{"id":28202,"date":"2018-12-12T21:36:16","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T13:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=28202"},"modified":"2026-03-15T20:34:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T12:34:44","slug":"12-days-in-taiwan-day-06-hualien-and-chisingtan-scenic-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2018\/12\/12\/12-days-in-taiwan-day-06-hualien-and-chisingtan-scenic-area\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Days in Taiwan \u2013 Day 06 \u2013 Hualien and Chisingtan Scenic Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

We said goodbye to Taichung after five days in the city and the Nantou region. We’re at the midpoint of our trip to Taiwan, and the next leg of our trip is to take us to Hualien<\/strong> \u2014 population 104,000 according to the 2016 census \u2014 where we’ll spend two days and a night. Since driver Kong was available in the morning \u2014 his next client was a 10AM pick-up of Hong Kong tourists arriving at Taichung Airport \u2014 he was able to ferry us from our Taichung apartment to the city’s HSR station. He got us to the station plenty early with time to spare, and we gave him a fat tip on top of the NTD300\/SGD13.35 fare, and said our goodbyes. The kids, and especially Peter, are going to miss him. Kong has been a genial, flexible, and accommodating person and a superb driver. And most important of all, his driving skills and solid vehicle meant that I didn’t get even the slightest whiff of vertigo during our Taichung stay. That alone really made it possible for me to enjoy this trip so far!<\/p>\n

We’d collected the train tickets for our three train transfers \u2014 Taichung => Taipei + Taipei => Hualien, and Hualien => Taipei on Day 07 \u2014 on the first evening at a Family Mart outlet near our Taichung apartment (there’s an administrative charge involved and charged per ticket \u2014 we had twelve tickets, so it cost NTD107\/SGD4.76 in all), so all we needed to do was to scan our printed tickets at the gate and head to our assigned seats when the HSR train arrived. The HSR leg from Taichung to Taipei took an hour and ten minutes, and was comfortable and smooth. Arriving at Taipei Main Station, we had another hour before the connection to Hualien, so it was as good an opportunity to feed our two younglings. The Taipei to Hualien segment was via normal, i.e., slower rail, but we opted for the express train which was still an hour faster than the normal service. Still, this second leg was less comfortable and pretty bumpy compared to the HSR segment earlier on, and took 2 hours 23 minutes including a ten-minute delay where the train stopped just before reaching Hualien.<\/p>\n

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Credit to Ling. She camped the rail ticketing web site and booked them as soon as the booking window opened.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The host of our stay in Hualien picked us up and brought us to the house \u2014 beautifully renovated \u2014 and I think Ling just might do a blog post of it at some point \u2014 then drew us a map and annotated it with all manner of instructions, phone numbers to call, and references. She then drove us out again to drop us off for lunch at \u738b\u8a18\u8336\u8216, a restaurant with a range of lunch sets that come with bubble teas. Post-lunch was decision time: we’d arrived in Hualien at a bit of an odd time. The night market wasn’t going to open until several hours later, the launching of fireworks at Chisingtan Scenic Area<\/strong> could only be in the evening, and Hualien city itself isn’t dense with things for visitors to do (outside food, that is). We decided to head straight to Chisingtan for a mid-afternoon checkout, so dialed a referred cab company from our host to ferry us across the roughly 6km distance. An interesting point to note: the cab referrals via our host all gave us a decent discount of NTD100\/SGD4.45 each ride as soon as we mentioned that we were staying with her \u2014 very nice!<\/p>\n

Along the way to the Scenic Area, the cab driver remarked that setting off fireworks isn’t permitted anymore. Not that we could verify that information, but we didn’t see anyone selling firecrackers anyway when doing a quick visual scan around the area after we arrived. The beach at the Scenic Area is quite suitable for a leisurely stroll, though the coastal winds at this time of the year are quite strong, even if they don’t approach the gale-like force we experienced at Gaomei Wetlands. So, we opted to rent bikes (NTD200\/SGD8.90 for a dual-type bike, NTD150\/SGD6.67 for normal ones), and headed out. The kids loved the experience, though that’s probably in part because it was daddy and mommy providing the horsepower for them to enjoy it!<\/p>\n

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Scissors Paper Stone for the kids while waiting for our ride to Hualien. Either that, or they badger us with “when is our train coming??”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Lunch @ \u738b\u8a18\u8336\u8216\u4eba\u6587\u8336\u5802. We had three lunch sets, each of which came with a beverage (hot tea or bubble tea), with total damage at NTD660\/SGD29.37.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Bike rental at the southern point of Chisingtan Scenic Area. No time limits to your rental.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Peter really enjoyed this bit!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The beach isn’t the kind where kids can play, and incoming waves were fairly strong this afternoon too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Family wefie at Chisingtan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Lunch @ Hualien<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Not much else in the vicinity of Chisingtan Scenic Area.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next stop after a visit to Chisingtan was Dongdamen Night Market<\/a> \u2014 in the next post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We said goodbye to Taichung after five days in the city and the Nantou region. We’re at the midpoint of our trip to Taiwan, and the next leg of our trip is to take us to Hualien \u2014 population 104,000<\/p>\n

Read More 12 Days in Taiwan \u2013 Day 06 \u2013 Hualien and Chisingtan Scenic Area<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[604,608,618],"class_list":["post-28202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-canon-g7x-ii","tag-sony-a7-iii","tag-taiwan-2018","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/blog-2018-taiwan-day-06-20181212_153859-hualien-chisingtan-scenic-area.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38566,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28202\/revisions\/38566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}