Planning a trip to Kenting
Chinese New Year holiday is over and I am already looking forward to the next holiday. This year, we are very lucky to have 5 consecutive holidays for Easter and Ching Ming. It’s time to plan ahead if you want to travel during that peak period.
My friend is planning to go to Taiwan during Easter and asked me for information about Kenting, as she knows I went there last year. I wrote her emails about how I feel about Kenting and shared some practical information. I extracted the content of my emails in this blog. Hopefully you will find it useful too.
Time to go
Last year, I went to Kenting during the May 1st long weekend. Taiwan also has a long weekend for the Labour Day. Many Taiwanese people travelled on short trips to Kenting that weekend. It was particularly busy. I suppose Taiwan won’t have Easter holiday (given they don’t even celebrate Christmas), so I expect fewer Taiwanese tourists during Easter. However, Kenting is a very popular destination for Hong Kong people. The number of Hong Kong tourists almost outnumbered local tourists when I was there. Basically I heard more Cantonese than Mandarin spoken at the tourist sights. I believe Kenting would still be very busy around Easter holiday.
Kenting music festival will take place on 3 and 4 April. I read about it in U Magazine last year. It looks like it mainly aims at young people. Concerts go on really late and I guess it will be very noisy near the concert venue. Bear this in mind when you book accommodation. Also, be prepared that the street will be full of people around 20 years old. Hope it won’t make you feel old.
There might be cherry blossom or some other flowers in Kenting in spring. Go and see if you are interested. If not, avoid the crowds in those places.
How to get to Kenting
You can take a bus from Kaohsiung airport to Kenting. The journey time is around 2 hours. But if you are hiring a car, just drive. The drive is easy and quite enjoyable with seaview. Fuel is very cheap in Taiwan.
Local Transport
You need to hire a car or motorcycle to go around places in Kenting. Public transport is not good or non-existent. It is much more enjoyable to have your own transport to be flexible. Or else, you may hire a car with driver. If you go with a group of 4, it works out to cost about the same as joining local day tour. But then you have complete control of your own itinerary and time.
Accommodation
There is a lack of really nice hotels in Kenting. There are only small 民宿. Some have more character than others. They are into different themes like Greek white house, Provence lavender garden etc. I would definitely recommend staying somewhere facing the sea. Anywhere facing the main street would be too noisy and unbearable.
Beach
The beach is quite beautiful with white fine sand. The drawback is that the beach was very very crowded at busy long weekend. I didn’t even bother to go to the main beach. Simply covered with people on every grain of sand. People go there for wind surfing, jet skis, banana boats etc. It would be quite exciting if you don’t mind the crowd.
Food
Food in Kenting is not good – Ah So agreed. She didn’t like the food when she went there for her programme either. She said Kenting is suitable for people who need to go on a diet…
Kaohsiung
Nothing much to see in Kaohsiung. Only a few shopping centres. No need to stop there unless you want to go shopping and buy some souvenirs. I stopped over and bought many many many many things though……
See more information on my website:
http://www.morethanhoneymoon.com/honeymoon/honeymoon/shorttrip/kenting.html
