Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet.
The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10.
A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate.
.Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls and bustling night markets as two popular destinations for food enthusiasts.
Aside from bubble tea, pineapple cakes and the Taipei 101 skyscraper, tourists can explore Yangmingshan National Park and the hot springs in Beitou (北投) when in Taipei, it said.
US tourists can travel to Taiwan on flights provided by Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, as well as three major Taiwanese airlines — China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) and Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空), the company said.
EVA Airways and China Airlines offer direct flights to Taipei from several airports in the US, including John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, it said.
The recommendation is good news for the tourism industry, Tourism Administration Director-General Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said, adding that the agency sees positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe.
“It shows that we need to continue to promote various tours for groups and individual travelers to Taiwan. We also need to speed up the development of low-carbon tours,” Chou said.
“We understand, of course, that incentives can still be attractive for tourists. While we would continue to support group tours with reasonable incentives, we propose that ‘Taiwan the Lucky Land’ [金福氣活動], an event that offers NT$5,000 for independent travelers through a free draw, would also continue until Sept. 30. Hopefully this event and discounts available for Taiwan Pass holders would continue to encourage tourists to visit Taiwan in the next six months,” Chou said.
Individual travelers from overseas are qualified for the free draw if they enter on a non-Taiwan passport and stay for three days to three months.
The incentive was originally scheduled to end on June 30, the agency said.
Tour groups from overseas that comprise at least four people and are to spend at least three days in Taiwan could receive NT$5,000 to NT$50,000 as an incentive.
The deadline for the incentive would be extended from June 30 to the end of November, the agency said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS