Wulai was our first place we visited outside of Taipei City and also our first real venture on Taiwan’s bus system. Both the destination and the transportation were stellar.
It’s amazing how little money and time it takes to go from Taipei to this charming mountain village, complete with its own free access hot springs river, spectacular waterfall, and gondola ride! We’ll give you the details of how to get there at the end of this post – but for now just know its easy, cheap and relatively quick to get to (think under an hour from Taipei!) Josh and I spent a long weekend in Wulai and loved every minute of it. But it’s close enough to Taipei that you can easily make a simple day trip out of it.
Suspension bridge &temple
The first two things you’ll notice as you get off the bus is the river and the beautiful foot bridge spanning it. On the other side of the bridge there’s a temple standing guard. It all makes for a great first impression! And calls for pictures and exploring!
Hot Springs
What you may not see at first glance is that on the other side of that bridge, heading left down the road towards town, is a trail that goes to the river. This is the free-access, all natural hotsprings of Wulai. The place to enjoy hot springs and nature with the locals! It’s a super unique Taiwan travel experience, although to be honest Josh and I only barely experienced it. So we are itching to go back and do it right!
day 1: Hitching a Hike
Our first day in Wulai we struck out in the direction of the waterfall and met Mr Wong, a sweet old Taiwanese man with a big smile and broken English who invited us to follow him on his hike. Which we did! And as a result spent the rest of the day traipsing all over the mountainside with him! Unfortunately my camera battery died shortly into the venture (although even without stopping every 
other minute for a picture I could barely keep up with that very spry old man!) A few hours in we stopped at the home of a local aboriginal family he apparently knew. They invited us in for freshly roasted vegetables and squid cooked over an open fire, along with some homebrewed liquor I insisted I could only enjoy a little of! (Afterall, I still had a mountainside to descend!)
Of course if you’re a single traveler I don’t suggest randomly following strange men into the woods! But my experience of the Taiwanese people has been so positive. And I encourage you to connect with the people as much as you can and to take advantage of (safe) spontaneous moments as they present themselves!
Either way, with or without an unexpected volunteer tour guide, you can find many trails to hike all over Wulai even before going over to the waterfall side of the valley.
Back to the HotSprings
Our impromptu tour finally ended at the river hot springs. We unfortunately weren’t prepared with swimsuits. But just walking back to the town via the riverside path proved to be a perfect final adventure. The river was so high that the path was under water by a few feet! So holding on to a rope we blindly trusted that there would be a path under our feet with each step forward! See video bellow 🙂
Travel Note: If that sounds like too much adventure for you, just take the other path from the road! And actually, during dyer parts of the year the waters no where near
Still we did enjoy some hot springs that night- just not of the river variety! As do most of the hotels in Wulai, our hotel included hot spring baths. I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit thrown when I discovered it was Japanese style – meaning the baths are segregated by gender and you bath completely naked! But when in Rome! And actually, it was significantly less awkward then I expected. Plus the hot water and massage jets felt pretty amazing after our intense day of hiking!
Travel Note: if you are just going for a day trip there are LOTS of places advertising indoor hot spring pools you can enjoy. They are all pretty reasonable from what I remember they weren’t much more than $300 pp.
Day two: Waterfall and Gondola!
Since we never made it to the waterfall side our first day, we made sure to hit it on day 2 in Wulai.
The gondola
The walk from the village to the gondola is really pretty and offers some great views of the waterfall before taking a trip soaring above it in the cable car. It’s maybe a 15 minute walk from downtown Wulai (gradually walking uphill on a paved road so if you want to save your energy for scrambling around the other side a taxi may not be bad call!) But you dont need to worry about missing it – there are plenty of signs pointing you the right direction all along the way.
View from the gondola hovering directly over top of the waterfall! Definitely worth its $5 price tag.
If you’ve read about Wulai at all you probably know that there were a couple typhoons that dramatically impacted this area in 2015. There’s a lot of information out there about what it used to be like before, lamenting its current state. And I’m sure it really was incredible … but while different now, it’s still beautiful.
For one it’s not as crowded (I hear) as it used to be. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we chose to go here for our long weekend. It was a national holiday weekend so we knew most popular tourist areas in Taiwan would be crowded, but a friend tipped us off that Wulai might the place to enjoy touring without the throngs. It was a great suggestion.
One of the “destroyed” attractions is the area on the other side of the still spectacular gondola ride. It used to be a nature park and resort; now it has a lost jungle ruins feel. If you’re expecting the first I’m sure it’ll be disappointing. But we weren’t expecting that and what we did find here we were delighted and fascinated by.
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The river, before it goes hurtling down the mountainside in the form of a waterfall, is calm enough up above to wade into and follow up a ways.
We explored abandoned paths and enjoyed stumbling upon random statues, Buddhist shrines, bridges, fountains (some working others not), and the strange mix of half tamed / half wild nature all around.
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And of course there were plenty of butterflies to make me happy too! Not to mention some stunning damsel & dragon flies. (look at our butterfly page for more pics of what we able to catch on camera there)
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Wulai Revisited
We finally made it back to Wulai’s public riverside hotsprings, late February on a beautiful sunny day. The free hotsprings were definitely worth it! Check out our youtube video on the entire experience here: