Kaohsiung Travel Guide – Visit Kaohsiung – Budget Travel In Taiwan

Known for its industrial history, in recent years Kaohsiung has transformed itself into a city of culture in which you can visit museums, art galleries, modern coffee shops and restaurants.

Our Taiwan adventure was coming to an end and we had a flight out of Kaohsiung to our next destination. As we were only in Taiwan for a two week period, this left us with only one night in Kaohsiung.

Arriving in Kaohsiung

We took the earliest train from Taitung to give us maximum time in our one day in Kaohsiung. From the train station, we connected with the MRT which was very cheap and got us to within 5 minutes walk from our hotel.

Where To Stay In Kaohsiung

These are some of the best budget hostels in Kaohsiung, according to user reviews. These are affiliate links to the Agoda web site. I found Agoda to be much better than booking.com in Southeast Asia. I receive a small amount for any bookings made through these links at no extra cost to you.

• Town Stay Hostel
• Backpackers Inn – Kaohsiung
• Chitow Hostel
• D’well Hostel
• Trip GG Hostel
• Chao She Hotel
• Paper Plane Hostel
• Pathways Hostel
• Kaohsiung Siziwan Sapu House
• Backpacker 41 Hostel

Fine Hotel

We decided to have a little bit of luxury on our last day in Taiwan so we booked a double room with en-suite bathroom. We booked a room at ‘Fine Hotel’ (map) which was located on the 16th floor of one of Kaohsiung’s many skyscrapers, and were relieved to find it was the right one. We were 2 hours early for check-in but our room was ready. They even gave us 2 security cards to access our room, which had never happened in our entire adventure, meaning I could go out at night and Joanna could lock the door! I planned to take advantage of this.

The hotel was a pleasant surprise. For the low price, we were expecting a not-too-flash place where the amenities were past their best. However, the room was excellent, the WiFi worked perfectly and the bathroom was fantastic.

After coming from Taitung where we had no WiFi in the rooms and one shoddy shower between 10 people, this was luxury! I had a long, hot shower and felt great and ready to explore the city.

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We paid £16 for a twin room with en-suite shower for one night.

Click here to stay at Fine Hotel.

Klook.com

Things To Do In Kaohsiung

Pier 2 Art Center

We left the hotel and made our way to the ‘Pier 2 Art Center’ (map), a former warehouse district that now houses many galleries, shops, cafes and outdoor sculptures. It was a 30 minute walk from our hotel, on the west side of the ‘Love River’. It is a great area to explore and there are many attractions (some free, some with an admission fee) as well as lots of street art. We literally did not know what to expect around every corner.

Pier 2 Art Center Opening Times: 10 am – 8 pm, Fri – Mon. 10 am – 6 pm, Tue – Thu.

Vegetarian Food In Khaosiung

After we had finished exploring the art center district, we made our way back to our hotel, making a small diversion to eat at ‘Qian Ye Vegetarian’ (map), a vegetarian buffet restaurant that was one of the few places that was open throughout the afternoon. The food was delicious and cheap.

Bottoms Up Saloon Bar

In the evening, I decided to check out a couple of the local bars. I started in ‘Bottoms Up Saloon Bar’ (map), a friendly place that had a mix of locals and ex-pats drinking side by side. I took the table outside and enjoyed a couple of large, cold beers for NT$100 each.

Black Dog Pub

I then moved on to a place called ‘Black Dog Pub’ (map). This place has various offers through the week and on the day I visited the offer was buy a portion of wings and get a free draught beer. I was expecting a small portion of wings and a small beer and I was wrong on both counts. The wings were plentiful and delicious and served with a large beer. I wasn’t fond of the beer so I moved on after one drink but it was a great offer.

Shamrock Bar

I was looking for another bar with no success and was heading back to the ‘Bottoms Up’ bar when I noticed a place called ‘Shamrock’ (map) on the same street. It hadn’t shown on Google Maps so I was surprised and delighted to discover it was a bar. The woman serving was very friendly, asking for my name and introducing herself (Joanna!). She even came and sat with me and chatted for a while. It was probably my favourite bar in Khaosiung. My only gripe is that you pay the bill at the end and my bill was considerably higher than I expected it to be.

Despite that, I had enjoyed my mini pub crawl in Kaohsiung. I headed back to the hotel in the pouring rain; the streets that had been bustling earlier now empty.

Forester Vegetarian Cafe

The next morning, we checked out of the hotel knowing we had quite a lengthy wait before our flight out of Taiwan. As the city is well connected to the airport (MRT runs just about every 5 minutes direct to the airport), we planned to spend the afternoon in coffee shops. Our first choice was a vegetarian cafe called ‘Forester’ (map), where we also decided to have breakfast.

The menus were all in Chinese but Google Translate did its best to help but without much success. We both went for the cheapest veggie burger meal on the menu. Bizarrely, a vegetarian burger in some places in Southeast Asia basically means there is no burger and that was the case here. Our ‘burger’ consisted of salad, cheese and apple! It came with a few sides, including what seemed to be some kind of tea jelly, and was actually very nice! We were able to charge our devices and we sat in the cafe long after we had finished our food.

Jockey Coffee

We moved on to ‘Jockey Coffee’ (map). We were able to keep our devices charged whilst doing some blogging. The coffee here was good but served in paper cups. It seemed like a good coffee shop for digital nomads as there were plenty of places to plug in your devices as you worked.

Is Kaohsiung Worth Visiting?

And so concluded our short visit to Kaohsiung. It also ended our time in Taiwan. I feel that we could have easily spent longer in Kaohsiung as it had a nice, friendly  atmosphere, despite being a big city, and I am sure there is much more to discover with more time.

We really loved Taiwan and its people. It had been full of surprises and we were sorry we had only given ourselves two weeks there.