A Taiwan guide with skin in the game

Taiwan, explained by someone who keeps coming back to live it

I grew up between Taiwan and the United States, hitchhiked through 120 or so countries, and still ended up back in Taipei. This site is everything I tell friends before they visit: what to book, what to skip, where to eat at 7am, and what it actually takes to stay longer.

Start with the 10-day route Read the Taipei guide

Wooden boardwalk viewing platform above green headlands and surf on Taiwan's northeast coast, late afternoon light through sea mist — Northeast coastLate light on the headland trail along the northeast coast. Two train stops from Taipei and most visitors never see it.

Raised bilingualEnglish, Mandarin, and enough Taiwanese Hokkien to make an aunty laugh
Lived and explored island-wideTaipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung, Tainan, Hualien, Kinmen
Guided travelers in personHundreds of trips planned, from honeymoons to shoestring runs
120+ countries for comparisonTaiwan is the one I chose to keep returning to

Start here

Pick the trip you are actually taking

Nobody needs another list of 40 things to do in Taiwan. You need the right version of the trip for you, planned in the right order: flights and rail first, hotels by neighborhood rather than by star count, then the eating.

Cornerstone guide

Taipei, properly

The city by neighborhood: where to base yourself, the breakfast you should not sleep through, night markets ranked with opinions, and what to skip without guilt.

Itinerary

10 days around the island

Taipei to Tainan to Kaohsiung by high-speed rail, with the northeast coast and a southern beach day built in. Every leg timed, priced, and honest about tradeoffs.

Hotels

Where to stay in Taiwan

Neighborhood-first hotel picks from backpacker bunks to onsen splurges, chosen the way I book for my own family when they visit.

Living in Taiwan

Thinking about moving here?

Gold Card holders, retirees, teachers, and the trip that turns into apartment hunting. What daily life costs and how the paperwork actually goes.

Why this site reads different

Written from the ground, not from other people's posts

Most Taiwan content in English is either government tourism copy or a blogger's single two-week visit stretched across fifty articles. I have stood in every place this site covers, usually more than once, often with relatives correcting my pronunciation.

That changes the advice. I will tell you that a famous night market is mostly for photographs now, that the correct move at breakfast is the salty soy milk, and that a typhoon day is a real possibility in September and what to do with it. Where something on the ground has changed, the guide says when it was last checked.