Taiwan Travel Guide

Taiwan is an island of about 36,000 sq km in the western Pacific, with Japan to its northeast and the Philippines to its south. It is very well known for cities such as Taipei, its capital, as well as hot spring resorts and ornate Taoist and Mazu temples. The island also has some remarkable landscapes. Cycling along the coastal highway with the Pacific Ocean on one side of you is just one of the ways in which you can take in Taiwan's beauty.

Taiwan packs an unusual amount into an island of about 36,000 sq km. A high speed train ride of under two hours takes you from Taipei in the north, with its night markets and department stores, to Tainan in the south, which was the island's capital for two centuries and still holds its oldest temples. Taichung and the port city of Kaohsiung sit in between, and wherever you are, the mountains are never far away.

Two thirds of Taiwan is mountain. Yushan rises to 3,952 metres, the highest peak in Northeast Asia, and the ranges around it hold Alishan with its sunrise railway and sea of cloud, the lake and cycling paths of Sun Moon Lake, and hot spring towns such as Beitou and Guanziling. The east is the wilder side, where the Pacific meets the cliffs of the Qingshui coast. Taroko Gorge is the best known of these landscapes. It has been reopening in stages since the April 2024 earthquake and parts of it are accessible again, though some trails remain closed, so check current access before you build a trip around it.

The island's history is layered and easy to see. Dutch forts, Qing-era streets, Japanese colonial civic buildings and post-1949 institutions often sit within a short walk of each other, particularly in Tainan and Taipei. The National Palace Museum holds one of the world's great collections of Chinese art, and temples such as Longshan in Taipei and the Mazu halls of Lukang and Beigang are working places of worship rather than museum pieces.

What most visitors remember is how easy and how well fed the whole trip is. The rail network and city metros are clean, inexpensive and signed in English, the island is one of the safest in Asia, and the night markets run into the early hours. Taiwan is where bubble tea was invented in the 1980s, and it is also home to beef noodle soup, xiao long bao, oyster omelettes and some of the best vegetarian food in Asia, thanks to a long Buddhist tradition.