The Tourism Bureau is seeking more contestants for a contest to design the best itinerary for travel in Taiwan.
The bureau said yesterday that the “Best Trip in the World — Taiwan Explorers Wanted” contest had generated interest from around the world and many teams had signed up, but it hoped more people would register to attract more interest in Taiwan.
Anyone can enter the contest as long as his or her team has at least two people and at least one team member is not Taiwanese, the bureau said.
Fifty teams with the best itineraries will be selected and each will receive NT$7,000 per day for up to four days to complete their trip. Team members must pay their own way to Taiwan, but the bureau will help them obtain special discounts from Taiwanese airlines.
The 50 teams will be selected based on how creative and inexpensive their itinerary is, as well as how feasible and popular it is with online readers.
Contestants must upload a video introducing their team in Chinese, English or Japanese on the contest Web site and submit their itinerary for their four-day trip by June 30, the bureau said.
The selected teams will then have to upload short videos on their daily adventures along with a 200-word description on the contest Web site.
The grand prize is NT$1 million to travel in Taiwan for a month. The winning team will be invited back for the trip next February or March and their visit will be used to promote Taiwan as a travel destination.
The bureau said it would announce the list of 50 selected teams by July 10, who then must complete their four-day trip by Aug. 31.
Online voting results will be part of the criteria to choose the grand prize winner, which will be announced on Nov. 15.
Contest rules and registration forms are available on the contest’s official Web site at www.TaiwanBestTrip.net.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its