Taiwan Discovery Guide

Taiwan is an island the size of the Netherlands with more than two hundred peaks above three thousand metres, so you can be at a night market in the evening and above the tree line by mid-morning. The food is the other argument: night markets are the ordinary way people eat here, not a tourist attraction, and beef noodle soup, soup dumplings, oyster omelettes and an entire vegetarian Buddhist tradition are all cheap and served late. It is also unusually easy, with widespread English signage, very low crime and one transport card that works on everything.

The main travel issue

Weather at both ends of the year -- typhoons through the summer and into autumn, and a north-east monsoon that leaves the north cool, grey and drizzling from December to February.

The solution

Come in October and November, when the typhoons have passed and the mountains are at their most reliable, with March and April as the second window. Ride the high-speed line down the west coast, which covers Taipei to Kaohsiung in about ninety minutes.

• Central Taiwan
• Eastern Taiwan
• Northern Taiwan
• Southern Taiwan
• Taiwan Outlying Islands

If you have a week

Three nights in Taipei with day trips to Jiufen and Beitou, the high-speed line to Tainan for two nights of temples and food, and two nights in Hualien for Taroko Gorge. That covers the three things the island is best at.

If you want the mountains

Alishan for the forest railway and the sunrise, Hehuanshan for a road above three thousand metres, and Yushan if you plan ahead — the summit needs a permit applied for months in advance through a lottery.

If you want to cycle

Taiwan is set up for it. The round-island Route 1 takes nine to twelve days, the Sun Moon Lake loop is a half-day, and bike shops, repair points and rail carriages that take bicycles are everywhere. The east coast is the leg people remember.

If you came for the food

Tainan for the oldest dishes and the sweetest versions of them, Taipei for breadth and for the night markets, Taichung for bubble tea and cafes, and a Buddhist vegetarian buffet at least once.

If you have longer

The outlying islands. Penghu for basalt and beaches, Kinmen for the military tunnels and the Fujianese villages, Orchid Island for the Tao and their plank canoes.

Taiwan is a Chinese-speaking society that spent fifty years under Japanese rule, forty under martial law, and the last three decades building one of Asia’s most open democracies. All three layers are visible.

Politeness as a default

The everyday civility here is noticeable even to visitors from other polite societies: queueing, quiet trains, lost property returned, shopkeepers who walk you to where you are going. Renqingwei, roughly the warmth of human feeling, is the term Taiwanese use for it.

Temples in constant use

Folk religion, Taoism and Buddhism overlap, and the temples are working buildings rather than monuments — people come in to consult the gods with divination blocks, burn incense on the way to work, and eat at the stalls outside. The Mazu pilgrimage each spring moves hundreds of thousands of people on foot across the island.

Indigenous Taiwan

Sixteen recognised peoples, all Austronesian, whose languages are the closest living relatives of those spoken from Madagascar to Easter Island — the linguistic evidence places the origin of the whole Austronesian expansion on this island. They are about two per cent of the population and a much larger presence in the east and the mountains.

An unresolved question

Taiwan’s status is the fact that shapes its foreign relations and a good deal of its domestic politics. It is discussed openly and often; visitors are usually better off listening than offering views.

Taiwan handles visitors well, and the main pressure points are specific: Jiufen and Shifen at weekends, Sun Moon Lake in season, and the peaks of Yushan and Snow Mountain, which are permit-controlled for good reason. Going midweek solves most of it.

Sky lanterns at Shifen are the clearest conflict. They are beautiful and they come down as wire and paper in the hills and rivers; if you want to do it, use an operator that collects the remains, and consider that the local debate about banning them is a live one.

Indigenous communities in the east and the mountains welcome visitors on their own terms. Go through community-run tourism rather than photographing villages from a coach, ask before entering ceremonial ground, and buy weaving and carving from the makers.

Recycling is taken seriously — household waste is sorted to a degree that surprises visitors, and the rubbish trucks play Beethoven to announce themselves. Follow the local system rather than leaving bags out.

October and November are the best months overall: the typhoon season has passed, the heat has dropped, the air is clearer and the mountains are at their most reliable. March and April are the other good window, with cherry blossom in the hills.

December to February is cool and grey in the north, where the north-east monsoon brings persistent drizzle, but warm and sunny in the south — a good time to be in Tainan, Kaohsiung or Kenting. It is also hot spring season, and Lunar New Year (late January or February) shuts much of the country for a week and fills every train.

May and June bring the plum rains, heavy and humid. July to September is hot, above 35°C in the lowlands, and is typhoon season — three or four a year affect the island, usually hitting the east coast first and closing transport for a day or two.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the island

Taiwan is inexpensive for a high-income economy. Food and transport in particular cost a fraction of what they do in Japan or Korea, and the biggest single saving is eating where everyone else eats.

One cost to plan for rather than budget for: Taiwanese hospitals operate on a pay-as-you-use basis, so you need adequate travel health insurance and accessible funds to cover treatment at the time, including possible repatriation. Care is cheap by international standards, but it is not free at the point of use and the bill does not wait.