The tour guide, Walter, was really friendly, and had a good sense of humor. He was always there to help everyone in our large group make purchases and translate menus when everything was in Chinese. He took the time to memorize all of our names even though there were 27 of us and the tour was only 3 days long. He made sure to repeat our meeting times and locations several times whenever we had free time to make sure everyone had heard and understood. He also knew a lot about the places we went, and could give good suggestions about where to eat or what to buy in each location.
The first day was great although it didn't start out very smoothly. The tour bus went to the wrong Hotel to pick me up, and when I called them they made me feel like it was my fault even though I was at the hotel indicated on my voucher ticket. After that though, we went to Wenwu Temple which was absolutely gorgeous, and I really enjoyed the hike up to Tse-En Pagoda. We had many great views of Sun Moon Lake. The itinerary on the website said we would go to Guangxing Paper Factory, but it was replaced with the Puli Shaohsing Brewery, which was still cool.
The second day, I was a little disappointed. We spent more time on the bus than actually visiting places. The hike through the Alishan forest was beautiful, but I wish we'd have had more time to take in the sites. We stopped to see Shouzhen Temple, but we only had about 15 or 20 minutes to see the temple and look at the shops. I felt very rushed. Also, the bus rides to and from Alishan are very long and might not be great for people who get car sick because the road goes through the mountains so we were constantly swerving back and forth for a couple hours. The description on this website also has interesting stories behind places like the sister ponds, but the tour guide didn't mention anything about this while we were there. It would have been nice to hear about the history and stuff like that while we were exploring.
Day three did not follow the website's itinerary at all. We were supposed to do a walking tour of Lukang, and Visit historic temples like Tianhou Temple and Lung Shan Temple but we didn't do any of that. Instead we went to The National Palace Museum of Asian art and culture. It was really interesting and I had a great time, but could not help but feel like I missed out on the temples. I would have liked to see them.
Overall, I did enjoy the trip but I feel a bit like I didn't get what I paid for. The places we went to were extraordinary, and the hotels were nice, but we didn't follow the itinerary on the website and we spent a lot more time on a bus than I would have liked.