Sicao Green Tunnel

Sicao Green Tunnel

The Sicao Green Tunnel is a boat ride through a mangrove channel on the edge of Taijiang National Park, on the lagoon coast north of Tainan's old city. The Tainan City Government Tourism Bureau's page for the site records the essentials plainly: boats run 08:00 to 16:00 daily, a full-fare ticket is NT$200, and the ride is a short round trip through a tunnel of mangrove canopy. That canopy is the whole point. The channel is narrow enough that the trees meet overhead in places, and the boat slows to a crawl so passengers can see the roots, the crabs and the mudflats at close range. This page lays out everything the official sources state, in the order a visitor actually needs it: what the ride is, what it costs, when boats leave, which of the two routes to pick, how to get there, and what else on the Qigu coast is worth pairing with it.

What Is the Sicao Green Tunnel?

The Sicao Green Tunnel is a roughly 30-minute round-trip boat ride through a narrow mangrove channel at Sicao, in Annan District on Tainan's lagoon coast, inside the wider Taijiang National Park area. Boats are flat covered vessels that seat a few dozen passengers, and the channel is tight enough that the mangrove branches close over the water like a roof.

The setting matters more than the ride itself. The coast here is the old Taijiang inner sea, the shallow lagoon that once reached close to the city and has been silting up for centuries. What is left is a wetland of mudflats, oyster beds, mangrove and fish ponds, and the Green Tunnel is the most concentrated slice of it. The Tourism Bureau's page for the boats describes the mangrove forest and the green tunnel formed by the canopy, and lists the wildlife a passenger may spot from the deck: fiddler crabs and mudskippers on the banks, egrets and herons in the branches. The most famous resident, the black-faced spoonbill, winters in the wider wetlands, and the black-faced spoonbill reserve nearby is the place to look for it, not the tunnel itself, where the birds are a bonus rather than a promise.

The boats are operated from a pier beside the Sicao Dazhong Temple. They depart when roughly 30 passengers have assembled, or after a wait, which means a quiet Tuesday morning and a holiday afternoon are two very different experiences. Nothing about the ride is extreme. It is flat water, low speed, and a guide pointing at the banks, and it is one of the few pieces of Tainan's natural coast that a visitor can see in under an hour without a car.

How Much Do Sicao Green Tunnel Boat Tickets Cost?

A full-fare Sicao Green Tunnel boat ticket is NT$200 at the counter. Primary-school children pay NT$100, ages 0 to 6 and visitors over 80 pay NT$30 on the black-faced spoonbill ticket, and the NT$100 accessibility ticket lets its holder bring one companion. The longer Taijiang route costs exactly the same NT$200, so there is no cheaper or more expensive route to choose between.

The Tainan City Government Tourism Bureau's page for the site lists all of these fares, and the city's standing disclaimer applies to every price it publishes: the figures are for reference and the on-site notice governs. Treat NT$200 as the price at the counter, not as a guarantee, and check the board at the temple pier on the day.

Two practical notes follow from the fare table. First, this is a cash-and-counter operation run from a temple pier, so bring notes rather than assuming a card terminal. Second, the ticket is for one seat on one departure, and because boats fill by the boatload rather than by a timetable, arriving early in the 08:00 to 16:00 window buys a shorter wait more reliably than any other tactic.

For visitors who would rather not stand in the sun for a boat to fill, the boat ride is bookable in advance through the operator's live listing, and a prepaid ticket is the one thing on this coast worth booking at all.

What Are the Sicao Green Tunnel Opening Hours?

Boats run 08:00 to 16:00 daily, with no closed weekday listed on the Tourism Bureau's page for the site. Departures are demand-driven rather than fixed: a boat leaves when roughly 30 passengers have gathered, or after a wait, so the last full boat of the day realistically pushes off well before 16:00.

The hours are the whole schedule. There is no published timetable of departures because there is no timetable: the temple counter sells tickets, and the boats go when they are full enough. The Tourism Bureau's page gives the 08:00 to 16:00 window, and that window is the only thing a planner can bank on.

The morning is the sensible end of that window for two reasons the schedule implies by itself. The earlier boats carry fewer passengers, which means shorter waits and a quieter channel. And the coast here has no shade to speak of beyond the mangrove itself, so a 09:00 departure and a 14:00 departure are different experiences in every month except winter. There is no typhoon-season exception published for the boats, but the site sits on open lagoon water, so on a day the Central Weather Administration has under a typhoon or heavy-rain warning, assume the boats pause and confirm before travelling.

The one thing worth deciding before arrival is whether the short mangrove channel or the longer lagoon crossing suits the day better, because the pier sells both and the fare is identical. The next section compares them directly.

Green Tunnel or Taijiang Route: Which Boat Ride Should You Take?

Both routes cost NT$200 from the same pier, so the choice is about time and scenery, not money. The Green Tunnel route is the short round trip into the mangrove canopy, roughly 30 minutes. The Taijiang route is the longer trip across the open lagoon toward the Qigu coast, taking in wider water, oyster platforms and the edge of the national park.

The Tourism Bureau's page lists both routes at the same fare, and the single most common mistake in writing about Sicao is claiming one is cheaper. It is not. The fare table has one number for both.

A reasonable rule of thumb follows from the geography. If the visit is a quick stop between the city and Qigu Salt Mountain, the Green Tunnel route fits, because it is short and the canopy is the image most visitors come away with. If the day belongs to the coast, the Taijiang route shows more of what the lagoon actually is, a working wetland of oyster racks and fish ponds rather than a single pretty channel. Visitors with a full day and no car of their own can also take the decision off their plate entirely on a guided day tour that bundles the boats with the lagoon and the coast's temples.

How Do You Get to the Sicao Green Tunnel?

The Sicao Green Tunnel is reached from central Tainan by city bus along the coast toward Sicao, or by car or taxi via Annan District, roughly a 20-minute drive from the old city. The pier sits beside Sicao Dazhong Temple off the coastal road, and there is no rail station at the site itself.

The bus is the budget option, and on this network it is cheaper than most visitors expect. The city's own bus site states that trunk and branch routes are free for the first 8 km with an electronic card, a Citizen Card, iPASS, EasyCard or iCash 2.0, with the NT$26 base fare waived, and that riders must tap on and tap off. Tap off is the part visitors miss. The same page notes the scheme runs for the 2026 calendar year, so treat it as current policy rather than permanent, and carry the NT$26 cash fare as a fallback. The easycard-in-tainan question is covered in full elsewhere on this site.

Visitors arriving by High Speed Rail should note what every Tainan arrival page on this site repeats: the HSR station is at Shalun in Guiren District, outside the old city, and reaching the coast means a transfer. The H31 HSR express bus is free for HSR passengers on production of a ticket stub, per the city bus site's fare page, but it runs between the HSR station and the city government area, not the lagoon coast. From the city side, a bus toward Taijiang or a taxi is the practical last leg.

Driving is straightforward and the coast roads are flat. The pier has parking around the temple, and the whole Sicao-to-Qigu stretch is one road with the Taijiang National Park wetlands on one side. A car also makes the obvious pairing easy, which is Qigu Salt Mountain, a short drive up the same coast.

What Else Is There to Do Near the Sicao Green Tunnel?

The Sicao pier sits inside the Taijiang wetlands, with Qigu Salt Mountain about 15 minutes up the coast, the Jingzijiao tile-paved salt fields nearby, and the black-faced spoonbill wintering grounds in the same lagoon system. Together they make a half-day or full-day salt coast loop out of one boat ride.

The verified visitor counts show how the coast divides its crowds. The Tourism Administration's 2023 dataset puts the Qigu Salt Industry Recreation Area at 690,750 visitors and the Jingzijiao Tile-Paved Salt Fields at 636,193, both far ahead of the boat pier itself, with Beimen's salt area at 344,093 further up the coast. The caveat the dataset carries is real: each site compiles and reports its own numbers, so a ticketed boat and an open salt field are not counted the same way.

Qigu Salt Mountain deserves the pairing more than anything else on the coast. The Tourism Bureau's page for it lists a NT$50 cleaning fee per person on foot or per scooter or bicycle, NT$100 per car, with coaches of 20 or more seats free, open 09:00 to 18:00 daily. It is a white hill of leftover industrial salt with a view from the top, and the Qigu Salt Mountain page on this site covers it in full. The salt fields at Jingzijiao are the older, prettier half of the same story, where seawater is still evaporated across tiled pans.

On the way back toward the city, Anping is the natural last stop, with Anping Old Fort and the Anping Tree House both open into the late afternoon, the fort until 17:10 and the Tree House until 17:30. A visitor who finishes the boats by 10:00 can do the whole coast and still be in Anping for the evening.

For visitors who would rather have the logistics handled, two of the coast's most popular bookable options bundle the boats with the salt coast. The eco tour with the oyster buffet is the one that pairs the lagoon with the lagoon's own harvest, and the salt mountain day tour folds Chihkan Tower and Anping into the same vehicle.

The salt mountain day tour below is the same idea aimed at visitors who want the historic city in the same day, and it pairs naturally with the eco tour above rather than competing with it.

Between the boat ticket, the bus and the salt coast, the decisions that actually shape the day are few, and the trio below covers the three ways most visitors choose to do this stretch.

When Is the Best Time of Year to Visit the Sicao Green Tunnel?

October to March is the best window for the Sicao Green Tunnel, because the Central Weather Administration's 1991 to 2020 normals for Tainan show that is the dry half of the year, with October averaging just 2.8 wet days while still reaching 30.8C maxima. Summer brings the rain: August alone averages 466 mm across 16 wet days.

The climate table decides this question almost by itself. Tainan's rain is almost entirely a summer event, with close to three-quarters of the annual 1,761 mm falling between May and September. The boats run on open lagoon water and leave on demand, so a summer afternoon thunderstorm stops departures in a way a museum never notices.

There is one reason to break the dry-season rule: the birds. Black-faced spoonbills winter in the Qigu wetlands, arriving in the colder months and leaving by spring, so a birder's ideal visit is the same October-to-March window anyway. A photographer's ideal visit is early morning in that window, when the light is low and the boats are empty.

Is the Sicao Green Tunnel Worth It with Kids?

Yes, for most families the Green Tunnel route is one of the easiest nature outings in Tainan: the ride is roughly 30 minutes of flat water, children of primary-school age pay NT$100, ages 0 to 6 pay NT$30, and the mangrove canopy plus mudskippers and fiddler crabs on the banks hold a child's attention better than a museum case.

The fare structure is genuinely family-friendly, and the Tourism Bureau's page states it directly: the NT$30 black-faced spoonbill ticket covers ages 0 to 6 and visitors aged 80 or over, which reads as a deliberate invitation to three generations at once. The accessibility ticket at NT$100, whose holder may bring one companion, extends the same logic to visitors who need it.

The practical cautions are about the pier rather than the water. Boarding is across a wet, low pontoon, so a stroller is more hindrance than help, and there is no shade on the waiting area beyond what the temple buildings give. Bring water, go early, and treat the ride as the centerpiece of a coast morning rather than a standalone trip, because the site is small and the boats are the only thing there that takes an hour.

Common Questions About the Sicao Green Tunnel

The Sicao Green Tunnel is a small ride attached to a large landscape, and the planning advice follows from that. Book or arrive early for the boats, carry cash for the temple counter, pick the route by the time available rather than the fare, and give the rest of the morning to the salt coast that the boats float in. That is the whole trick of the place, and the Tainan Travel Guide coverage of the lagoon coast, from Qigu to Anping, is built to make the rest of the day as easy as the first 30 minutes on the water.