The once remote East Coast is one of Taiwan’s last great tribal strongholds. Traveling here, it’s hard to miss the myriad roadside indigenous totems, murals, arches, and statues, but to get any real understanding of tribal Taiwan you need to delve...
The bright-painted trains of the short Jiji Line are like buses on a convenient local route delivering tourists and locals between old settlements along the Zhuoshui River, from the edge of the western plains to the foot of the mighty central...
The core of Lukang (Hanyu Pinyin spelling: Lugang), located just off Taiwan’s central-west coast, is perhaps Taiwan’s best imperial-days living museum, a repository of heritage architecture even more concentrated than that found in the acclaimed core of Tainan City to the...
Old Tainan County, which surrounded coastal Tainan City on three sides, was merged with the city in 2010, bringing a great swathe of watery coastal lands, farmed flatlands, foothills, and mountains within the city’s borders. In this article we rollick about...
Old Chiayi City is a little place sitting in the middle of the southwest plains that meanders at a pleasingly relaxed pace through its days. It is filled with nuggets awaiting the history spelunker, more and more of its architectural nuggets...
Glory Days in High-Mountain Country TEXT / RICK CHARETTEPHOTOS / RAY CHANG Lalashan is a popular tourist destination in the high-mountain region of north Taiwan. It’s in Taoyuan City’s far south, a region populated by rugged, brawny mountain giants. Both indigenous...
From the sky-searching, thick mountains that define its deep interior all the way down right to water’s edge along its Taiwan Strait coast, the Hsinchu region is beautiful hill country – in most areas away from the coast well forested and...
Ahoy! We’re headed out to the scores of islands big and small, populated and unpopulated, that make up the Penghu Islands, all within the Penghu National Scenic Area gem that floats smack in the middle of the Taiwan Strait. What awaits...
Picture-perfect Sun Moon Lake, snuggled in the foothills of Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range, high peaks looking down into the lake basin on the east, is one of the prettiest of the island’s bursting treasure vault of tourist mountain getaway destinations. Your...
When traveling, you target places of the most inspiring beauty, natural or manmade. As you well know, however, choosing your places of accommodation can be just as important as choosing the sights you’ll visit. Stays in “OK” facilities, at best, add...
Tainan, this island’s first urban center, provides the most powerful introduction to “yesteryear” Taiwan for a visiting traveler. It is filled to bursting with historic sites of national importance, and famed especially for its thick cluster of centuries-old temples. Now, the...
Alishan and Kenting are two of the top-tourist draws in Taiwan. One is known for high mountains with coniferous forests, bamboo groves, tea plantations, indigenous villages, and a narrow-gauge alpine railway line, the other is the island’s most popular tropical beach...
Tainan is a city with an essence that never seems to change, yet somehow gets better and better. Taiwan’s political and economic capital for more than 200 years, until 1885, it’s rightly regarded as a bastion of traditional culture. In its...
What sorts of healthy, invigorating active-fun pleasures will fill your days spent along the visually spectacular Northeast Coast, the expanse of the mighty Pacific laid out before you, wall of young and still quickly growing mountains close in behind? Hiking breeze-swept...
The Donghe Township experience: A little surfin’, a little beach action, a little sunrise watchin’, a little café loungin’, a little outdoor live-music listenin’, a little indigenous-culture and Taiwan heritage explorin’, a little indigenous arts and crafts shoppin’, a little barbecuin’,...
Taitung County, stretched along Taiwan’s southeast coast, offers scenic beauty in great diversity, with bright-blue ocean waters, terraced rice fields, and towering mountains. Possessing the longest coastline of any county on the island, Taitung is a popular destination for tourists looking...
