Taiwan #IlhaFormosa

Taiwan was such a pleasant surprise! It is not a very common tourist destination and in retrospect I realized how little I knew about this small beautiful country before arriving.

Why you should consider Taiwan as your next destination:

The island country is also known as Ilha Formosa or the Beautiful Island in Portuguese for a reason
Food is so delicious, different and rich in flavour that you cannot not turn this trip into a food exploration feast
The people are extremely kind and warmhearted. I cannot stress this enough! For example there hasn’t been a single time we looked a bit like confused tourists and a person didn’t come to try and help us
Taiwan offers a rich cultural experience combining tradition and modern in a unique way. The years of influence from Japan, China and the West (Portugal, Spain and Holland set foot here in the past) have created a truly beautiful place and culture
Last but not least: it is safe and cheap. Also travelling around is convenient

Here are some highlights from the places we visited, the Taiwanese food and some things about Taiwan that we found interesting (including the next in line places we wished we had time to visit).

Taipei

We got to familiarize ourselves with Taipei with the help of Like it Farmosa free walking tours which offered a great introduction into this vibrant city. They have several different tours a day, every day and we’d definitely recommend them (note that the guides are not professionals and it’s tip based but you get to learn a lot in a short period of time).

We took the Historical tour which showed us Longshan temple and explained the meaning behind some of the rituals (which was really nice actually); we also passed by the Red house and saw the LGBT district as well as the old Chinese quarter (where a.o. we learned about the differences between Chinese and Western zombies). We further strolled to the presidential house and saw the area where people protest, we continued to the 2-28 Peace Memorial Park which has rich history and ended up at the Chiang Kai-shek memorial hall. And I even skipped mentioning some stops 🙂

Note on the last picture the statues of the Chinese and Japanese men each with a cup of bubble tea and the modern Taiwanese teenagers taking a selfie – so much meaning behind this.

The tour ends very close to the Nanmen market, which offers great Taiwanese lunch options. If you want to try some good Taiwanese coffee or you miss your latte macchiato, around the corner is Cafe No.7.

We also did the Modern walking tour which was shorter and a bit less exciting than the Historic one but it was still worth doing. We started close to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall monument, passed by the city hall and ended up at Taipei 101 which at 508 meter high was for a while the tallest building on earth.

To round off the walking tours we ended up going to the Golden Age tour too (I hope this doesn’t feel too much as a promotional post for the tours :).

This was a relaxed one and also a favourite one where we got to explore most of Dihua street, namely a long shop street with lots of history, a small and beautiful City of God temple and a hipster section. We also got to see the typical Taiwanese cloth made from plastic bottles (yey for the environment!).

At night we went to the Raohe night market, one of the oldest ones. This is definitely a must! Great endless choice of food and next to the entrance there is another beautiful temple. It is mostly focused on food and is less touristy than others.

We went to several more night markets and another big one was Shilin night market. It covers a large area of streets and side streets selling food but also clothes, souvenirs, cosmetics, etc. It is also a more touristy one. If you have time, try to visit several night markets for the full experience.

Perhaps the most interesting and beautiful temple we saw was the Baoan temple so try to squeeze it in. Just next to it is the Confucius temple which was rather majestic.

Another must-see attraction is the National Palace Museum containing endless Chinese artifacts transported from the mainland some 70+ years ago. We followed the general advice and visited the museum on a Friday after 6pm when it was less packed with tourists (or in our view normally packed for a museum sometimes referred to as the Chinese Louvre). We unfortunately missed the highlight piece by a week, the Mona Lisa of the museum, namely a Jadeite cabbage (yep, you read this correctly.. but to be fair it looks beautiful on the photos). The lightning in the museum is a bit dark and there’s a lot to see so it could get a bit tiring at some point, to be frank.

It is handy to equip yourself with an easy card to navigate the public transport. You can get it at the airport. Ours had Hello Kitty at the back.

Tainan

Tainan is the old capital of Taiwan and has a lot of temples, delicious food and sights to offer. We took the normal train line from Taipei which took four hours (not the high speed one which apparently stops at the outskirts of the city). It’s a perfect city for a one or two day trip.

Most of the sights are temples (eg Grand Matsu Temple or actually two of them; God of War temple; Confucius temple), as well as several sights linked to the Dutch presence on the island (such as the Chihkan towers and the Dutch fort). Also fun to see is the ‘hipster’ Shennong Street.

We would really recommend to get bikes to explore around the city. You can find them at several locations throughout the city (including at the station) and these are easy to rent with a credit card or otherwise with the easycard (though for that it seems you need to register and a Taiwanese number is required). Rate was rather cheap, around 3 euros for the day.

With the bikes we easily got to Anbing area where the old Dutch fort is and came back cycling by one of the canals.

Alishan National Park (and Chiayi)

The Alishan national park offers a great escape from the city life to a beautiful fairytale forest. In spring the trees blossom will likely be very beautiful, we were however there in November. The park offers some easy walks and we managed to walk nearly all in several hours. There are two cute short train rides you can take as an alternative. There are lots of Chinese tourists but you can still find quiet spots (we were there on a weekday).

Spoiler alert – the oldest tree we saw was 2000 years old! Let us know if you’ve been there and you’ve seen an older one as we might have missed it.

In terms of logistics in order to get to Alishan, you likely need to go via Chiayi. You can get there from Chiayi in around two hour bus ride or split the way there into a beautiful forest train ride to Fenqihu (elevating from 30m to around 1400m in two hours; the original train goes all the way to Alishan elevating to nearly 2500m! But it’s currently closed). The last bus leaves at 17.10 from Alishan.

Some words on Chaiyi – the city turned bigger than what we had expected. We didn’t do much, just walked around and ate 🙂 We also went to the cinema, which has turned into a tradition for us when we go for longer travels – English-spoken movies are run in English with subtitles.

Taichung

We spent a day and a night at Taichung which was okay. The city center doesn’t offer too many sights but it’s still nice to stroll around and have some food (ice cream at Miyahara is an experience).

The above picture is in case you wondered how many types of chocolate ice cream can one think of.

We again rent some bikes in order to see more of the city. We also visited the National Museum of Fine Arts.

Many people use Taichung as a gate to Sun Moon Lake. We also read about a very nice bike tour around an hour to hour and a half outside of the city but that was just a bit too far for our lazy day.

Food!

Food is so delicious, accessible and everywhere! Night markets offer a real food feast where the concentration of deliciousness is unimaginable.

And apparently Taiwan brought both bubble tea and dumplings to the world. Thank you, Taiwan!

Here are some of the things we tried and which we wish we had more of 🙂

Steamed dumplings (Din Tai Fung – waww!)

Oyster omelette and Stinky tofu (the one we tried was not that stinky but we didn’t try a second one after it 😉

Lurou fan or rise with braised pork (less than a euro and super delicious; it can also be with beef)

Stinky tofu .. because I had to try it. This one was the deep fried version which was recommended as the best one. I tried a simple stinky tofu as well as and I indeed liked the fried one better. Both were stinky! The aftertaste stays with you for longer than I would have hoped, to be honest

Rise ball with fish and/or meat (here in the making, it is great on-the-go food)

Bao Bing or shaved ice dessert in this case with red beans (because .. why not)

Almond tofu cheese (Tainan)

Dan tsu (dry) noodles plus dry sofu and wasabi in Tainan – the dish on the lower right side of the photo; the rest is octopus, dry tofu and of course rise with braised pork

Beef noodles

We didn’t take a picture.. noooo. Now you just need to trust us 🙂

Pepper chilli bisket (or something like that)

Sweet soup with grass jelly, purple rice, taro, sweet potato and more (didn’t love it)

Pig blood’s cake (trying it was an experience in itself; you don’t feel the blood taste but it’s hard to forget what you’re eating so we didn’t finish it; it’s covered in peanuts so that helps a bit with the taste)

Traditional pancake (this one was with peanut butter, quite nice flavour)

Frozen fruits / real fruits ice cream

To our surprise, it turned out that there are great bakeries with really good bread – some of the best we’ve ever had!

Also a typical lunch option is the so-called lunch box (here accompanied by cold tea and eaten in the train)

Some more desserts of which i didn’t take photos and which were nice: Custard egg roll in Tainan, moon cake, pineapple cake, local ice cream such as taro ice cream or red bean ice cream

Drinks

Bubble tea is the king and queen of drinks here! Don’t order at full sugar, already 20-30% is quite sugary. It’s advised to drink it every day because .. again why not 🙂

Normal tea is also to be found at every corner, be it green, black or oolong, warm or with ice, with or without sugar. We had simple ice tea with no sugar on multiple occasions

Delicious dragon fruit ice drink – this one is worth mentioning! The fruit can be any sort, the one we tried was dragon fruit but options are ample (mango seemed quite popular). They essentially mix some fruit with ice run it through a blender making for the perfect drink in the warm weather

Coffee – good coffee was actually not hard to find and we even stumbled upon a coffee shop with a very passionate about coffee owner (and a really fluffy cat). He brew some special Taiwanese-grown coffee for us and showed us how the taste can be very different dependent on the cup in which it is served (and thus the difference in temperature)

And here some more pictures of food:

Observations / things we found interesting / AOB:

Only 17 countries recognize Taiwan, down from 20 a year ago. This leads to a lot of complications. Please read and talk to locals as much as you can on this topic and the topic on independence – this was an eyeopening experience and now I feel I have more questions than answers

If we had more time, the things we would have loved to do next are: Taroko National Park on the east side, Kenting national park in the south, go to a hot spring, Sun Moon Lake, bike next to the east coast line, visit Jiufen (we actually did the last one but it was very rainy so we went back to Taipei)

Also there appear to be multiple festivals that are really worth seeing (eg Matsu pilgrimage)

Birth rate is very low (1.05 was what our tour guide said)

Baseball is a national sport here (we didn’t expect that)

Other ‘national sports’ are apparently protesting and lining up. We saw both at several occasions (the lining up pretty much all the time) and both say a lot about the culture

LGBT rights are progressive here and the largest gay pride in Asia is held in Taipei. The country will hold a referendum on gay marriages later this year

Temples may mix several religions in one in the same way Taiwanese people combine them. For example Longshan temple is a Buddhist temple but there are more than 100 other gods and goddess worshipped there

Taiwan was under martial law for a very long time (between 1948 and 1987; a period also called White Terror)

Although they have a 200 bill for the Taiwanese dollar, we never saw it in circulation and mostly 100, 500 and 1000 bills are used. Locals link it to the face on the bill namely that of Chiang Kai-shek (ruler during the ‘white terror’ period)

Tutto il mondo è paese