When I left for Asia a little over a year ago, I set a goal to blog once a month, providing a travel update about life as a “digital nomad”. I was successful for 7/8 months. So, before I jump into other life musings, I feel it’s my duty to share about my time in Taiwan way back in May of this year.
Ryan and I flew to Taipei, Taiwan from Tokyo, Japan. We left Japan on a complete and total high. I had expected to like Japan, but not to fall so completely in love with it. Do you know that feeling when you arrive in a new city or country and you feel totally at home right away? That’s how I felt in Japan. It just felt right being there. There are few places in the world that have given me that feeling, so 3 weeks certainly didn’t feel like long enough to spend there.
Before I dive into my tales of our time in Taiwan, I think it’s important to note a couple things about Taiwan. Taiwan is a super unique country, as it is not a UN recognized country (I’m still counting it in my country count). China threatened to leave the UN if it recognized Taiwan, because China still considers Taiwan part of China despite the fact that it has an independent government, passport, customs policy, etc. Because of this, Taiwan is technically called “The People’s Republic of China”. Taiwanese people are also allowed to put both their Taiwanese name and an English name of their choosing on their passport!
Now, on with my story…
We arrived in Taipei in the wee hours of the morning after sleeping in the Tokyo airport. We spent over an hour in customers before we FINALLY left the airport and got on the train to our AirBnb. Much to our chagrin, it was going to take us 3 trains and an hour to get to the apartment. Great.
We have a lot of friends who have traveled Taiwan and they all had great things to say about it, so we had pretty high expectations. As we rode the train into the city, all I could think to myself was how drab the city looked, and how it could use a good power wash. I thought it, Ryan said it.
I nodded, but then brushed it off saying that we were probably going by a bad neighborhood, or that we weren’t quite in the city yet.
Those things weren’t entirely wrong. We weren’t in a nice area, and we were on the outskirts of the city, but as we arrived into the city, our eyes were met with more drab buildings.
We arrived at our AirBnb and had one of those situations where our apartment looked nicer and bigger online. We had planned to stay a month in this specific place, but we almost immediately cut it back to 2.5 weeks, deciding we would spend less time in Taipei and more time elsewhere on the island.
We decided to give Taipei a couple of days, do some sightseeing, meeting up with a couple of friends, and try some local food before we made any rash decisions (ie. booking a flight immediately out of Taiwan).
So we spent the next week checking out night markets (do NOT eat the fermented tofu), meeting up with expat friends, and exploring some of the most popular tourist sights. We spent one afternoon visiting the Kai-shek Memorial in downtown Taipei, we went to the top of Taipei 101, we watched the sunset over the city, and we went for a hike with friends in Yangmingshan National Park. All the while I was trying so desperately to fall in love while Taiwan, while finding myself desperately wanting to be back in Japan.
A couple of weeks went by and we headed to southern Taiwan to a city called Kaohsiung, where we have a travel blogger friend who specializes in waterfall hikes. He kindly organized a waterfall hike during the week we were there and drove us and a couple other people out to a remote waterfall deep within the Taiwanese mountains. I was in awe of the contrast between the drab cities and the beautiful countryside. I should know by now that nature always saves the day (or in this case, the month!).
On top of some much needed time with mother nature, we also discovered a salad and smoothie bar called To Be Smoothie, where we proceeded to eat all the rest of our meals that week. Taiwanese food may be all the rage to some, but when you’re a gluten free vegetarian it’s tough finding good eats.
After a week in Kaohsiung, we headed back to Taipei where we met up with another travel blogger friend, Brock (Backpack with Brock is his travel blogger name – go check him out, he’s awesome!). We spent an awesome couple of days with Brock, trying new food, visiting new coffee shops, and watching the sunset at the top of the Maokong Gondola way up in the hills overlooking Taipei.
By the time our one month mark in Taiwan rolled around, I felt slightly sad that we were leaving. I had spent so much time trying to like Taiwan that when it finally grew on me, it was time to go. Isn’t that always how these things work?
Here are a few things I learned from my experience in Taiwan:
1. Don’t create expectations based on other people’s opinions.
2. Always come in with low expectations. That way the situation has to be extra shitty to get any worse!
3. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover – there is always more to discover!
4. It’s okay not to like a place.
5. Mother nature and healthy food really do make a difference.
6. Location matters in a city that you don’t know!
7. Spending time with friends is awesome 🙂
8. I may have been Japanese in another life.
Next up – South Korea!