My Travels; Taiwan Itineary: Free & Easy or Package tour

We travelled to Taiwan recently last Oct and we had a great time. One of the questions we asked initially was whether we should do Free&Easy (like we always do) or go on a package tour, as we weren't familiar with Taiwan roads to drive on our own.

Advantages of Free&Easy:
1. Flexibility to change schedule
2. No side marketing tours to sell you merchandise
3. No need to put up with crying babies on package tour buses =)

Advantages of Package Tours:
1. Itinerary all planned out, no hassle to book air tics, accommodation, entrance tics
2. Tour guide helps to focus on important sights, things to eat & buy at specific places
3. Better for families, especially those with small kids

As we had redeemed our miles from Krisflyer, we decided to do both at the same time. We went on a package tour for the 1st 7 days and Free&Easy for the last 3. Our itinerary was as follows:

Day1: Arrive in Taipei
Day2: Meet with tour group in Taipei, Taipei-Taichung
Day3: Taichung-Kaoshiung
Day4: Kaoshiung-Lukang
Day5: Lukang-Taoyuan
Day6: Taoyuan-Hualien
Day7: Hualien-Taipei
Day8: Taipei
Day9: Wulai
Day10: Taipei

We did some comparisons among tour providers and we decided to go with Chan Brothers Travel. The price was S$850 for a 7days/6nights land tour (without air tics). It was a bit pricey but we figured it was worth it as they put us up in local 5 stars hotels.

If you were to plot out the package tour journey, we did not tour Taiwan in an smooth anti-clockwise journey as per the original itinerary. So we had more bus travel time and had to cut short on some sights. This is one of the disadvantages of going on a tour package.

Will share some other things on Taiwan attractions, accomodations and what/where to eat in later postings.