Permit to Guishan (turtle) island ?

Hi,

I plan to go for some dolphin viewing there but I also would like to visit the island itself but a permit seems needed and it must be done a few weeks before.
I plan to drive (and not take a bus operator from Taipei) there so I wonder where to get this permit in Taipei ?

Thanks

Go to the harbor there and get a ticket for island tour. The boat goes once around the island, then drops you off with tour guide on the island. Walk through the village, around the lake/pond, thru tunnels where old WWII fortifications were. Worth it.

Thanks, do you mean that a permit is no longer needed ?

A permit implies that you are doing it “solo”, right?
These are guided tours. Do not worry about them as being “guided”. There is plenty of walk-around space to look at things. It was actually a cool tour when I went on it with the missus. Did not feel like a “tour group” experience.

Edit: Bring some form of ID (passport or ARC), as I believe both tours (as Incubus notes below) need it.

There are two types of tours for the island: short and long. The boat for the short tour only stops long enough for you to walk around the lake and see the village and military installations. The long one allows you the time to hike up to the peak. If you intend to scale the 401 Peak, you should make sure the tour operator offers the long version. I went 2 years ago, and they only had the short tour, which was worth it as KHHville pointed out, but it would’ve been nice to hike up to the peak for the spectacular view.

About the permit, we made a reservation with the tour operator, who then applied for our landing permits on our behalf.

Not WWII. The military installations were set up to thwart a beach landing on the main island by the Chinese communists.

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Damn, I was almost saving this on my “to do” list. Thanks for clarifying that these are ROC area installations…

Thanks to all.
Finally I went today to have a look but was a bit too late to go to the island.
Boats leave at 9 am and 1 PM.
I just did a 2 hours dolphins “hunting” but they did not bother to show up.
Weather was very nice, boat was quite ok and cost was NT$1000.
ID is indeed compulsory.
Turtle island is an semi-active volcano with the same smell that around Beitou.

Will surely return to see the island after summer.
Thanks again for your help

My buddy and I did the long tour (the hike up all those steps!) in Aug. 2016. At that time the long tour was only offered in the summer, you had to request a permit, and it was a lottery draw because they limited the number of visitors per day. Our names were finally drawn on our third try.

Perhaps this has changed since then? I’m curious myself.

If this information can be useful to anyone, I found the link about the permit here :

https://www.necoast-nsa.gov.tw/Coast/Default.aspx

It seems that Taiwanese nationals can register online while foreigners must write to the Tourism bureau.
https://www.necoast-nsa.gov.tw/Coast/foreign.aspx

It’s interesting that all of the English links work except applying for a permit :roll_eyes:

Anyway, the Chinese permit link works and doesn’t require a local ID. This is how my friend and I got our permit last time.

https://www.necoast-nsa.gov.tw/Coast/Query.aspx

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I was half planning(if its not a huge hassle) to try to see dolphins this summer. Has anyone done the hualian one? Seems to have a better success rate than the yilan guishan one

Take the boat to Green Island. You might see the flying fish during the ride. Naturally not as wonderful as dolphins.

Still interesting nonetheless. Most people wonder why the guns are pointed toward Taiwan, rather than toward the open waters where the enemy would approach. The tour guide explained that since there are just several places along the Yilan coast that could be a potential beachhead (the rest are too rocky for amphibious landing), the guns are trained on the areas just off the beachheads, setting up a kill zone.

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