Everyone who visits Kaohsiung should plan a visit to Cijin Island, in my opinion. First of all, Kaohsiung is a pretty quiet place with nothing much to do especially if you are staying more than a couple of days there. Most travellers spend at most 2 days in Kaohsiung City itself, and travel out to nearby places like Kenting and Cijin Island for day trips. Cijin Island is easily accessible by a 5-minute ferry ride from Kaohsiung Harbour (I think the ticket is about 20NT per adult). There are many beautiful sights to explore on Cijin Island and best of all, savour cheap and very fresh seafood before you leave the island and go back to Kaohsiung. This might be the place for the best and freshest seafood in this part of Taiwan.
To get to Kaohsiung Harbour: Take Orange line on subway and get off at Sizihwan station Exit 1.
You can either choose to explore Cijin Island on foot or on bicycle. I would definitely recommend the latter so that you make full use of your time. Furthermore, bicycle rentals are everywhere and very cheap the moment you arrive at the island, and you get some exercise done before feasting on the seafood and street food – what’s not to love about it?
Once you reach Cijin Island, either grab a map from any of the bicycle shops or take a photograph of the map board so that you know where you are going. Everything is pretty straightforward so you will be able to cover everything if you follow accordingly. Here’s a pictorial itinerary of how our half day on Cijin Island went:
Drying whole cuttlefish on the racks
Cijin Fort
Cijin Tunnel of Stars
The other side of the tunnel leads to the sea!
So windy & beautiful!
Rainbow Church
Windmills Park
Along the way, look out for ice-cream shops and make a pit-stop because ice-cream there is freshly made with real fruits in them. And of course, very, very cheap as well. Definitely good after cycling for a couple of hours under the sun! We had ours here – Very yummy!
Finale has got to be fresh Seafood feast – Only 100NT per dish for 80% of the items – That’s less than $5 per dish –> Super cheap! And you just choose the ingredients you want and they will recommend the best cooking method for them.
These are the more expensive items but still very, very cheap! We only paid $10 for a big plate of prawns!
The ingredients are so fresh, so everything tasted really good. Rice is free-flow and self-service, with complimentary fruits served after the meal. 
For this meal, we paid 190NT per person (there were 3 of us) for 7 dishes and that’s only like less than SGD$9 each?! Singapore needs to up its seafood game, please.
I would say half a day would suffice for Cijin Island, but if you are the kind who likes to loiter on the beach (They have a black sand beach on Cijin island, by the way) and take tons of photos for hours, then by all means, stay a whole day there. It’s just a chillax place, nobody would mind it I’m sure.
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