Keelung And The Northeast Coast: The Complete Planning Guide

Keelung is the city most Jiufen visitors pass without ever quite seeing. The train from Taipei runs through it, the coast road bends around its harbour, and the rain that gives Jiufen its fog is measured at its weather station. It is also a cruise port, which changes what the northeast coast is: on a port day, Jiufen, Shifen and Yehliu are shore-excursion country, and on any other day they are train-and-bus country. This guide covers both versions of the same coast, from the harbour to the gold-mining hills above it.

One number explains the whole region before anything else does. The Central Weather Administration has no station at Jiufen at all, so the climate record everyone quotes, including every figure on this site, comes from Keelung station 466940, about 12 km away on the same windward shore. That record shows 3,589.7 mm of rain a year against Taipei's 2,329.5 mm, about 54 percent more, falling on 193.6 days a year. More than half of all days here are rain days. Plan around that and the rest of the coast falls into place.

Why Does Every Jiufen Weather Forecast Come From Keelung?

Because there is no weather station at Jiufen. The nearest manned Central Weather Administration station is Keelung, station 466940, about 12 km away on the same windward north coast, and its 30-year normals, 1991 to 2020, are the record this entire site cites: 3,589.7 mm of rain a year, 193.6 rain days, and a wettest month of November at 396.9 mm, with July the driest at 119.5 mm.

The practical point is that the numbers describe the coast's pattern, not a measurement taken in Jiufen's lanes. Jiufen sits higher and further inland than the harbour, so the pattern holds and is probably wetter up the hill, but no verified figure exists for rainfall at Jiufen itself, and any page that prints one is guessing.

What the Keelung record shows is a coast with two faces. September through February takes 2,198.8 mm, 61 percent of the whole year's rain in six months, and that is the northeast monsoon: the season of fog, drizzle and lanterns glowing through mist, which is precisely the atmosphere Jiufen is photographed for. July inverts every piece of standard Taiwan advice. It is the driest month on the record, 119.5 mm across 8.5 rain days, with 229.2 sunshine hours, while December manages just 48.5 sunshine hours in the entire month, about 1.6 hours a day. If clear views matter more than moody ones, summer is the coast's quiet secret.

The table is the Keelung station's own 30-year series, published by the Central Weather Administration's climate normals page, and it is worth reading before you pick a date. The same page carries Taipei's series for comparison, and the gap between the two, 1,260 mm a year over stations about 25 km apart, is the single best explanation of why the northeast coast feels like a different country from the capital.

What Does The Northeast Coast Circuit From Keelung Include?

The circuit runs west to east through four anchors: Yehliu Geopark's rock formations on the cape, the Yin Yang Sea and Golden Waterfall at Shuinandong, the Gold Museum at Jinguashi, and Jiufen Old Street on the hill above them all, with Heping Island sitting just off Keelung harbour itself. Every one of them is reachable on the roster's coast tours, and the full set is what the eight-hour excursions cover.

Yehliu is the cape an hour's drive down the coast, a headland of honeycomb rock whose Queen's Head mushroom rock is the most photographed stone in Taiwan. Its neck has been measured for three decades: about 220 cm around in 1994, 116.59 cm by October 2024, a loss of 103.41 cm in 31 years, roughly a centimetre a year. Asked how much longer it can last, the scenic area administration's own official said even specialists find it hard to forecast, which is the honest answer and the only one worth printing. The park's rules are unusually sharp too, and they are covered further down this page.

Between Yehliu and Jiufen the road passes the Yin Yang Sea, a two-coloured bay, and the Golden Waterfall, an orange-stained cascade on the old mine drainage. The colour is iron staining from the old mine workings, visitors should not enter the water, and no chemistry figure belongs on the page because the underlying cause is genuinely contested. Above them sits Jinguashi and its Gold Museum, and above that, Jiufen. The full chain is laid out in the Jiufen and Shifen in one day guide, and the mining country above the coast has its own page in Jinguashi and the Golden Waterfall.

Hoping to do it in one day with someone else driving? These are the three coast products that fit a Keelung anchorage best.

Which Keelung Shore Excursion Is Right For A Cruise Day?

Three roster products run from Keelung as private shore excursions, all eight hours: the Jiufen and Shifen tour from $155 per person, rated 4.8 across 85 reviews; the Yehliu, Jiufen and Houtong tour from $179 per person, rated 4.9 across 34 reviews; and an eight-hour Jiufen and Shifen private option from $186 per person, a newer listing with too few reviews for a star claim. All three confirm free cancellation.

The choice comes down to what your ship's hours allow and which anchors matter most. The Yehliu, Jiufen and Houtong excursion is the broadest: it takes in the geopark, Jiufen Old Street, the Golden Waterfall, Houtong Cat Village and, at the end of the day, the Miaokou Night Market back in Keelung itself, so you eat in the port city before reboarding. It is the strongest-proofed of the three, 4.9 across 34 reviews, with port pickup and a guide included.

The Jiufen and Shifen excursion from $155 per person is the one that adds the waterfall and the lantern railway street, plus the Yin Yang Sea and Golden Waterfall viewpoints, but it skips Yehliu, which matters if your sailing also calls at other Taiwanese ports. The third option, the eight-hour Jiufen and Shifen private tour from $186 per person, is a smaller-volume listing: five reviews is too few for a fair star rating, so treat it as a newer product rather than a poorly rated one. Note that it lists no pickup, so check the meeting arrangement on the live listing against your berth before booking.

If you would rather check availability against your sailing time, the live listing carries the full itinerary and the current price. One planning caution for port days: the traffic control plan described below applies on weekends and public holidays, and a coach that cannot get approval drops passengers at the New No. 9 car park for a shuttle transfer, which eats time. A weekday port call runs cleaner than a weekend one.

Is Miaokou Night Market The Real Night Market Of The Northeast Coast?

Yes, and by default, because Jiufen has no night market at all. Keelung Miaokou is the night market for this whole corner of Taiwan, a compact grid of food stalls around the temple in central Keelung, and it is the evening anchor of the coast: one roster tour ends there deliberately, and the Yehliu, Jiufen and Houtong shore excursion finishes its day at the same stalls.

The question sounds odd to anyone who has read that Jiufen is a night destination, so it is worth being precise. Jiufen at night is lantern-lit lanes and teahouses, covered in the Jiufen at night guide, but it is not a night market: there is no market of that kind there, and the nearest real one is down the hill in Keelung. That makes Miaokou the place the coast's evening eating actually happens, and it is a genuinely famous one, built around the Dianji temple and running for decades.

The most efficient way to combine the two is the roster's evening product: the Jiufen A-Mei Teahouse, Heping Island sunset and Keelung Night Market tour, seven and a half hours, rated 4.7 across 866 reviews, from $58.90 per person at the current sale price. Its stops are Jiufen Old Street, Heping Island and the Miaokou Night Market, with an optional A-Mei Teahouse tea set. One thing to be clear about, because the listing is widely mislabelled as a Yehliu, Shifen and Jiufen tour: it reaches neither Yehliu nor Shifen. What it does instead is give you Jiufen in the late afternoon, a coastal sunset, and dinner at the stalls, which is a better evening than a coach circuit anyway.

For cruise passengers weighing the whole day against the evening, the shore excursion is the one booking that ties the coast together. It runs eight hours from the berth, covers Yehliu Geopark, Jiufen Old Street, the Golden Waterfall and Houtong Cat Village, and lands you at the Miaokou stalls for dinner before the ship sails, which is the full circuit in a single guided day.

Can You Do The Northeast Coast Without A Car?

Yes, by train and bus, and in one respect the train beats the coach outright: Taipei Main Station to Ruifang carries 45 to 47 direct services a day, 32 to 68 minutes, from NT$73 on the local, and Ruifang is the interchange for the whole coast, with Shifen a flat NT$29 and 17 daily trains further up the Pingxi branch and Houtong just NT$22 and 5 to 7 minutes away.

The rail spine is the reason a car-free circuit works. The local train is the sensible default on the Taipei to Ruifang run: the fastest express saves only about 13 minutes over the median local and costs NT$41 more, NT$114 against NT$73. From Ruifang the Pingxi branch runs 17 direct trains a day to Shifen, 27 to 32 minutes, and the count is identical on a Saturday as on a Monday, the line gets no extra weekend capacity. Mind the gaps: after the 16:54 departure the next train is not until 18:33, and after 19:22 you wait until 21:06.

One correction worth carrying, because most English guides imply otherwise: there is no direct train from Taipei to Shifen. Zero through services run on any date checked. Every routing changes at Ruifang, so build the day around that transfer. The Taipei to Jiufen guide covers the capital end of the run in detail, and the fare table below is the verified spine of the coast.

Buses fill the gaps the rails do not reach, and the New Taipei open bus dataset carries the three routes that matter. Route 788 runs from Keelung to Shuinandong, 05:00 to 22:30 seven days a week, on a two-section fare, and its stop list includes the Gold Museum at Jinguashi, which makes it the long, reliable way up the hill. Route 827 links Ruifang to Fushan Temple, but its last holiday departure is 11:10, so on a weekend it is a morning-only bus and never a way home. Route 825 runs Ruifang to Jinguashi with a single 09:30 service. No verified cash fare exists for any of these sections, so check the board at the stop.

What Rules Catch Visitors Out On This Coast?

Three official rules, all from primary sources: Yehliu Geopark fines climbing on the rock formations up to NT$500,000 plus restoration costs; the Gold Museum at Jinguashi is closed the first Monday of every month; and since 1 January 2025 coach access to Jiufen is controlled between 08:00 and 20:00 on every weekend and public holiday, with applications capped at roughly 20 coaches per half-day slot.

The Yehliu fines are listed on the park's own ticket page and they are startling. Climbing on or damaging the formations carries up to NT$500,000 plus restoration costs, and up to NT$5,000,000 more if the damage cannot be repaired. Flying a drone, the park is a no-fly zone, runs NT$300,000 to NT$1,500,000. Crossing the safety line, littering or pocketing a rock or a hermit crab: NT$5,000 to NT$1,000,000. Admission itself is NT$120 for adults, NT$60 concession, and hours are 08:00 to 17:00 year-round, extended to 18:00 in summer, with last entry at the closing hour itself rather than before it. The Yehliu Geopark guide covers the full ticket table.

The Gold Museum's first-Monday closure is the single most useful practical fact about Jinguashi and it is routinely missing from English pages. Admission is NT$80, hours are 09:30 to 17:00 on weekdays and 09:30 to 18:00 on weekends and national holidays, and if the first Monday is itself a holiday the museum opens and closes the following day instead. Payment is cash, EasyCard or O'Pay. The museum's own English page carries the full exemption list, which includes New Taipei residents, nationals 65 and over, enrolled students and disability certificate holders with a companion.

The traffic control plan is the one that reshapes whole itineraries. The signed New Taipei City notice, published as a PDF on the Tourism Administration's site, controls the Ruifang, Jinguashi and Jiufen area from 08:00 to 20:00 on weekends, national holidays, Labour Day and make-up working days. Coaches must apply in advance to Ruifang Police Precinct, may not drive to Jiufen Old Street on their own, and applications are refused entirely during holiday runs of three or more consecutive days. The plan restricts coaches, never private cars and never pedestrians, so a self-drive day or a train day is unaffected.

How Many Days Does The Northeast Coast Need?

Two full days covers the circuit comfortably: one for Yehliu, the coast road and Jinguashi, and one for Jiufen with either Shifen or Houtong, with a Miaokou evening in Keelung between them. Cruise passengers get the compressed version in eight hours, and the honest ceiling for a single day is Jiufen plus Shifen plus the coast viewpoints, because adding Yehliu to that already assumes a coach and clean traffic.

The two-day split works because the anchors cluster. Yehliu sits on the cape west of Keelung, while Jiufen, Jinguashi, Shifen and Houtong all hang off the Ruifang interchange, so a day built around Ruifang reaches the second cluster by train and bus without a vehicle at all. The mistake to avoid is treating Pingxi as a separate stop on top of Shifen: several tours carry Pingxi in their titles, and every one of them actually reaches Shifen, which sits inside Pingxi District. Shifen is the stop; Pingxi is the district it sits in.

For a private, unhurried version of the compressed day, the roster's third Keelung excursion is the eight-hour Jiufen and Shifen private tour, from $186 per person, with free cancellation confirmed. It is a newer, smaller-volume listing, five reviews so far, too few for a fair star rating, but its itinerary is the classic pairing: Jiufen Old Street, Shifen Waterfall and Shifen Old Street. As with the other shore products, it lists no pickup, so confirm the meeting point on the live listing before you commit.

Whatever the length, book the coast around the weather table at the top of this page rather than around the calendar. A November day delivers the fog and the lantern-lit photographs but can deliver 396.9 mm of the month's rain in a single soaking; a July day trades the atmosphere for 229.2 sunshine hours and the driest month on the station's record. Both are real versions of this coast, and the Jiufen Tour site's season pages break the trade down month by month.

Where Should The Coast Circuit Start And End?

Start in Taipei on a local train to Ruifang, work outward from the interchange, and end in Keelung: the branch lines and buses all radiate from Ruifang, the coast viewpoints sit between Ruifang and the harbour, and Miaokou Night Market plus a short hop back to Taipei closes the loop. Cruise passengers should invert this, starting and ending at the berth and letting the excursion choose the anchors.

The end-in-Keelung shape is what the evening tour above already does, and it is the shape the train timetable rewards. The last branch-line train back from Shifen reaches Ruifang at 22:47, and Taipei-bound services from Ruifang run until the 23:29 departure, which reaches Taipei Main Station just after midnight, so a Miaokou dinner still leaves a rail connection home. Going the other way, starting at Yehliu and finishing in Jiufen at dusk, is the coach-tour order, and it is the order the shore excursions follow because it front-loads the farthest point.

For travellers with more than a weekend, the coast also chains onward. Keelung itself earns half a day beyond the market, and the question of whether the port city justifies a full one has its own treatment in is Keelung Taiwan worth visiting. The wider New Taipei region, and how many Taipei days to budget alongside the coast, is covered in how many days in Taipei is enough.

Whatever shape you choose, these three are the coast products that hold up best against the verified facts on this page.

These are the questions travellers actually ask before committing to the northeast coast, answered from the verified record: where the weather numbers come from, which shore excursion fits a cruise day, why Miaokou and not Jiufen is the night market, how the train spine works without a car, and the rules that carry fines or closures. Each answer below repeats the figures from the body of this guide, so nothing here depends on a page you have already scrolled past.

Common Questions About Keelung And The Northeast Coast