Taiwan

As much as I may or may not miss life in the Northeast, one major benefit for someone with the travel bug like me is that it makes getting across the Pacific much cheaper and much easier. Back around Christmas 2024 and New Years 2025, my partner and I were combing Google flights trying to figure out where was going ton be next on our lists. Mexico was up there, Japan would have happened were it not for bad timing of the cheapest week for flights, and we definitely had lots of items we felt an urge to cross off our bucket list.

By some random stroke of luck, though, I decided to check out tickets to Taipei “for sh*ts and gigs.” A friend had recently returned from teaching English with Fulbright there, it looked pretty, and I knew it had high speed rail, which was altogether enough to make me a little curious. Popping some dates into Google Flights, though, found us tickets for just $600, not all that much more than tickets to Mexico City. Thinking we probably wouldn’t see tickets across the Pacific for a price like that anytime soon, we pulled the trigger and ended up having the time of our lives.

Jackson arrived a few days before me and explored the East Coast, taking the train back up to meet me in Taoyuan after my very late arrival. From there, we made our way to Kaohsiung in the South by HSR, took the local train and a winding bus into a tiny mountain town called Fenqihu, and finally made our way back to the top of the island in Taipei. In between were sprinkled some daytrips to Tainan - a historic capital city, Shizhuo - a hilly town of tea plantations, Jiufen - the inspiration behind Spirited Away, and Houtong - an old coal mining town now filled with cats and a personal highlight of the trip. Below are a collection of photographs from our travels and a bit more information about them.

Kaohsiung, the major city of the south of the island and an anchor of Hokkien/Taiwanese culture, was our first major stop on the trip (or first shared stop, Jackson did the East Coast without me) and was oppressively hot and humid, even for this Florida-raised boy. Unfortunately, we didn’t get up to a crazy amount of exploring here, and what we did was punctuated by frequent dips into the hotel or local malls for water and AC, but we did enjoy a beach sunset after a brief ferry ride, night market eats, and riding the local metro. A personal highlight was delicious Chinese-style breakfast at our hotel (through which Evan discovered after 3 days of the same meal that he is indeed allergic to soymilk).

Kaohsiung also served as our home base to visit the old capital of Tainan, probably the most historic city of our trip. The short trip north did not bring much relief in terms of weather, but we had plenty of fun here, wandering through neighborhood alleys, visiting an Imperial Japanese-era department store, stopping into the most interesting Catholic Church I’ve been to (out of many), and our favorite lunch of the trip: mango beers, fresh rice, stir-fried garlic pea shoots, and fried oysters à la Taiwanese popcorn chicken.

Headed north from Kaohsiung by local train (TRA, or Taiwan Railways Administration), we hopped off in Chiayi to take a slightly harrowing ride into the island’s central mountain spine to stay in Fenqihu, one of the last stops on the way up to Alishan National Park. We stayed there for maybe two and a half days, enjoying hearty cooking, a meticulously-well-kept 80’s-era hotel, and quiet mountain vibes and views. I got less great photos here on my camera than on my phone unfortunately, and one sight in particular - Fenqihu’s insane nightly fireflies - was barely able to be captured on either!

All in all, Jackson spent a solid chunk of our trip exploring Taipei and its surroundings. I can say with some confidence that this is certainly one of the cities I’ve enjoyed most in my travels. So many quiet, wonderful neighborhood pockets, the hustle and bustle of a megacity, incredibly easy and convenient transit, and my god the food… I could spend days writing about this city, but some particular memories included tea in the mountains to the city’s southeast, our visit to cat town Houtong, fried food near National Taiwan Normal University, a night market visit with a good friend of a good friend, and lots and lots of food.