Penghu or Green Island?

so my family are coming here soon, last year we went to hualien for a weekend trip, which went down very well. this year i thought visiting one of the smaller islands (i know penghu is a set of islands not one) might be a good trip. i’ve not been to either of them before, and i can’t really decide which would be better. my gf suggested green island as it would be more manageable. i thought penghu looked more interesting, but manageable is good too, so im not sure. any advice?

Hmm… how are you planning to get around? If there are many of you, and you need a car to get around, Penghu seems like the better choice. Green Island is more of a everyone rides a motorcycle kind of place.

Both places are really really hot during the summer too.

If you are into seeing scenery then maybe Penghu. If you are looking to do more under water activity, Green Island might be the better fit.

Although there’s more planning involved when going to Penghu, especially if you want to go to many different islands.

Green island has more tourist activities, it can be pretty crowded during summer.

Penghu is a bit of a pain to travel around, but the scenery is very beautiful (for the love of god, bring hats/umbrellas, there’s no shade anywhere). In order to reach many spots it’s basically necessary to join a tour and get on boats.

Lanyu is a really cool place, plenty of diving spots with amazing water. It’s a single island and doesn’t take long to travel around it. It’s full of goats. There are some tours but it’s an easy place to explore.

My personal favorite is Lanyu.

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+1

yea travelling around could be a problem. theres only 4 of us total. somebody told me that you can rent e-bikes in both places, can anyone confirm? that would be useful as a license isn’t needed.

Just come back from Green island. Wonderful place. Can confirm about electrical scooter. Fee 600NT per day.

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For most of these islands, if you can ask your B&B owner to reserve motorcycles for you, and basically no license would be required. That being said, the roads on Green Island and Pongso no Tao are tiny country roads often by sea cliffs or going steep up or down. So, some riding experience is preferable.

Penghu is the obvious choice if you are ok with renting a car.

Green Island is pretty small and has lots of tourists in the summer. The main island of Penghu is much larger and you can see quite a lot of different things, though it’s mostly flat, whereas Green Island is more mountainous. You can do island hopping in Penghu (Wang’an, Qimei, Jibei, etc.). If you go to Green Island, go to Lanyu too. Snorkeling and scuba diving definitely better on those two islands.

I am actually fond of the islands of Matsu and also Kinmen, those two can also be combined with a trip to Fujian Province.

leaning towards green island. seems like it would be a lot less hassle. penghu looks great though, i’ll have to make a separate trip at some point.

i would also like to visit kinmen but i want to step over to xiamen and probably further into fujian. which requires a certain pain in the ass chinese visa… so ain’t gonna be doing that one on the fly… its also a hard sell for my gf LOL.

I’ve done both a few times. Green Island is good for about 6 hours. Penghu is good for a few days. A lot more activities and some beautiful view and interesting old buildings and neighborhoods and much more food that is amazing from the sea and firework shows this time of year and history and…

If you just want to chill out and see a couple things and sit in a couple spots the entire time, then Green Island will work.

Green Island is not much more manageable.
They’re basically both a flight from Taipei. Unless you take the route via flying to Taitung and then a ferry to Green Island which is more manageable.

And flights to Green Island are much much much less frequent and sometimes even challenging to get a flight especially for a group of people. Penghu is easy to get a flight.

Green island all the restaurants close in the middle afternoon from like 2 to 5 so you can’t find any food less you go to 711. Very few hotels so finding the type style and quality that you prefer maybe a challenge

Sounds like your gf is either more interested in going to Green Island or doesn’t have much experience visiting both places. Most people that travel Taiwan much know getting to Green Island can be a challenge by plane or boat considering the limited capacity and impossibility to determine weather impacts.

yea she doesn’t want to go to penghu because she went last year, and also went by ferry and didn’t have a good time of it.

for me personally i am a bit worried about getting around. we cant rent cars or scooters so e-bikes are pretty much it.

Sounds like Ken ding is another option. A lot easier to get to. Fun place for your family if they haven’t been there before. Some decent hotels, reasonably priced, with sea views.

And if the weather doesn’t cooperate, like it’s extremely hot, or extremely sunny, or extremely wet, or typhoon, or windy, then you’re in a big situation flying in and out and also enjoying your time there moving around on scooters. I was there in the middle of May and at 2 in the afternoon I was looking for shade and air-conditioning believe me. And it was not easy to find because the restaurants closed between 2 and 5?!

Most flights in and out are booked well in advance. Some people get bumped due to other priorities like nurses or doctors or fire department that need to go either direction. And then if the weather gets bad you might end up needing to take a ferry back to Taidong and not even get to fly out.

didn’t go to green island in the end, everything was booked at such short notice. summer is pretty busy in taiwan i guess. next time i will know to book things well in advance. i’m sure the typhoon would have made things pretty rough anyway so it worked out fine. we went to tainan instead. didn’t catch too much rain actually, just on sunday most places were closed but it was still a pretty nice trip. the rain started as we were leaving, pretty lucky.

Thanks for the update :sunglasses: