Private Taipei Dragon Boat Festival Day Tour

In the morning, meet your tour guide at the hotel lobby and then head off to the first stop—a local traditional market.

In a Taiwanese traditional market, everything is sold in the most ordinary and simple way. From fresh ingredients to ready-to-eat foods, you can see the vendors peddling and the customers bargaining. Here you cooking class teacher will give you an instruction on the ingredients and the preparation work for today’s class.

After that, it’s time to test your cooking skill. Don’t worry! You have the best teacher to teach you how to make the iconic food of Dragon Boat Festival—Zongzi. It is a sticky rice dumpling that is eaten by Asian people, especially on this day. In addition to that, you will also learn how to cook seasonal vegetable, and how to make Sishen Soup, which is dish made with medicinal herbs and pork.

Have you ever tried to balance an egg? If you haven’t, now it’s your chance to challenge yourself! After lunch at mid-noon, you will be given an egg to balance it. It said if you are able to balance an egg at 12:00PM on the day of Dragon Boat Festival, you will gain your luck for the rest of the year. Sound interesting? Let’s put your hidden talent to the test!

Now after you successfully gaining your luck, here comes the highlight of the tour, also the main activity of the Dragon Boat Festival– the Dragon Boat Race. The sport of dragon boat racing can be traced back to the ancient times, today it’s a popular sports in some Asian countries. You can just sit down and relax by the river side, enjoy the race and cheer for your favorite team.

After the race finished, the next stop is the famous Dalongdong Bao’an Temple. The original building of temple was built in 1742, after numerous of reconstructions and extensions since the period under Japanese Rule, the temple has resulted in the present look. In 2003, the temple was inducted into the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation. The temple worships Baosheng Dadi, the God of medicine in Taoism. You can pray for health and wellness for you and your family.

This is a time of year once considered unlucky and unhealthy, because as the mild days of Spring give way to the heat and humidity of Summer, snakes, centipedes, scorpions, and other creepy crawlies start to emerge, and diseases spread more easily. To ward off these unwelcome guests, branches of the fragrant herbs calamus and wormwood (moxa) are hung above the front door of Taiwanese homes.

The 5^th day of the 5^th month in lunar calendar once considered unlucky and unhealthy in the past, because the heat and humidity of summer time make the venomous insects and snakes start to emerge, and diseases spread easily.The last stop of the tour is a Chinese medicine shop, which gathers a huge variety of Chinese medicinal material. Here you will learn about the history and development of traditional Chinese medicine, and the curative effects of different medicinal materials.

In the end of the tour, you will be given a fragrant sachet as a small farewell gift. The fragrant sachets are filled with herbs and powder, which you can wear around your neck or elsewhere on your body like a piece of decoration of the garment. It is said the fragrant sachet can protect people from evil spirits and prevent diseases, also can ease your mind with relaxing sense.

After this amazing season limited tour, your tour guide will escort you back to your hotel.