Nice part of Taiwan to chill out for a couple of months?

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
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For most of June/July/August I’m looking for somewhere inexpensive where I can chill out, get a ton of reading done. Would be very grateful for any suggestions. I’m currently living in the middle of Taipei, I speak Chinese.

Ideally:
Nice environment: by sea or mountains or greenery
No scooter, but have bicycle.
Quiet and low-key

Initially I was wondering about somewhere in the countryside in Nantou, or maybe Alisan kind of area.
But, would Kinmen (or another island) make sense?

I did also see someone called @Mucha_Man write 10 years ago that

Live on the southern or northern edge of Taipei and you literally have mountains out your doorsteps (or a quick public transport ride away) and literally hundreds of km of dedicated bike paths along the rivers.

So maybe that’s the simplest answer: Tienmu/Beitou/Muzha/Bitan?

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I’d probably go to Taitung personally, for the sake of being close to the sea while still having some city/town conveniences.

I don’t think any of the places you mentioned in Taipei would be especially cheap, despite being cheaper than other parts of Taipei?

At least if restricted to Taiwan (if I wasn’t, I’d go somewhere else tbh, probably Thailand or the Philippines).

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梨山? It’ll be nice and cool in the summer there while rest of Taiwan is very hot. It’s high up in mountains. Lots of home stay type places. Few people and lots of greenery.

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Try Donghe or Taimali in Taitung County for ocean and excellent access to Coastal Mountain range.

Another cool place to hang for a while in the mountains would be Lidao (利稻). Also in Taitung county.

The towns in the Rift Valley are pretty laid back too. Yuli, Chihshang, Guangfu etc.

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A few examples there

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Taipei and environs are a huge metropolis I would never call it quiet. Better off really getting out there.
Summertime many places are not guaranteed to be quiet quiet in Taiwan (or anywhere really) , also it can be very hot.
Mountains are good but cycling up and down mountains ain’t easy :slightly_smiling_face::slightly_smiling_face:.
Yup East Coast is a good suggestion especially if you want to cycle but yeah… :fire:.

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Hengchun

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The Conjugal Love Farm-- I am not joking

CONJUGAL LOVE B&B - LA LA MOUNTAIN - Reviews (Taiwan/Taoyuan) (tripadvisor.co.uk)

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Thank you very much for all the super-helpful advice! Had me leaning heavily to the east coast and Yuli or thereabouts in particular, until the Hengchun/Pingtung suggestion threw a spanner in the works.

Conjugal love farm looks lovely but wouldn’t work for me unless they supply the conjugee.

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Will be very hot so take that account when you pick a location. Especially if wanting to get out in the daytime like beach or eating or shopping or etc.

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@yanom It’s just a B&B albeit with a strange name.

Lalashan is really great if you want a mountainous retreat.

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Kinmen is hecking hot in the summer. Far worse than Taipei.

That being said, if you pick a BnB in a more remote part of the island or go to Little Kinmen, you can have basically private beaches during the day and decent silence in the evening. It pretty much never rains there either, so plenty of sunshine but also heat.

Note that Jincheng and Jinhu and anything on a main road will be filled with noisy scooters at all hours, probably worse than Taipei due to the total lack of enforcement. So find a BnB in Oucuo or Zhushan Village where there aren’t enough straight shots of road for people to drive crazily on :joy:. I think you can also camp in the National Park that’s right next to the airport. At least they used to have platforms for people to pitch tents on

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As a pale Englishman, anything 30 degrees (85 American) or above is ridiculously hot for me especially with humidity (unless I’m cycling) so 30/35/40 is basically all the same as long as I’m staying somewhere with air conditioning.

But from what I can see online, Yuli and Lishan average just under 30, which definitely make a difference. Rainy though, by the looks of it. Anyone happen to know if that’s all-day rain or just a daily shower/thunderstorm (typhoons apart)?

I’m not expecting one place to tick every single box :slight_smile:

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It doesn’t rain much in the summer once the monsoon ends. But I don’t know about mountains because Taiwan has so many micro climates.

Most the rain you see will be typhoons and we don’t know how those work, as they’ve been avoiding Taiwan lately.

But you don’t want to be in the mountains during a typhoon. We’re talking week long power outages or being cut off because the only road there washed away. Or landslides. If a typhoon is imminent I recommend getting off the mountain.

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Yes but Summer is a different kettle of fish . It doesn’t rain much then. Winter and Spring are rainy. When we say hot we mean direct sun baking hot as there isn’t much shade on the East coast and they have the Foehn winds sometime. Look it up .
It’s actually worse in Penghu . Very nice place to chill out but shade in Summer…forget it. You just have to avoid the hottest parts of the day.

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When it is 35 in Taipei in the Summer, it is mid 20s in Lalashan given the elevation.

Even now, a lot cooler. Lalashan - Mountaineering | Central Weather Administration (cwa.gov.tw)

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Actually in the summer I’ll escape to yangmingshan because its 5 degrees cooler. It’s not massive but it’s enough to be tolerable.

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I burn easily and Penghu in the summer can be deceptive. When you have a strong wind coming down the strait you can miss how hot it is, until you turn bright red in the evening.

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You want to limit your cycling to 5am to 9am and then 3pm to 6pm in the summer months.

Otherwise, stay in the shade in daylight hours and don’t move much. A six pack or two of taipi are optional but often warranted.

But from what I can see online, Yuli and Lishan average just under 30, which definitely make a difference. Rainy though, by the looks of it. Anyone happen to know if that’s all-day rain or just a daily shower/thunderstorm (typhoons apart)?

Lishan is pretty high up so it will be hot (but not humid) for a few hours and then well below 30 at night. Maybe even below 20 at times. My sense is that Lishan is partly affected by Yilan’s raininess but it’s hard to tell because mountain weather changes so quickly. It can be gorgeous up there.

That said, I would not stay in Lishan. It appears to me to be a dismal little high-altitude farming town with a fair number of dilapidated hotels left over from the days you could get up there from Taichung. It’s quite possible there are some nice corners hidden from the main roads as is often the case in Taiwan but they have eluded me.

Yuli like the northern 60% or so of the rift valley has a very distinct weather pattern of great weather in the morning followed by clouding over and a brief rain storm lasting an hour or two tops. You’ll need to be in the southern Taitung area to avoid this.

If you want to be in the mountains, try the Alishan area or Namasia in Kaohsiung. Dubang, Laiji, or Chashan in Alishan would be good choices. This minsu is Chashan is well situated and appointed for your purposes.

In Namasia, any of the towns on Highway 29 would work but I would choose Minquan simply because it would be the coolest. There is also Taoyuan over in the next river valley east.

Like Lidao (mentioned in previous post), these are all indigenous communities that have much more sensible layouts than Han mountain communities.

羅娜, 潭南, and 瑞岩 in various parts of Nantou are all similar.

Yuchi is a Han community just north of Sun Moon Lake that is pretty pleasant and more accessible than some other places. As I recall, it even has a supermarket.

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Yuli is hot in the summer, but at least there is good food and plentiful amenities in that town (including supermarkets, traditional outdoor markets, a Pakistan guy selling tasty food, and at least five distinct Vietnamese places). You’ll have clean air, great views, and the chance to travel to other towns along the rail line if you wish (including some great cafes in Chihshang). But it will be hot.

Guy