Just How Much Does 6 Weeks Family Trip Around Taiwan Cost?

This is my series on our 2018 Round the Island World Schooling Trip.  For more posts, you can check out the index page or subscribe to my Facebook page.  You can also subscribe to my Instagram for pics.

Someone asked me today how much it cost us to travel around Taiwan and I was reminded that I wanted to write this post!

Oops.

Good thing I kept a really detailed Google Sheets records this time around because I keep seeing Worldschoolers quoting travel costs and I wanted to see if I can maintain a travel budget as well.

When we were planning our trip, I looked up a few budget posts and decided on an arbitrary number of $125/day for 3.5 people (Baba was joining us at exactly the midway point).   Why $125?  That just seemed to be the number for families budget traveling around Southeast Asia.  I added another $25 since Taiwan is a bit more expensive.  I also asked another amazing friend who planned a 2 week trip.  She said her lodging budget had to average $125/day for her family of 3 (which really means you book like you have 4 people when it comes to beds).

Here’s the final cost breakdown per day, for a total of 42 days:

Our 3.5 people included 2 kids who always had to pay child fare.  This does not include the books I bought or the other household items I would have bought in the US, like jackets and shoes.  This table reflects costs for 1 adult 2 children for 3 weeks and 2 adults 2 children for 3 weeks.

For comparison, here is Fleur’s final cost.  Though we split most of our lodging, some days we lived in different hotel rooms.  2 of her 3 kids often paid nothing for transportation or reduced entrance fees and they ate much less our family of 4.  So her spending is much like 1 adult 1 child for daily + lodging costs.

I know, crazy right?  Her family of 4 eats 1/3 less than mine.  SIGH.  So Fleur is really amazing for having a budget of $100 for her group of 4.

Details

For Daily Incidentals, we travelled mostly by bus and train.  For trains, we did not use high speed rail except for certain long portions like Taichung to Tainan.  We rented cars for a total of 7 days.  My breakdown for the incidentals are:

• Food – $37.00
• Experiences – $12
• Transportation – $23

I was actually surprised just how low our daily food budget was, giving how I wanted to eat a lot of delicious food.  I guess bringing food with us helped.

Experiences included things like tours to factories, museums, SUP paddle boating at Sun Moon Lake, and bike rentals at Sun Moon Lake and 池上.   Food included a trip to Ding Tan Fong and dimsum at a famous fancy hotel in Sun Moon Lake (don’t bother).

For Lodging, I was surprised how the average was lower than my expections, even accounting for $326 I spent to stay one night at the aquarium for a family of 4 at full ticket prices.  In this instance, having that $125 daily budget really helped keeping me in line.  I allowed $40 for food and $30 for transportation and realized I needed to really keep our lodging cost to $50/night.  That helped me to keep looking for cheap lodging when the search became tough.

Transportation costs includes everything in Taiwan plus the shuttle I had to take when I returned to the US.

Ways We Saved Money

Since we were going to Taiwan, I didn’t want to skimp on the food.  Otherwise I would feel like I’m wasting my money for a travel experience and not actually experiencing anything.  However, Fleur pointed out that it doesn’t mean we have to go out to eat delicious food daily.  So half of my carryon suitcase were filled with food from the States.

1. Bring food from the States & Eat in

We ate most of our breakfast at home, except for the occasional Taiwanese breakfast.  For breakfast, we each brought a big gallon bag of oatmeal and ate that for breakfast most days.  

For dinner, we brought mac and cheese and pasta.  Usually the first night at a new lodging, we’d go to local PX Mart and buy some peas & carrots, spinach, and ramen.  We’d have ramen the first night. 

Then second day we always go to Costco if there was one to pick up wontons, precooked chicken, and other impulse buy items.  Mac and cheese with chicken and wontons make several meals.  

The pasta turned out to be a great substitute for rice.  It’s much easier traveling with a bit of pasta than buying a heavy bag of rice to cook along the way. 

For snacks, trail mixes and granola bars are a bit healthier than whatever you can find at your local 7-11.  It kept me out of trouble as I tend to just go to 7-11 for junk food when I’m hungry.

As I mentioned, all of this was consumed about half way through our stay in Hualian, which was perfect because we were getting tired of cooking in little kitchens, needing to make do with limited cookware we weren’t familiar with, and all that good food in stores we passed by daily was calling out to us.

2. Use cheaper modes of transportation

The best way to save on transportation, other than walking, which Fleur inevitably gets me to do, is to take buses instead of taxis or MRT and take Taiwan Rail instead of High Speed Rail.  If we had more time we probably would have taken commuter trains more often than 自強號.  But I’m secretly a person who likes her comforts so I get lazy.  Plus commuter trains takes a long time so if you’re on a time crunch it may not work.  Taiwan Rail is already super cheap with ticket prices maxing at $10.  But it does add up when you’ve got 4 people.

But buses take longer and so do trains.  Part of the reason why I planned 3 weeks worth of itinerary for 6 weeks is because I knew it would take us longer to travel if we wanted to do it cheaply.

3.  Take advantage of free programs

For each  museum we visited, I made sure to look up their free entry days.  Sadly, only the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung had their free day on Wednesday before 9am.  We shuffled our itinerary so we’d go on a Wednesday.

Similarly, I tried looking up free tours in large cities like Taipei and Tainan.  We went on these great free weekend tours run by the Tainan Tourist Bureau and learned a lot about Taiwanese history and Tainan history.

4.  Look for packaged deals

Taiwan heavily promotes its tourism and there are always packaged deals available, deals that combine transportation, lodging, and fun activities.  For example, High Speed Rail has a section that sells packaged tours.  With 5 kids in tow, and an uncertain travel time, we didn’t want to be tied down to these types of packages.  But for every destination, I looked up its tourism bureau and the transportation companies and tried to find packaged deals that would work for us.

This is how we ended up with our itinerary in Sun Moon Lake.  I found a package deal off of Nantou Bus Company that bundled the a side trip to Puli, gondola and entry fees to Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village, 1 boat ride and 1 bus ride in Sun Moon Lake, and return bus to Taichung.  This was a good deal considering the entry fee to the Aboriginal Culture Village was $850NT normally, and we got the package at $1000NT.

Keep in mind though, that package deals may not be worth it if you have children under 6, as they’re often free anyway, and these package deals are calculated with all adult travelers in mind.

5. Travel during low season

If you look at the charts above, you can see that lodging and air travel is the biggest expense and fastest way to up your daily average.  Typically World Schoolers and Travel-Around-The-World-For-One-Year types cut cost by redeeming miles, after they’ve applied for credit cards such as the Chase Sapphire Reserved*, even with the hefty annual fee, because the free 50k miles is equivalent to a $600+ when you redeem them.   But since I’m lame and never get things done, I didn’t go this route.

Instead, we just booked during low travel season.  We found the first cheap flight after Chinese New Years, which was 2 days before Lunar Festival.   Other good times are in October and November.

We also booked more expensive hotels and B&Bs during the week instead of weekends.

And there you have it.  On paper $8000 feels like a lot.  But the kids have caught the travel bug now.  And they talk about wanting to go back to Taiwan and traveling again.

*affiliate link