Taiwan travel: a most beautiful and fascinating island

The ‘awe-inspiring’ Taroko National Park

(Image credit: Hemis/Alamy Stock Photo)

You’ll encounter few other Westerners on holiday in Taiwan – it receives only 3,000 British tourists each year, for instance – and yet it is among the most beautiful, fascinating and friendly places you could hope to visit, says Janice Turner in The Times. An island one-seventh the size of the UK, with a population of 24 million, it has spectacular mountain landscapes, some of the best food in Asia, and the world’s greatest collection of ancient Chinese art. Perhaps “outdated perceptions” put visitors off (“Made in Taiwan” means high-end microchips now, not “cheap plastic tat”); and no doubt Chinese talk of “forced ‘reunification’”, together with recent military drills around its coast, don’t help. But for me, the chance to show support for a fellow democracy in daunting times was just one more reason to go.

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The capital, Taipei, is “spotless”, and all but crime-free. In Taipei 101 – once the world’s tallest building – you’ll find “ritzy stores” and a Michelin-starred dim sum bar where robots help the waiters. But the city is not some “sterile, supersized Singapore”. The carnival stalls of Shilin Night Market are great fun, as is the gay quarter, and there are teeming low-rise districts full of noodle bars and foot-massage joints. Taipei’s “unmissable” sight, however, is the National Palace Museum, which houses the “hoard” of antiquities that the Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek brought when he fled the Communist revolution in 1948.

But to see the layers of Taiwan’s history, you need to head to Tainan, its oldest city. It was here that the Dutch first landed, in 1624, establishing colonial rule over the island’s indigenous people, and there are also buildings from the periods of Chinese rule (1683 to 1895) and Japanese occupation (1895 to 1945). Take it in on a tour of the country that should also include the awe-inspiring Taroko National Park (great for hiking), the hot springs of Yilan province, and the thriving art scene in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second city.