Taitung is typically just where people change trains. They come down the east coast from Hualien, get off, wait on a platform and carry straight on to Kaohsiung. Taitung City is not a big cosmopolitan place. There’s no famous old street, no huge landmark, nothing here that’s going to stop your thumb mid-scroll. Most guides will tell you the best things to do in Taitung are somewhere else entirely, out on Highway 11 or over on Green Island, and I get why. But the city itself is special in its own quiet way. There’s a hill with a dragon and phoenix pagoda on it, a forest so dense with pines that locals call it the Black Forest, a house one man built by hand over forty years, and a music village strung with lanterns that only wakes up after dark.
It’s also one of the most relaxed places we went in Taiwan. Nobody here is rushing. You can walk or cycle this entire one day Taitung itinerary and never once look at a train or bus timetable.
Here’s exactly how I’d spend one day in Taitung, plus where to stay, what to eat, and how long I’d actually give the wider county.
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How To Get To Taitung
The best way to get to Taitung is by train. Taiwan’s east coast line is one of the nicer train journeys in the country.
From Taipei you want the Puyuma or a Tze-Chiang Limited Express. The fast ones take somewhere in the region of 3.5 to 4.5 hours depending on how many stops they make. From Hualien it’s about 2 hours, and from Kaohsiung it’s a little over 2 hours on the South Link line. Book these as far ahead as you can. Express seats are reserved, they can sell out on weekends and holidays and you are not allowed to stand on the Puyuma. Sit on the left side going south if you want the sea.
Taitung train station is not in Taitung. It’s 6km northwest of the actual city centre and there is not much in between. When we got off the train I genuinely thought we’d misread the sign. You’ll need a bus, a taxi, or a prebooked hotel pickup to get downtown, so factor that in and don’t plan on walking it with your bags.
Where To Stay Taitung
The only place to really stay is downtown, near Tiehua Village. The city centre is small and flat and almost everything in this itinerary is within a fifteen or twenty minute walk of that area, including the night market, the old railway station and the seafront.
We stayed at Inn by the Village (台東南豐鐵花棧) which was perfect. The rooms were spacious with a separate seating area, large bathroom and good AC. They offered an excellent breakfast buffet and also complimentary bikes. All the main sites were a short walk or cycle away, I honestly couldn’t fault it.
My main advice is to not book near the train station just because it looks convenient on a map, you’ll be stranded and very bored.
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What To Do In Taitung
Morning
Taitung Railway Art Village
Taitung’s old train station sat in the middle of downtown for more than eighty years. Then the South Link line opened, passenger and freight numbers outgrew what the old station could handle, a new station was built out of town, and in 2001 the line into the old station was decommissioned. Rather than knock it down, the county government and a load of local artists turned the whole site into the Railway Art Village.
The good news for you is that they left it looking like a station. The platform is still there, the tracks are still there, there are old carriages parked on them, and the warehouses have become studios, classrooms and exhibition spaces. The old station hall is the information centre now. There’s also a triangular turnaround loop which I’m told is the only one in the country.
Liyu Mountain
Liyu Mountain, or Carp Mountain, is the green lump sitting right behind the old train station. It’s only about 75 metres tall so calling it a mountain is generous, it’s more of a hill with ambitions. The name comes from its shape, apparently it looks like a carp lying down.
What makes it worth the twenty minutes is everything layered on top of it. It was a place of worship during the Japanese colonial period, there was a Shinto shrine here that later became the Martyrs’ Shrine you’ll pass on the way up. Then the KMT used it as a defensive position, which is why you’ll find old gun emplacements, bunkers and air raid shelters tucked into the trees. Today it’s mostly locals doing their morning exercise and looking mildly amused at tourists puffing up the steps.
It’s a short but nice hike, about 30 minutes up and back along narrow concrete stairs to the Carp Hill viewpoint. The views are great, you get the whole grid of Taitung City and the Pacific behind it, you might even see Green Island and Orchid Island on a clear day. Aside from Carp Hill viewpoint there are a few other trails that take you to different scenic platforms so if you like to hike I’d give yourself an hour to explore the other trails.
Longfeng Temple
Longfeng Temple sits on the slopes of Liyu Mountain. It’s a Buddhist temple finished in 1976, which by Taiwanese temple standards makes it a baby. Many temples I visited in Taiwan date back to the 1600s. It was built by a local committee with the specific aim of promoting Taitung, someone in the sixties looked at this hill and thought, right, we need something up here.
As with all temples, they require you to slow down and take in all the intricate details. The staircase and balconies are lined with small white buddhas standing on a lotus flower, there are colourful inscriptions of dragons and tigers, Chinese Gods on the roof, colourful engravings on the rafters, and inside is a slew of vibrant paintings and gold statues.
We had the 3-storey temple to ourselves when we visited, surrounded by nature the atmosphere was so peaceful. You also get incredible views of Longfeng Baoyu Pagoda.
At the entrance you’ll also find a century-old camphor tree and a 70-year-old banyan tree. The morning we visited a large group of locals were doing tai chi, and a few were doing karaoke from a machine in a boot of a car.
Longfeng Baoyu Pagoda
The octagonal Longfeng Baoyu Pagoda is eight storeys with red columns, baby blue body and dragons decorating the roof – it’s the most recognisable landmark in Taitung City. You can spot it from the bottom of the hill, poking out of the trees. It’s become a bit weathered over the years but that adds to the charm, it’s just the way most of Taiwan’s buildings are.
I recommend climbing to the top as it takes just 5 minutes but the views are nice. There isn’t much else to see, I found the exterior to be the most interesting part.
Afternoon
Taitung Forest Park
If you do one thing in Taitung, do this. And rent a bike, because Taitung Forest Park is 280 hectares and walking it would mean you could barely scratch the surface.
Taitung Forest Park is known locally as the Black Forest, which sounds ominous but is just about the dark beefwood pine trees. They were planted from the 1960s onwards to stop erosion and shield the city from the wind coming off the Beinan River. However there are so many of them that the whole forest appears black.
There are three lakes to visit. Pipa Lake is the prettiest one, you can see a few fish in it. Flowing Lake is manmade and connected to the sea, which is where the name comes from, and Egret Lake is the wetland one and it’s where you can find some birds. It cost NT$30 to enter the park.
We rented two electrical bikes from Cool Horse Electrical Bike Rental (酷馬電動自行車租賃) which allowed to go all the way to Egret lake which we would have struggled to make it to on foot. We rented it from this bike shop in Taitung town as the park is located a few minutes cycle outside of it, so it’s just easier to cycle along the coast through Taitung Seashore Park. Many people give Taitung Seashore park a lot of time on their itinerary but apart from a few sculptures there isn’t too much to see.
The park also links into the 21km Mountain-Ocean Bikeway that loops around the city, so if you’re enjoying yourself you can just keep going.
We spent about two hours here and it was the nicest bit of the day. There are a few cool tunnels to cycle through like the pergola tunnel that is covered in plants, but I personally loved the smell of pines and getting lost in some nature.
Taitung White House
This next one on the Taitung itinerary is strange but it has a cool backstory involving 40 years of stubbornness.
Down a side street in the city you’ll find a leaning four storey building made of bricks, scavenged glass, bits of wood and whatever else was going. People call it the Moving Castle because it looks like something you would find in a Ghibli film.
It was built by one man, Mr Lee Wen-Chang. He was a KMT soldier, from China, who came over during the civil war and was eventually posted to Taitung. He met his wife here, had six children, and from around 1966 he started extending the small wooden house he lived in. When the military outpost he’d worked at was abandoned in 1970 he began collecting the materials from it, and then just kept going, heading out most days to bring back bricks and glass and waste wood. This salvaging went on for decades. The story you hear locally is that he was building space for his son’s future family, a house big enough for everyone to live in together.
Mr Lee Wen-Chang sadly died in 2017 and the house has been empty since. However it has held up through typhoons and earthquakes which, given how it’s put together, is a spectacular feat.
Donghai Wetland Park
Nobody seems to write about this one, which is exactly why I’m putting it in. Donghai Wetland Park sits a 12 minute cycle from Taitung seashore park. Although it’s called a wetland park, it’s effectively just a beach, a very very quiet beach.
Taitung is already a quiet city and this is the quiet bit of the quiet city. After a morning of steps and a couple of hours on a bike it was a nice way to wind down before the evening crawled around.
You can spot lots of different birds here as this whole coastline sits on a migratory route and the wetlands around Taitung are important stopover habitat, so depending on the season you’ll get herons, egrets and waders working the shallows. Autumn and winter are better for it.
Honestly, this is not going to be the highlight of your trip. But if you want twenty minutes with nothing but the sound of the ocean, then you’ll be happy you stopped here.
Evening
Music Village
Tiehua Music Village is the reason to be in Taitung after dark, and it’s right next to the art village in the same old railway complex, in what were the railway warehouses and dormitories.
It started in 2010, run by the Lovely Taiwan Foundation, with the aim of giving Taitung’s musicians an actual stage. A lot of Taiwan’s indigenous musicians come from this part of the country and there was nowhere down here for them to play. It has become a real cultural landmark with big names like Deserts Chang having played the little outdoor stage.
It’s so beautiful at night with strings of gently glowing lanterns, a slow market with handmade stuff that’s actually made by the people selling it, a few food and drink stalls, and live music on the stage most evenings. There’s usually no entry fee but there’s a minimum spend of around NT$120 on drinks, which is nothing. Opening hours run roughly evenings Wednesday to Sunday and it’s normally closed Mondays.
Taitung Night Market
A 10 minute walk from Tiehua is Taitung Tourism Night Market which runs along Zhengqi Road and it has a nice double life. During the day this street is a fruit market, and this is custard apple country, Taitung grows the best ones in Taiwan, so if you’re here in season buy one. At night the fruit sellers pack up and the food stalls roll in.
It only started in 2010 so it’s a young night market by Taiwanese standards, and it’s small. A good chunk of the stalls are carnival games rather than food, there’s less variety than Taipei or Kaohsiung, and vegetarians will find it limiting. What it does have is Taiwanese night market classics like the famous Dongshan duck head, crispy squid, taiwanese grilled sausage, stinky tofu and sugar cane juice.
Although Taitung itself is extraordinarily quiet in the day, once the night comes around the crowds seem to come out. We were expecting this night market to be dead, but it actually was very lively and much more upbeat than we would have guessed.
It’s only open Thursday to Saturday evenings, but it’s also worth checking locally when you are there as these times can typically change.
What To Eat In Taitung
The dish to look for is mi tai mu, short fat rice noodles that get called silver needle noodles in English. They come in soup or dry and they’re a Taitung thing. Rongshuxia Mi Tai Mu is the super famous restaurant to try it at.
For breakfast, Beinan pig blood soup is the local move. It’s clean tasting rather than metallic and it comes with sticky rice. Give it a try.
Then there’s the indigenous food, which is the genuinely distinctive stuff here and the reason I’d tell people to eat in Taitung rather than just eating in Taitung. Look for abai, the Puyuma rice dumplings wrapped in leaves, anything with red quinoa, and grilled wild boar. Several places around Tiehua do this and it’s a world away from standard Taiwanese menus.
And the produce. Custard apples, obviously, but also the tea from Luye and the rice from Chishang, which you can buy in town and is considered the best rice in Taiwan.
How Long To Spend In Taitung
One full day in Taitung City is enough. Everything above fits into a day without rushing and if you tried to stretch it over two you’d be padding. However, one day in Taitung County is nowhere near enough.
The city is a base. From here you’ve got Chishang and the rice fields up in the East Rift Valley, Dulan for surfing and a completely different pace, the coast road along Highway 11, hot springs at Zhiben, and the ferries out to Green Island and Orchid Island. If you’re going to Green Island you need two nights in Taitung anyway because of the boat timings, which is how a lot of people end up here in the first place.
So my honest recommendation: give the city one day (using this itinerary of course). Then give the county another two or three. The East Point Shuttle bus is the best option for those with more than one day in Taitung.
There is an affordable East Coast shuttle bus that operates daily. It’s a 9 hour tour covering 130 km along the East Coast Provincial Highway. It stops at Little Yehliu, Jinzun, Amis Folk Center, Chenggong Fishing Port, Sanxiantai, Donghe Bridge, Dulan Sugar Factory and other sightseeing spots. →