Taiwan Road Trip, October 2025
Taipei was the introduction; the round-island route is where Taiwan actually opened up. Just under two weeks in October, travelling clockwise from Taipei down the east coast, around the southern tip, up through Tainan and into the central mountains, then on to Taichung and back to Taipei. There’s a lot more to Taiwan than Taipei.
The east coast came first: Hualien's harbour at dusk, sailboats sitting still in the breakwater and a container ship silhouetted against a saturated orange sky, Taitung, further south, gave the single best landscape frame of the whole trip almost by accident: a misty mountain valley with god-rays breaking through cloud that I nearly didn't stop the car for. From there it was a short ferry ride out to Green Island, where a lighthouse sits on a green cliff over water clear enough to read as turquoise even in a snapshot.
Kenting, at the southern tip, took two days and swung between two very different moods: a Moroccan-styled resort with draped curtains and terracotta archways one morning, then a headland watchtower under genuine storm cloud with waves properly crashing the next. In between, a troop of wild macaques turned up on a forest trail, a mother cradling her baby and looking skyward while the rest of the group wandered past close enough for a clean eye-contact portrait.
Tainan, Taiwan's oldest city, earned two days on its own: gilded temple deities under warm interior light, a koi pond with a trickling waterfall, and at Anping, a genuinely startling banyan tree that has grown its aerial roots straight over the ruins of an old merchant house, easily the most photographed single subject of the trip. Shennong Street closed the visit out after dark, lanterns hung in a neat symmetrical row over an old doorway.
Sun Moon Lake, inland and up in elevation, gave two very different mornings: the first classic and calm, a small islet and misty mountain silhouettes; the second a proper sunrise panorama with the whole lake reflecting the mountains back at itself, one of the strongest frames of the trip. Alishan, higher again, added a burning-orange cloud sunrise over the ridgeline, a red Forest Railway train crossing an arch bridge, the same train framed by a wooden station roof, and, entirely unplanned, a small, brightly coloured mountain bird sitting still on a mossy rock just long enough.
Taichung closed the trip out and couldn't have been more different in tone: Rainbow Village's painted houses, the chandeliered grandeur of Miyahara, a night market strung with jellyfish-style light installations, and a back-alley wall covered in hundreds of hand-painted anime characters that took considerably longer to photograph properly than I'd budgeted for.
A full loop of the island in just under two weeks is a lot of ground, and it still didn't feel like enough. Next time I'd slow down around Sun Moon Lake and Alishan specifically, and let the rest of the itinerary give up a day or two to make room for it.
