“A lovely hotel with great facilities and a lot of traditional charm”

For our 40th wedding anniversary my wife and I enjoyed an 18 day Asian smorgasbord tour from 28 December 2019 to 14 January 2020 visiting in order Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Laos and Singapore. Our 6 night private tour of Taiwan was arranged through Wendy Wu Tours and we visited Taipei, Taroko G… more

For our 40th wedding anniversary my wife and I enjoyed an 18 day Asian smorgasbord tour from 28 December 2019 to 14 January 2020 visiting in order Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Laos and Singapore. Our 6 night private tour of Taiwan was arranged through Wendy Wu Tours and we visited Taipei, Taroko Gorge, Sun Moon Lake, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The tour offered us just a glimpse of each of the places visited. However each place offered wonderful attractions for us to enjoy. Kaohsiung is Taiwan's third largest city and its largest port. It is located in the south of the island of Taiwan around 350 kilometres from Taipei. Two highlights of our visit to this city were the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas in the Lotus Pond Scenic Area and 30 minutes from the city the magnificent Fo Guang Shan Monastery, the biggest Buddhist Monastery in Taiwan with a 48 metre high statue of the Buddha (over 100 metres tall when you include the base) making it the largest bronze Buddha statue in the world. For our stay in Kaohsiung Wendy Wu chose for us the very impressive Howard Plaza Hotel. We really liked this hotel and we wished we had more than just an overnight here. We received a warm welcome from the friendly reception staff on arrival and the uniquely dressed Concierges attended to our luggage efficiently. We were very impressed by the large floor space for the reception area which included a delightful flower display as its centrepiece. Our deluxe room had a very comfortable King bed and some elegant furnishings – nice bed chairs and a good sized writing desk and an attractive wooden cabinet for the tea and coffee making facility and the refrigerator. The bedside table had a most useful console consisting of switches for turning the lights in the room on and off including a switch for “ Make my room” and “Do not disturb”, two adaptor plugs and a USB port. That was a thoughtful feature. The view from our window offered an impressive cityscape. We found the bathroom had great facilities including an efficient shower unit, separate plunge bath and an electric toilet with heated washlet. The hotel boasts some great shops in its basement area selling clothes, food, wine and traveller’s needs as well as a cafe to enjoy a tea or coffee. The shopping area is very classy indeed. We did not take advantage of any of the restaurants in the hotel; however we did order room service and had a delightful meal in our room instead. We enjoyed the breakfast in the morning in the restaurant. The variety of food on offer was excellent and it catered for all tastes including offering a good selection of vegetarian options. It even had a Häagen-Dazs ice cream machine for ice cream lovers to enjoy complimentary ice cream delights. The hotel has an excellent outdoor swimming pool and spa on the 10th floor which I visited to take photos but not to have a swim. This facility I am sure would be very popular with hotel guests, particularly in the hot summer months. We found the Howard Plaza to be a lovely hotel with great facilities and a lot of traditional charm.

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