ilha formosa (taiwan)

April 10, 2025

Ah, Taiwan. One of the places I look back on most fondly.

Arriving from South Korea, we took the train from the airport to our accomodation in Taipei, the capital of the country.

The streets here reminded me of some Chinese cities, but with a more expressive and open atmosphere. There was still the messy streets, the smell of street food stalls and the density of other megacities, but people seemed more relaxed and welcoming.

Our first port of call was to get some food, so we sat down at a street-side restaurant and had a meal and a beer before deciding to walk through the city.

taipei #

We decided to do the Elephant Mountain trail, and at the top we had a pretty good view of Taipei 101, the most famous skyscraper in the city.

We took a detour from Elephant Mountain’s trail and found some funny looking statues at a temple called Songshan Tianbao, including this guy.

I also spent an afternoon riding around the city on the rentable bicycles littered through the city, and spent a good while on the bike path alongside the river.

One evening, Jade and I went to Raohe Night Market to try some local foods. A highlight were these black pepper buns that are cooked in the inner wall of a clay brick oven.

We visited a place called Modern Toilet Restaurant for lunch once. The whole idea is they serve food in little toilet bowls. We weren’t sure if we should visit this admittedly tacky concept of a restaurant, but the food was actually decent.

houtong cat village #

We took the train to Houtong Cat Village, which is a town most tourists visit on the way to Jiufen, another famous tourist town.

licking cat — As you'd imagine, there's just a lot of cats lazing around.

cat clipped ear — Having a clipped ear is the village's way of keeping track of which cats have been sterilised.

cat statues — The town has really committed to the bit.

hide and seek cafe — A cute cafe we stopped at for a drink. Naturally, the cafe had its own resident cat.

jiufen old street #

After visiting the cat village, we continued on to Jiufen and walked down the lantern-adorned alleyways. Once again, I failed to adjust my camera’s exposure setting and so quite a few of these pictures are dark.

lanterns — The entire town was dressed up in red lights.

Many of the alleys are tight and snake up and down staircases.

ghibli town — The entire town felt a little like it was out of a Ghibli film, but quite touristy.

tight section — This particular section was very cramped as it was close to all the famous teashops of the town.

jiufen amei tea house — The front of Jiufen Amei Tea House.

The overpriced but enjoyable tea setup we enjoyed.

chiang kai-shek memorial hall #

The most impressive structure to visit in Taipei is, of course, the Memorial Hall. It’s very well looked after, and larger than the pictures make it out to be.

chiang kai-shek statue — A statue of Chiang Kai-shek.

memorial hall square — The square in front of the hall.

shrimp fishing #

The most unusual thing we got up to in Taipei was spending an evening fishing for shrimp in an indoor pool. You essentially post up, grab a beer, cast your line and wait for a nibble. Then you get to eat whatever you catch.

We did also manage to make it to Tainan, a city south of Taipei, but we weren’t there for very long and I didn’t take any pictures whilst we were there. A delightful place, however.

Having spent a good amount of time in dense cities, we were due for more of a ‘vacation’. Time to catch a flight and relax on a beach in the Philippines.