Start your engines and drop in on Yilan, the place with rare activities on offer, from hot springs to whale-watching. With the Hsuehshan Tunnel -- the Snow Mountain Tunnel -- easing travel, you must go there and discover its splendors for yourself!

It's still early (not even 9 am) when we arrive, yet the car park at the entrance to Wufengchi Waterfalls (五峰旗瀑布) is packed with cars this fine Saturday morning in June, and we're forced to find an empty roadside place to leave the car.

The spring weather is changeable. It's raining in the dawn of a February weekend. But it does not scare us enough to cancel a plan to go hiking on the Sinliao Waterfall Trail (新寮瀑布步道).

The Lunar New Year Holiday will begin on Jan. 24. This year there will be up to nine days for camera-wielding tourists and their families to take either a long or short trip around the island.

There's a choice of three routes to Shipanliao Waterfall (石盤寮瀑布), hidden deep in the coastal mountains behind the town of Dasi (大溪) in Ilan County, and all three are really, really difficult!

There's so much variety and sheer natural beauty packed into the small northeast county of Ilan(宜蘭), that visits there would be a regular event, if only the weather in this, the rainiest corner of Taiwan wasn't so darned horrible.

The 2008 Turtle Island Whale Trip (TIWT) was launched last Sunday at Wushih Harbor of Yilan County.

In this, the second of four installments following the adventures of nine brave cyclists riding 800km from Taipei to Kending over eight days, we look at stages three and four which took us from Yilan (宜蘭), up and across the mighty Central Cordillera, and down to the glistening Sun Moon Lake.

For anyone who comes to Taiwan to learn about local traditional folk arts, the National Center for Traditional Arts (NCTA,國立傳統藝術中心) is a must-see. Almost all of Taiwan's traditional folk arts can be found at the center.

Some of the loveliest walks start with less than promising beginnings, and there are few hikes that start less attractively than the short gem of a trail newly opened in the hills above Jiaosi, Ilan County's famous hot spring resort.