I’d like to travel with my motorbike around to Keelung and along the coast, is that possible? What is the best map for that?
Thank you,
Igor, you can certainly do it! I asked questions about it here;
forumosa.com/3/viewtopic.php?p=134339#134339 (make sure you continue reading to the following page as several people contributed useful information).
My mother, my friend and I did this trip over the Chinese New Year holiday. My mother was riding pillion on the back of my motorcycle. Despite the cold and wind, we all enjoyed the trip a lot. Although I haven’t finished doing the write-up, there are photos and sketch maps on my website at;
mcttw.tripod.com/north_taiwan.htm
(The specific pages you might be more interested in are mcttw.tripod.com/yilan-jilong.htm
and
mcttw.tripod.com/jilong-taibei.htm )
The very best road and contour maps of Taiwan are a 1:50,000 scale two-volume set divided into north and south. Each volume costs a whopping 2000NT in bookstores or 1600NT online. Details on these here;
forumosa.com/3/viewtopic.php?p=123444#123444
But you only really need these maps if you need a lot of detail. Otherwise, there are a number of single-volume road maps at 1:100,000 scale which do the job fine. They can be a bit misleading if you’re on very minor roads, but it’s generally not too difficult to find your way again. You can find them in all bookshops and they are much cheaper; I think I paid 1000NT for mine.
Unfortunately, all the above-mentioned maps are Chinese-only. There are a couple of single-sheet maps with some Romanized names - they can be useful although if you want to explore some back roads I suggest using one of the bigger, Chinese-language maps as well. I posted on this issue here;
forumosa.com/3/viewtopic.php?p=138860#138860
Igor, I’ve suggested to the moderator of this forum that he merge this topic with the ‘motorcycle touring’ one, in order to keep related information together. So if you can’t find your post later, that’s where it may be.