M
ost travelers consider New Taipei City’s
eastern neighbor a place for going
through
rather than
to
, but Yilan deserves more than
just a passing glance out of a train window.
For one thing, Jiaoxi is the only town in
Taiwan where you can simultaneously wait for a train and soak
your feet in natural hot-spring water. The town has another
distinction: it’s the only place in Yilan considered a serious
tourist hotspot, leaving the rest of the county virtually
untrammeled and open for exploration by independent travelers.
Great hot springs abound in Taiwan. Cold springs, however,
are harder to come by, and the town of Suao has built a cottage
industry around the mineral cold springs that bubble up from the
town’s underground aquifer. Suao isn’t the only place in Yilan
where you’ll find deliciously swimmable cold springs. Water,
clean and packed with healthy minerals (courtesy of the same
system of aquifers), is one of Yilan’s key features.
Another is agriculture, which has led to the fairly new
phenomena of agritourism. Yilan boasts several leisure farms,
each of which consists of a cluster of farm-based businesses that
supplement agricultural income with tourism revenue.
Yilan:
The County Next Door
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BY JOSHUA SAMUEL BROWN
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PHOTOGRAPHY: TOP PHOTO GROUP
36
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