2014 North Taiwan Round Island Road Trip - Prologue

One hot and humid afternoon in July, my wife lamented to me that we need another long holiday (the Yogjakarta trip we had in June hardly counts because the holiday part is too short). So we started brainstorming for ideas on where to go.

Living on an island barely 48km from east to west means that a vacation almost certainly means crossing a border, be it across the causeway into Malaysia, or to Changi Airport for a flight to somewhere.

This also means, for most Singaporeans, vacation are largely grouped into 2 categories. First, are the short 3-5 days weekend getaway to nearby locations, usually within 3 hours flying time, during the occasional long weekends. Bangkok, Bali and Hong Kong are popular destinations.

Then there are trips to farther afield, ranging from 5 days to a couple of weeks.

After a quick look at the calendar and checking the balance annual leave we have, we settled on a 10 day period in early November to a country not more than 7 hours flight away.

There are no shortage of destinations between 3 to 7 hours flying time. Northern Australia, Korea, Japan, China, Maldives all come into mind.

Finally, we settled on Taiwan, because we didn't had enough of the country when we last went there in May 2013. Also, the food in the night markets of Taiwan is just too fantastic not to miss. Lastly, being a petrolhead, I loved driving curvy mountainous road. During the last trip, we planned to drive across the central cross island highway through Taroko Gorge on what many people say is one of the best driving road in Taiwan. But the drive was cut short due to landslide in the previous week blocking part of the road.

With that in mind, we started searching for cheap flights to Taiwan. To our horror, most of the flights during that period range from S$ 400 (for budget airlines) to S$ 1200 (for SQ flights) per person.

When it seems increasing likely that we need to do a re-think of the plans, I suddenly remembered that I have about 100k of Frequent Flyer miles in my Krisflyer account from all my flying in the past year or so. These number of miles is more than enough for 2 economy class round trip tickets to Taiwan on Singapore Airlines.

Then, I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that is more value for money to use miles to redeem for Business Class rather than Economy, especially when the tax and fuel surcharge for both cabin class is nearly the same.

A quick check on Singapore Airline's website confirmed this. A round trip, full fare, economy class ticket cost $1300 or 21,250 miles. While a round trip, full fare, business class ticket cost S$3400 or 42,500 miles.

It's a no brainer choice, we redeemed 2 seats on Business class for 95,000 miles + S$ 800 in taxes and surcharges.

And with all the rave about Singapore Airlines's Book The Cook (BTC) service for First and Business Class passengers, we couldn't resist.

The Classic Lobster Thermidor is one of the most ordered item on BTC menu, so I went for that without a second thought. While my wife, bring a codfish lover, naturally ordered the Seared Black Cod.

With the flight settled, we began planning the itinerary earnestly. We will pick up the rental car at TPE airport and drive down to Keelung. Landing at 1pm will leave us ample time to reach our hotel at Keelung, walk around the harbour a bit, and finally head for miaokou night market (庙口夜市).

We will then use Keelung as a base to visit Jinguashi (金瓜石), Jiufen (九份) and Shifen(十分), where we will spend the next night.

From Shifen, we will drive down XueShan Tunnel (雪山隧道) to Yilan (宜兰), and Suhua Highway (苏花公路) to Hualien (花莲). Hualien will be our base for the next 2 days, where we will to visit Taroko National Park.

After Hualien, we will drive on the Taiwan Central Cross Island Highway to Cingjing and Taichung.

Taichung will be the base for the next 2 nights to explore nearby towns. This is also the city where Motels are very famous for. The motels are unlike their western counterparts with cheap and sleazy looking rooms. The rooms here are individually themed and can cost from anywhere between TWD 2000 to TWD 10,000 per night.

From Taichung, we will drive up back to Taipei Airport to return the car, and spend the last 3 nights in Taipei. Public transport in Taipei, in some sense, is even more efficient than Singapore, so no sense in keeping the car.

This trip will cover nearly most of the interesting sights on northern part of the island, covers nearly 650km, and take 7 days.