Maokong grow the oolongs Taiwan is known for, on slopes an hour from Taipei that stay in cloud most mornings. A tea day here is unhurried by design: you are shown the leaf, the roast and the water temperature, and then you sit and drink the same leaf four or five times while it changes.
- 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
Past Taichung the island gets vertical.
Two thirds of Taiwan is mountain. Sun Moon Lake sits in Nantou at the middle of it, Alishan runs its narrow-gauge line up through the cloud forest, and Taroko cuts a marble gorge down to the Pacific. These are overnight distances from Taipei, not afternoons — plan them as their own trip.
- 15-Day Best of Taiwan: Sun Moon Lake, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Hualienfrom $715
- 2Nantou and Sun Moon Lake View Day Tourfrom $63
- 3Private 3-Day Tour to Sun Moon Lake and Alishanfrom $1,009
A cruise day in Keelung is eight hours. Here is how to spend them.
All Keelung shore tours →The terminal is in the middle of Keelung and Taipei is forty minutes away, which is either a gift or a trap depending on what you booked. These are the runs that get you back to the gangway on time.
Full-Day Private Custom Keelung Shore Excursions
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Keelung Shore Excursion: Jiufen & Shifen Sky Lantern Private Tour
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Keelung Shore Excursions: Private 6-Hour Taipei City Adventure!
Read our review →
Taipei rains for months. Book indoors and eat better.
The northeast monsoon parks over the north of the island from about October to March, and the plum rains come through in May and June. Locals do not cancel; they move the day indoors. A cooking class, a bathhouse, the museum on the hill, a long lunch — none of these care what the sky is doing.
Book these before you fly into Taoyuan.
Most of Taiwan can be arranged from your hotel the night before. These four cannot — they run on flight numbers, fixed schedules and timed entry slots that do not care when you land.
- 01Private Custom Taipei Airport Layover TourPickup is built around a flight number, so the operator needs your transit details while you are still at home.
- 025-Day Best of Round Taiwan Island TourFive days of car, driver and hotels do not assemble at a day’s notice.
- 03Kenting, Taiwan｜PADI Basic Diving License Course｜Taiwan Diving Open Water CourseA certification course runs to a fixed schedule and a fixed instructor ratio — the places are finite.
- 04Priority Pass Taipei 101 Observatory Deck TicketTimed entry to the observatory: the sunset hour is the slot that goes first.
By place — north to south
Taipei248 tours
New Taipei15 tours
Yilan6 tours
Taroko & Hualien7 tours
Sun Moon Lake & Nantou23 tours
Taichung11 tours
Tainan6 tours
Kaohsiung14 tours- Kenting5 tours
- Everything on the island →
By day — what kind of day is it?
Just reviewed in Taiwan.
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Yilan 1-Day Private Tour to Kavalan Whisky & Cultural Gems
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One-way Private Transfer between Jiufen and Taipei
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Keelung Shore Excursion: Private 6H Natural Wonder & Seafood Tour
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Taipei Cherry Blossom Day Tour to Yangmingshan and Tamsui
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12hrs – Chiayi Meteor Garden Classic Tour From Taipei
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National Palace Museum Northern Branch Taiwan Admission
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Tainan Ancient Capital & Wushantou Reservoir One Day Tour
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