Kenting was recommended to us by my cousin Carolyn who lived in Taiwan for a year. We were originally thinking of staying in Taipei for a week and doing some day trips from there, but are so glad we instead opted to spend some time in this fantastic beach town!

We arrived in Kenting around 6pm on a Wednesday to a bustling night market lining the main street where we stayed. After dropping our bags in our room, we went to explore the food options and had a great time trying local delicacies. This became our go-to dinner spot for the next 4 nights. Our favorite foods included scallion pancakes, dumplings, grilled squid, and fresh fruit juices (even though eating the ice made us a bit nervous). Having dinner at the market was fun, allowed for many different food opportunities, and was well within out budget.  A typical night market dinner for two was about $400 NTD or about $13 USD.

In addition to eating as many new things as we could, we spent a lot of time exploring Kenting and taking in the beaches, beautiful scenery, and scuba diving opportunities.

Beaches

On our first day, we went to Kenting Beach, a long stretch of white sand dotted with a few resorts along the way. Swimming isn’t allowed in many areas of this beach as it’s a protected national park area, so we spent our time walking along the shore and climbing on the rock formations dotting the coastline. I thought the water looked pretty rough and not ideal for swimming, but John insisted it would have been a great place for swimming and was disappointed we couldn’t go in.

After a quick lunch, we walked down the road to discover Little Bay Beach. This beach was much calmer as it’s situated in a cove. It had two swimming areas roped off and there were only a handful of people in the water and on the beach. We had a great afternoon swimming, exploring the beach, and playing some rousing games of chess on the beach before catching a spectacular sunset.

 

Beautiful Scenery

We rented a scooter on our second day in Kenting to explore more of the area. Since we don’t have a motorcycle license, we were only allowed to rent an electric scooter that we quickly learned could reach a max speed of 30 kph (about 15 mph). One of the perks of being on such a slow moving vehicle was we had a lot of time to take in the scenery.

We started our day with a ride to the west side of Kenting to scope out our options for scuba diving. We popped into a dive shop that had an English sign and signed up for two dives the next day.

After securing a dive spot, we rode over to the east side of Kenting to see some of the cliffside areas. Along the way we stopped at the southernmost point of Taiwan.

Our last stop on the bike was up into the National Park area. We rode up a very big hill and got some incredible views of Kenting and it’s beautiful beaches.

Kenting was a great place for two beginners to learn how to ride a scooter. The roads had wide shoulders and in many cases, designated scooter lanes. They were also not very busy so we didn’t have to worry about competing for road space with more confident drivers. John did a great job scooting us all around. I took over momentarily and immediately drove us into a ditch and let John continue to be the primary driver. Gotta work on that…

Scuba Diving

On our last full day in Kenting we went scuba diving with Dive Inn, a shop we spotted the day before on our scooter. We were picked up in the morning by Kyle, a 24-year old dive instructor who became our guide for the day. Kyle spent a semester abroad studying in California, so he had great English and helped as our translator when working with other divers.

Our first dive required us to clamber over lots of rocks with our tanks strapped to our backs before beginning our underwater adventure. We saw some cool fish, including this one that Kyle described as a “lightning fish.” We also saw some crawly things that looked like lobster tails on the move. We learned to dive on our honeymoon in Jamaica this past August, so we are pretty new to the sport and I’m still not 100% confident in my diving skills. About halfway through the dive, I got some water in my mask and tried to dump it out… while surrounded by water. Needless to say that didn’t really work and one of the dive instructors with us had to stop me as I floated to the surface while struggling to blow the water out. He was able to demonstrate the proper technique while we were still under water and gave me a more thorough lesson over lunch when we could talk it out.

Our second dive was a bit easier than the first. We entered the water from the beach and had a much less strenuous walk to the water. The guides brought some bread with them that they feed to the fish, so we had tons of beautiful, colorful fish swimming really close to us for most of the dive. I felt much more confident this time around and didn’t have any underwater snafus.

We are planning more scuba diving instruction when we are in Thailand, so I’m looking forward to improving and building my confidence!

Kenting was a fantastic stop and one of the highlights of the trip for us so far. It was really amazing to get out of the city and live a slower-paced life for a few days in one of the most beautiful places we’ve been.