Tips before travelling

• The water is not safe to drink, but most MRT stations and hotels have UV cleaned water. However, I found I needed my own filtration device on the East coast.
• At the airport you can get an Easicard for transport – it is convenient but requires a non refundable $100 deposit Read more here.
• Trains and buses can often be booked in advance I recommend Taiwan Obsessed for their guide or read my experience here

Vegetarian Eats

• Taipei- Jí Yuán SùShí 吉緣素食
• Taipei – Du Hsiao Yueh 
• Taipei – Dongxing Chili Noodles 東興辣椒麵
• Tainan – SānJīn ShǒuGōng Zhì Miàn 三津手工製麵
• East Coast – Changji Old Street Donghe Steamed Buns – Taitung Buns – 纏記舊街東河包子

As an outsider, Taiwan feels like a gem that has been hidden from us. The country has beauty in its mountains, sea’s and rainforests. Its cities are clean and convenient and a it has a transport system most countries would fight a war over. This year, Taiwan was voted the 28th best country to live in but those who do. I can count on 1 hand the places I have visited that have what Taiwan does. Have a read below about my two week experience backpacking around the island.

Taipei

Can a capital city be charming? Even one of the big metropolis in Asia? No, it cant. But Taipei is about as close as I’ve ever experienced. As you come into Taipei on the train you can see that it is a capital city surrounded by greenery. Rain forests are matted together so tightly on the surrounding hills that it is hard to see where one tree starts and the other ends. And that sums up Taipei quite well. It is a city so well connected that you can go out for dumplings in the morning and be climbing forested mountains in the afternoon before enjoying your evening by the sea.

Taipei is lively enough and conjured memories of Tokyo and Hong Kong in me, but without the same energy. This city does sleep and sometimes that meant the restaurants closed before we had dinner (typically 7-8PM). Thank god for 7/11!

We had two spells in Taipei, one at the start and one at the end. The first, we stayed near Taipei central and the second in Beitou. What I learned is, just stay in an area that interests you the most. Taipei central was not all that thrilling for us, and we enjoyed Beitou much more. It was a bit quieter, had a local feel and was close enough to central, the Yangmanshan national park and the airport to still be convenient for us. The MRT here makes this possible in huge areas of Taipei.

Yangmanshan National Park

Granted, we only did one hike here, which was Zhongzhen trail, due to its ease of access from our hotel in Beitou. If we had done that we would have had more energy and time to explore the trails around Zhongzhen peak, but the heat, stairs (and wrong turns) took its toll on our legs. Although the humidity (and perhaps some pollution) obscured our view, it was still a pretty fine site seeing the entire area of Taipei from one point. We were lucky enough to have Eagles fly around us (perhaps they could sense how weary I was?). The bird life here in general is superb, with many endemic birds fluttering about. You will see lizards scuttling on the path in front of you the whole way up and you’ll probably come across at least one snake. Don’t worry, they are more scared of you than you are of them!

Easicard

An Easicard is a really convenient way to get around Taiwan. Although it is a Taipei travel card, it is used all over the country. It cannot be used for express trains with reserved seats, but can be used for the rest. This includes MRT systems and buses – which you’d need correct change for if you didn’t have the Easicard. But as I said above, you do lose your deposit. So, it isn’t really a deposit, is it?

Alishan

Firstly, tickets! We prebooked as it was Cherry blossom season. We went midweek and we were the only people to have prebooked the train, bus and also the sunrise train in Alishan itself. Everyone else used their Easicard to jump on the bus, the train from Taipei was nowhere near full and the sunset train is in fact multiple trains. One thing to note – if you buy your train tickets in advance from here you have to collect them from the station with a passport. If you buy your bus ticket in advance you have to do so from Familymart and collect it from a computer station in their stores. The sunrise train requires the same but from 7/11. If you don’t read Chinese then this is difficult! I managed it by using Google translate, but remember to check here for a better guide than I can give.

The journey to Alishan was long but not bad, the drivers up the mountain are safe and careful. My partner didn’t even get travel sick like she usually would! I came away thinking that Alishan should be done as a day trip, unless you absolutely want to do the sunrise trip up the mountain. We were lucky and had a semi clear day for the sunrise, but it is often cloudy. There are multiple viewing places up the mountain so you can avoid the crowd from the train, my favourite was here. Unless you want to walk up in the pitch black, the train is your only option – but walking down once the sun has risen takes about an hour.

The food and accommodation in Alishan is renowned for being poor, the local villages are about an hour away and have a great deal more to offer in this regard. The walks here are all very accessible and often on raised walkways. The main ones take 3-4 hours. There are much longer walks which can get very raw quickly which will require pre-planning and often permits (much of the hikes in Taiwan are like this).

Tainan

Tainan was clean and had nice places, but for me I couldn’t recommend it as anything other than a pass through town. We had one full day and a second evening there and we spent it strolling to the temples and enjoying the street are. But we used Tainan as a place to stop before getting the train to Taitung and collecting our bikes from the Giant store.

Cycling the East Coast

Cycling the East coast of Taiwan is no joke. Seriously, be a fit cyclist or become one before going or don’t do it. The latter is really something you’d want to avoid as the scenery was something else and I can’t imagine a better way to enjoy it than being on a bicycle. The first day we had the sea on our right and the mountains on our left. We took the coastal road from Taitung and then took the 30 up through the mountains to Yuli and a combination of the 9 and 193 to Ruisui to stop for the night. Honestly, we walked up the mountain with the bikes. Neither of us were fit enough. That was on us, saying that, unless you cycle you won’t be. There is no shame in it, just make sure you give yourself enough spare time.

The main rule here is to get off the 9 and onto the 193 between Yuli and Hualien if at all possible. The 9 is a highway with a bicycle lane, it’s straighter and faster but way less enjoyable. The 193 has no convenience stores, but it does have rice paddies reflecting the mountain view, villages which are a peek inside what Taiwan was like decades ago and farms fragrant with pineapples and orange blossom.

Final Thoughts

Wow, Taiwan blew me away. As someone who has spent a lot of time in China and Japan, I’d wanted to come here for a while. But I really didnt have any expectations from it. What I found was a country that has been so well cared for by its government and citizens that I think any person could come here and enjoy it. The scenery on the East coast was the highlight and I really recommend trying to do the cycle or at least some of it if you come here. The access to nature and in particular national parks from Taipei is unbelievable.