You may have noticed that Pauline and I are more than happy to do a little research, and then blaze off on our own adventure. On those trips, we certainly see people who are obviously on group Taiwan travel tour packages. Up until this point in my life, I never considered going on a group tour. But we have noticed a few things about travel here in Taiwan that’s slowly changed our impression of group tours.
Taiwan travel tours: snorkeling
The first time we really participated in a Taiwanese tour was on Xioliuqiu island with friends visiting from the US. It was the first time we went on a snorkel tour where all the participants had to hold on a rope. The guide then pulled people around to show them the sights. All in all, it was a remarkably pleasant experience, as there were a lot of turtles, and a lot of people.
The guides all made sure the tour groups had a chance to get close, without disturbing the turtles. All in all, a very reasonable experience. We had the chance to share the water with a lot of people, and a lot of turtles. It’s obvious that without the tour groups, the concentration of people would end having a much greater impact on the turtles. So we were thankful for the experience.
Taiwan travel tour: packages
One of the upsides of working in Taiwan is the number of official government holidays. People do get vacation time here, but it can be difficult to get permission to take advantage of those days. But the official holidays mean that you have the opportunity to take the occasional long weekend, or even longer trips, if you tack on some additional vacation days. The downside of this, of course, is that hotels and trains fill up far in advance.
Enter the special opportunity for Taiwan travel tours. Travel companies are good at booking blocks in advance. So even if a popular holiday weekend where a lot of things are booked, you can still get spots with a tour package. And that’s what we are doing this week! This week the whole island has Wednesday – Friday off for Children’s day and Tomb Sweeping day (when people are given time to visit ancestral grave plots and clean and repair them for the following year).
Of course, a lot of people take advantage of the time to get in a mini holiday. For major holidays like Lunar New Year, Pauline and I usually plan a few months in advance to take advantage of relatively low rates and un-booked rooms. But this holiday took us a bit unawares. We wanted to hop over to Okinawa, which is just a 90 minute flight from here. The flights weren’t exactly full, but all the cheap seats were gone.
Fortunately, we have friends here (ex-pats) that are fluent in Chinese, who wanted to do a couples vacation. So we went to a local tour agency and to ask if they had a line on any reasonably priced airline tickets to Okinawa. They didn’t. But they did have a great deal on a 3 day tour package, which included train tickets, scooter rentals, hotel stays, and food down Island. So we decided to give it a try.
Explaining to the agent that our group of 4 foreigners includes two Vegans & a Vegetarian
Now, we never would have been able to book a local Taiwan travel tour group package with our Chinese. But thanks to our friends we can give it a try. Even though we know it will probably be a total surprise to everyone else in the group!
We are going to Green Island, which happens to be a bucket list Taiwan trip for myself. I want to check out one of the only natural salt water hot springs on the planet. Stay tuned.