Volledige dagtour in Shifen, Jiufen en Yehliu van Taipei

Quite possibly one of the worst tours I’ve been on (and I’ve been on many). It’s hard to say how much of our experience was shaped by how MyProGuide operated the tour or our tour guide or both. We booked the Yehliu, Shifen, Shifen waterfall, and evening Jiufen tour through Klook, who outsourced the tour to MyProGuide. This tour is great if you want a low-cost option to transport you to and from these spots. (Maybe. I’ll provide more detail on that later.) Chaotic check-in process: Prior to the date of the tour, we received detailed emails with maps on where to locate the tour group at Taipei Main Station. But the check-in process was chaotic as throngs of people were told to pick a line in order to approach a MyProGuide employee/tour guide to see if they were assigned to this guide. If you weren’t assigned to the guide who you just lined up for, you were then directed to go to another line to ask if you were part of their group. There were at least 3-4 long lines the day we were there. It would have been more efficient for each of the guides to have a master list of all the guests with their tour group assignments, rather than have people line up repeatedly on different lines. Guide could be improved: Our guide for the trip was Imma. Although she did provide brief introductions of the stops, she spent a large portion of the time talking about herself. It would have been nice if she could have provided more information on the history and cultural origins and significance of some of the sights, activities, foods, etc that we came across. Also, it’s unclear if it’s company policy or just a cautionary tale from our tour guide but Imma told us that on a previous tour, one group did not return to the bus on time so the bus left them behind and that group had to cab it to the next stop. She explained that Taiwan limits the bus drivers to work a certain number of hours a day so they have to keep a tight schedule and cannot wait for long at a stop. What confuses me is that Imma has the contact numbers of the groups so did she attempt to reach out to the group before leaving them behind? Or is it only the customer’s responsibility to reach out to the guide? For us, after checking in at Taipei Main Station, Imma dismissed us and asked us to meet back at the gathering spot at 8:30AM, allowing us to go to the bathroom or buy food. However, despite waiting at the designated gathering spot prior 8:30, Imma was nowhere to be seen. Apparently she already took her group to the bus. When we reached out to her, she blamed us for being late. Given the experience of almost being left behind by our guide before the tour even started and her/company policy of not waiting or reaching out to their customers, the rest of the day just felt like a fight to survive in order to not be left behind by the tour group. My previous tour guides have always tried their best to “host” and watch out for their guests. I think this was the first tour where I did not feel hosted or watched out for and the goal of the tour is to shuttle us from point A to point B. So if that is the case, the tour did its job and hence the 2 star rating. But this falls below the average experience I’ve had with other tours.

Mark was fun and informative. My only star deduction is that he would not wait for all of us to arrive to location/point of interest that he was explaining. Not everyone can walk as fast and we’re often trying to move around crowds to get to where the explanation will be given.

Bessie taught us singing happy birthday in Chinese and beautiful scenery at shifen, jiufen and Yeliu.