Taiwan with children: 10 days, three hotel changes
Taiwan is one of the easiest countries in Asia to travel with children and almost nobody thinks of it first. The trains are punctual and cheap, the cities are exceptionally safe, there is a clean toilet and a hot meal in every convenience store, and the food is the kind children actually eat: noodle
- Duration
- 10 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 3
- Best months
- Oct, Nov, Dec, Mar, Apr
- From
- $1,950 per person
What it is not is a beach holiday. This route is built around trains, water, cable cars and one hot spring town, with three hotel changes in ten days and no drive longer than ninety minutes.
Who it suits: families with children roughly 4 to 16. Younger works too and we build it with more pool and less coast.
Your specialist: Asaf Zamshtein, our Southeast Asia and China specialist, with our Taiwanese partner team on the ground.
Day by day
Taipei, days 1 to 4
Day 1: Arrive Taipei. Airport express or private transfer, about 40 minutes. Nothing scheduled. A hotel with a family room near a metro interchange, which in Taipei is easy and makes the whole week work. Dinner at Ningxia night market, which is small enough not to lose anyone in and where children order their own food from about thirty stalls.
Day 2: Taipei from above. Taipei 101 in the morning, whose lift is one of the fastest in the world and whose observation deck contains a giant steel damper that children find far more interesting than the view. Then the Maokong gondola in the afternoon, a 25-minute cable car up over the tea hills, with glass-floored cabins if you want them and nobody minds if you do not.
Evening: shaved ice, which is a national obsession and comes under a mountain of mango.
Day 3: Taipei, animals and trains. Taipei Zoo in the morning, which sits at the bottom of the gondola line and is large, green and well kept. Or the Museum of Drinking Water and the children’s science museum if the weather is against you, which in Taipei in winter it sometimes is.
Afternoon free, and a night market again in the evening because they will ask.
Day 4: The Pingxi line. A day out by train on a single-track branch line into the hills, stopping at Shifen for the waterfall and the old street where the railway runs between the shops, and at Houtong, which is a former mining village now full of cats and is exactly as strange as that sounds.
Sky lanterns are released at Shifen and we will be honest with you about them: they are beautiful, and they come down somewhere as litter. Some operators now use biodegradable paper and collect what they can. We will explain the trade-off and let you decide as a family rather than making it a scheduled activity.
Yilan, days 5 and 6
Day 5: Taipei to Jiaoxi. About an hour by train through the tunnel under the mountains to the Yilan plain. Jiaoxi is a hot spring town where the water is odourless and clear, which matters with children, and every hotel has a bath. Afternoon at the National Center for Traditional Arts, a large riverside village of workshops where children make things: puppets, dough figures, dyed cloth, paper.
Day 6: Yilan. The cold spring at Su’ao, which is naturally carbonated and about 71F (22C) and which children think is a joke until they get in. Or, between roughly March and October, a boat out to Turtle Island for whale and dolphin watching, which has a good sighting rate and a real chance of nothing. Afternoon in the hotel bath.
Hualien and the east, days 7 to 9
Day 7: Down the coast to Hualien. An hour and a half by train along the Pacific. Book the seaward side. Afternoon at Qixingtan, a long crescent of grey pebbles where the mountains meet the sea, and where the swimming is not safe but the paddling and the stone-skimming are excellent.
Day 8: The gorge day, or the river day. Taroko Gorge if it is open, which we confirm at the time of quoting rather than assuming, because the April 2024 earthquake caused severe damage and the park has been reopening in stages. The parts that suit children are the short, flat trails rather than the cliff paths.
If access is limited we run the alternative, which children usually prefer anyway: the Sanzhan river and Mugua River Gorge south of town, where you walk in the riverbed between marble walls and swim in cold green pools.
Day 9: The Rift Valley. Inland for the day with a car and driver: rice terraces at Chishang, a paddle boat or a bike on the valley floor, and a hot spring at Ruisui. Back to Hualien for the last night on the coast.
Day 10: Hualien to the airport. Train back to Taipei, two hours, then the airport express. Or, if your flight is late, a morning at the beach first and an afternoon train.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast throughout in family rooms or connecting rooms, all rail legs in reserved seats including the east coast line, a private air-conditioned car with English-speaking driver on two days, licensed guides briefed for children on two days, Taipei 101 and gondola tickets, the Traditional Arts Center, the zoo, all entrance fees on guided days, a stored-value transport card each, a day-by-day document with train numbers, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our partner team in Taiwan throughout.
Whale watching is quoted separately because it is seasonal and because sea conditions cancel it.
What we would change, and when
- Children under six? Drop the Pingxi day, which is a lot of train, and add a second Taipei pool afternoon. Keep the gondola and the beach.
- Teenagers? Add a day at Sun Moon Lake with bicycles, or two nights in Taitung with the hot air balloon festival in July and August. Older children also get more out of the National Palace Museum than younger ones do, with the right guide.
- Travelling in summer? July and August in Taipei are hot and very humid, around 95F (35C) with afternoon thunderstorms. We would move everything outdoors to the morning, add pool time and weight the trip east where the sea breeze helps. We would also warn you that this is typhoon season.
- Travelling in winter? The north-east is grey and drizzly from about December to February. We keep two indoor days in reserve for Taipei and we would consider swapping the east coast for the sunnier south.
Honest notes
There is no beach holiday in this itinerary and Taiwan is not the place to look for one. The swimming beaches are in the far south at Kenting, which is a five-hour journey from Taipei and is crowded at weekends, and on the outer islands, which need a third week and a ferry that cancels.
Taipei is a walking and metro city and children walk a lot on this trip. We keep the daily distance sensible and we build in the middle of the day, and it is still a city holiday for the first four days.
Night markets are loud, crowded and slow to move through, which some children love and some find overwhelming. We book two of the smaller ones rather than the biggest, and there is always an alternative dinner five minutes away.
The gorge question is unresolved and we would rather say so. Anyone selling you a full Taroko day in a family brochure written last year is not checking the current position.
Built by Asaf Zamshtein, our Southeast Asia and China specialist, and checked with our partner team in Taiwan before it goes out.
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