I have been enjoying much of our time in Taipei, but we want to get away to a more open space. We decided to find a beach to hang out in Taiwan. After some research, we found that Kenting has some of the nicer beaches in Taiwan. To our delight, traveling to Kenting is super fast and easy.
We took the High Speed Rail (HSR) from Taipei Main Station (in Taipei) to Zouying ( in Kaohsiung City). You can easily get the tickets at the ticket counter for about 1490 TWD (~50 USD). The tickets are reserved and the ride takes about two hours. The HSR was amazingly clean and quiet. There were restrooms and vending machines on the train. An important fact to know: the train has three cabins (number 10,11,12) that are for unreserved seats. The train you want might run out of reserved seats so you can try to get on these unreserved seats. But you might not be able to get a seat and that sucks! Also, the price for unreserved and reserved seats are the same.
Once in Zouying, we took a bus to Kenting. The bus was called Kenting Express and the ticket counter for this bus was located right outside the train station. The price is about 225 TWD (~ 7 USD). IMPORTANT NOTE: the last bus runs at 7pm. Make sure you get there before 7pm if you want to catch the bus. Tell the bus ticket counter or bus driver where you need to go. The bus makes multiple stops and you don’t want to get out on the wrong stop.
Kenting definitely had some very nice beaches that we very much enjoyed. The weather in January was still a bit chilly so we didn’t spend a lot of time in the water. But there were plenty of activities that kept us busy.
1.Beaches:
I was delighted to find how nice the beaches were in Kenting. Not because I heard it was bad, but I just hadn’t heard much about them. One of our favorites was Little Bay Beach. It was small, but really clean. We sat there enjoying the sunset. There was a bar for food, alcohol, and live music playing around 9pm. The waves weren’t that big so I don’t think you could have gone surfing here.
On the contrary, South Bay Beach seems to have more recreational activities. There were banana boats, water jets, and surfing spots.
2.Rent a scooter:
Even though we had to fight the strong wind while riding, we still had a lot of fun. We rented a scooter for about 500 TWD for the day (~16 USD). We rode down Kenting road until we hit the most southern point of Taiwan. We stopped at many hidden beach gems on our way there. I really loved this way of travel because it gave us so much flexibility. And for 16 USD a day (included gas) that was not a bad price at all.
3.Kenting night market:
The night market opened around 6pm every night and it can get super busy. There were many food stalls and game stalls. Some also served seafood which was a must try.
4.Go-kart and paintball:
I know this sounds weird. But to our surprise, there were a ton of places that offered paintball and go-karts if you keep going north on Kenting Road. The prices weren’t cheap (about 1000 TWD ~30 USD for a paintball game) but it was a good way to have some fun if the beaches weren’t enough. Also, it’s a good way to meet some new friends and enemies (just kidding!).
Happy Travels!
