TAIWAN is wonderfully non-frenetic, a destination for exploring care-freely – motorists drive here with a sense of courtesy, a place – and experiencing moments of throwaway enchantment. A singing gondolier on an evening boat ride down Love River in the southern town of Kaohsiung; bubble tea at Chun Shui Tang, the tea room in Taichung where the unique beverage originated; a drum orchestra performing in an abandoned sugar factory in Tainan; standing safely on the tracks of a railway line, after an hourly service brings a train dashing down Pingxi’s main street, and launching a giant, burning lantern into the sky after painting your wish list on its four sides.
Admittedly, Taiwan has a tendency to cuteify – a garbage truck playing a Für Elise audio loop has to be heard to believe – but it comes as an endearing part of a refreshing unselfconsciousness that leans in to decorum and politeness.
Taiwan’s best hotels are tastefully modest with occasional outstanding features that make them memorable. Le Méridien in Taichung has bedrooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and a 24/7 fitness centre. Just Sleep in Tainan, with a 25-metre outdoor pool, nods towards hipness with some nicely designed touches. Come nightfall, the exterior of H20 in Kaohsiung appears as pulsing waterfalls of vivid lighting. The eminent Palais De Chine in Taipei indulges in an over-the-top penchant for dark interiors and a museum-like atmosphere that feels obscurely decadent.
A deservedly favourite hotel is Amba Taipei Songshan, next to train and metro stations and Raohe Night Market (with Michelin-recommended street vendors), with stunning views on its side that looks across to 508m-high Taipei 101 as well as design details like the pleasingly retro light switches in bedrooms.
Here, too, is Que restaurant with its speciality steaks, cooked over the wood of longan trees to impart a smoky flavour to the meat; vegetarians, best let them know in advance, are happily catered for.
Regional Chinese cuisine, predominantly Fujian, features in most restaurants and seafood is hugely popular. At the National Palace Museum in Taipei – replete with treasures taken from the Imperial Palace in Beijing to Taiwan in 1949 – Silks Palace deserves its reputation for classy meals and, unlike many Chinese restaurants in Taiwan, vegetarians can dine here without being reduced to sampling side dishes.
Know-how avoiders of meat seek out restaurants like Serenity in Taipei, established when the daughter of a restaurant entrepreneur became a Buddhist and persuaded her parents to cater for their food preferences. Serenity’s mock-meat, Sichuan-style dishes are exemplary and, if feeling adventurous, dare yourself to try the stinky tofu.
Japan’s 50-year colonization of Taiwan, which ended in 1945, has left a culinary legacy across the island and signature dishes at ibuki (‘the breeze that stirs beside mountain mists’ being one poetic translation of the word), in the Shangri-La Far Eastern in the capital, bear delectable testimony to this: sashimi platters; hana sushi; California rolls; Wagyu by way of sirloin or hot pot; and a separate tappanyaki station with the chef live cooking show.
Situated on the 6th floor, ibuki’s Japanese herb garden adds to the atmosphere but, if staying a night, it cannot rival the hotel’s nocturnal, rooftop views of the city. At Bencotto in Taipei, the Venetian chef combines ingredients from the US, New Zealand and Japan to create classic Italian tastes, like a delicious parmigiana di melanzane (with an authentically-enhanced coulis, courtesy of San Marzano tomatoes).
The beaches and fishing towns of Taiwan’s east coast are best explored by car, being separated by mountains from the rest of the country which is comfortably reached by public transport.
Travelling down the west coast, after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, the presence of frangipani, palms and Taiwanese Golden Rain trees add an exotic quality to southern Taiwan.
Highlights in temple-filled Tainan – the new, 12th edition of the Lonely Planet guide has a map for touring on foot seven of the more interesting ones – include the Anping Tree House where a huge banyan tree has grown in and through a crumbling, colonial-era warehouse and another deserted building, this time a sugar factory with its machinery in situ, which has become the Ten Drum Cultural Village.
Transformation on a larger scale has turned Kaohsiung, once a major port in Japanese colonial times, into the culturally and architecturally most vibrant city in southern Taiwan. On nearby Cijin Island, a ten-minute boat ride from the harbour, a bar awaits where, after hiring a volley ball for the nets on the beach, you can eat Mexican and drink under swaying palm trees while gazing out to the South China Sea.
From Kaoshiung, a morning, 300-kph train makes a rocket-fast journey to the capital that will allow for, pre-lunchtime, another high-speed trip – this time a vertical one that shoots you to the 89th floor of Taipei 101. Travelling at 1010 metres per minute, the 37-second journey is as hushed a journey as the train ride.
The atrium on the fourth floor of Taipei 101 is dedicated to high-end international flagship stores but for quality shops with merchandise not readily available outside Taiwan it is worth a day trip northeast to the National Center for Traditional Arts in Yilan County.
Here you can make your own indigo-dye design on a piece of cotton before stirring and squeezing in a vat of inky-blue liquid and then rinsing it to reveal your patterned cloth. It’s an experience likely to motivate the purchase of some of the stellar designs on the bags, backpacks, pillow cases and scarfs in the store.
by Sean Sheehan
For more information on Taiwan see Taiwan Tourism.