Taiwan may be the most balanced place I’ve ever visited. Nestled tensely between communist and capitalist political and economic systems, it manages to make the best of both. Food is what most travelers think of when visiting Taiwan, but I’d heard from my Taiwanese tourists that it was a very beautiful country. I found that these were indeed the two elements I enjoyed most while visiting this most civilized society.
Transportation from the airport was easy, with the choice of a commuter train, an express train, and the high speed rail with the most expensive option costing just five US dollars. I was able to hold my mobile phone over the electronic reader at the turnstile for the express train which deducted my fare using Google pay. Once aboard, I sat next to the window to watch this city of 2.6 million people as the train made the 35 minute trip to the city.
Despite using my phone for the airport express, I did have to purchase a Taiwan metro card to use locally. These can be purchased and topped up at any 7-11, a store that are ubiquitous throughout the country. I find it odd which chains are represented overseas. It comes as no surprise to see McDonald’s and Starbucks in every city I visit, but the odd American chain shows up randomly. Swensen’s, a San Francisco ice cream store is spread throughout Laos and Cambodia. Gloria Jeans coffee also shows up there. Dunkin’ donuts is a favorite in Taiwan and Malaysia. In the Philippines, I saw more than one Shakey’s, a pizza parlor, a place I don’t even think exists in America anymore.
I do avoid chains while traveling unless they offer something I just can’t get locally. I have given into a grand slam breakfast at Denny’s in Manila or a banana split at Swensen’s in the capital of Laos. Sometimes you just get tired of eating the local fare, especially if it’s a country that offers little else than the local fare.
In Nepal, the only meal served is Dal Bhat. The Nepalese are crazy about it and eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Taiwan is not entirely different: It’s basically some form of rice or noodle for every meal. My friend in Taiwan was trying to explain to me how breakfast was different, and it basically came down to the fact that the same food was served at breakfast, just fewer variations of it. On the plus side, a place like McDonalds could offer noodles all day instead of cutting off the breakfast noodles at 10:30am.
Malaysia probably is one of the best places to travel for food diversity as they have three different cultures there in equal proportion: Indian, Chinese, and Malay, which means you have a variety of options to choose from no matter the time of day. Add that it has a large expat population, and that means you have access to BBQ ribs, steak, wine, cheese and coffee.
The night market
Taiwan did not disappoint with food. On the first day, I headed to the popular Ximen night market. I was a little hungry from the long day of flying so I decided to get a bowl of noodles from the place right in front of my hotel. I have often mocked people for paying twelve dollars for a bowl of noodles you can get at the grocery store for less than a quarter a pack, but when I got my first taste of freshly made Taiwanese noodles I gasped with delight.
I am convinced that the Taiwanese demand their noodles as fresh as the French demand their bread. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the bread culture in France: you would never find bread for sale in the afternoon that was made in the morning. The french bake bread at least three times a day, and it is expected that you eat it as soon as possible after it leaves the oven.
The noodles I scooped into my mouth with a pair of chopsticks tasted like they’d been rolled just minutes before they were immersed in boiling water for my minced pork and mushroom soup. I ordered a side of pot stickers, called dumplings here, and they were presented in five different colors. At first, I thought it was simply different colored noodles, but within each one was a different stuffing: one with spinach, one with corn, one with mushroom and the other two chicken and pork. I’d never known pot stickers to come in so many flavors, and the noodle wrapping was just as fresh and tender as the ones in my soup.
The broth had a complex favor, unlike anything I’ve ever tasted from a ramen packet, though I still added spicy chili pepper oil as I have taken to liking my food spicy. Still, it needed no alteration, and the soy sauce only proved to mask the subtle flavors of the pot stickers.
I paid the equivalent of seven US dollars for my meal and headed out to the night market. I should add that I can’t refer you to the place where I enjoyed my noodles as the mom and pop shop had no markings. It was simply a kitchen with several boiling pots immersed in a counter with pictures of all the noodle options available to help the foreigners who can’t read Chinese. You grab a plastic menu and, with a crayon, mark the number of each dish you want before walking back to take a seat and wait for your meal.
The night market was several blocks of all types of food being prepared in all types of ways. My next stop was a place that cooked steak bites. Once I ordered, the chef poured a small bowl filled with cubed steak pieces onto a grill. Once they’d gotten a chance to heat, he pulled out a butane torch, the kind I’ve seen highway workers using to clear brush from the side of the road. He seared the outside of the meat and then put the cubes into a box. I got to choose my flavoring, and he generously sprinkled them with garlic pepper.
Each steak bite was a mini filet mignon, and they melted like butter in my mouth. I headed a few stalls down and decided to wash my meal down with bubble tea, a Taiwanese favorite that made up almost half the vendors I saw on the street. There were numerous flavors from which to choose, and I decided to be adventurous and go with the black jelly.
Like the fresh noodles, bubble tea vendors pride themselves on the quality of their tapioca balls. I could taste the difference in freshness, and the sweetness of the drink was a nice complement to the savory steak bites. Because they are composed of brown sugar and condensed milk, you can imagine the delight my tongue experienced, like a kid drinking liquid ice cream.
I attempted to make room for two more things that evening: an oyster omelette and a piece of fried chicken, which turned out to be an entire breast flattened milanese style. Since I only had one night in Taipei, I was trying to get a taste of all the local favorites, but I took it too far and ended up throwing half the chicken away when my stomach warned my brain that food was about to back up into my esophagus.
A walk along the river gave me some time to digest my food and explore the quieter alleys outside the market. It was an unusual experience to walk a narrow deserted street at night with no fear of crime. Taiwan’s more Chinese side is that they are rule followers. You stand to the side on escalators to let others pass. You wait for others to get off the train before boarding. You always wait for the light to turn green before crossing the street, even if there are no cars coming. This is a town where I didn’t have to live in fear of getting struck by a car or having my phone pick pocketed on the metro.
Everywhere I went, people were polite and were quick to help if it looked like I needed assistance, often wishing me a pleasant visit afterwards. Having help can be important sometimes as many times there are only Chinese characters for directions or explaining what a product is. That prompted me to study up a little on Chinese characters. It was a little harder than I thought.
Learning to read Chinese
Chinese characters are not the same as letters. Each one represents an object, idea, or sound. When combined together, the individual meaning of the characters is changed to a collective concept. For instance, there is a character for big and a character for door. If used together, however, they mean front door. Combine them with the characters for secret and key, and the four characters together mean password. What I can’t understand is how you know when to stop combining the characters as you’re reading them across. Still, I enjoyed learning the meanings and their origins.
This brings up another point: though to us the characters look like pictographs, some are and some aren’t. The original character for cow actually looked like a representation of a cow’s head, well at least as much as the constellation Taurus looks like a bull. Though the modern character for cow is a derivation from the original, it looks nothing like a cow now, so you just have to know the modern character for cow. Just make sure it’s not combined with another character, or you’ll end up with meat or milk.
Taiwan’s natural side: Taroko gorge
After a night of gluttony, I decided to find the nature I’d been told about. I purchased my train ticket online and hopped onto one of the regular trains to the eastern side of the island. Keep in mind this is like having four trains an hour go from San Francisco to Yosemite. I am always amused by what American’s call a developing country. In fact, when I arrived in Hualien, I was able to use my transit pass on the local buses there. That’s right, the fare card I bought in Taipei can be used on all buses and trains throughout the entire country!
Hualien is the gateway to the Taroko Gorge, a 10,000 foot deep canyon that winds into Taiwan’s heartland. I found out on the tour I took that Taiwan has 285 peaks over 9.800 feet. My original plan had been to rent a car and drive from the east side of Taiwan to the west, exploring the gorge along the way, but with daily rental car costs equalling the weekly rate in the US, I opted to let someone else do the driving. Unfortunately too late, I found there is local bus service, for which you can use your transit card, throughout the gorge.
Admittedly I got to see and learn a lot more than I would have had I done the tour on my own. The guide was an energetic young man who took pride in the copious amount of information he shared about the area, of which I understood about half because of his accent. Understanding his version of English was no different than trying to understand Spanish, and I was left with a headache at the end of the day from all the Chinglish translation.
I understood the basic ideas, and he brought the group to a couple indigenous sites that had the same history as those in our country: people who’d been living off the land just fine for thousands of years before being conquered and taught how to live civilized lives of sitting in front of electronic screens for 12 hours a day, with no idea how to turn grain into flour.
I was able to taste a couple of the local foods. One was simply the young growth of a leafy plant that had a taste as fresh as any lettuce I’ve ever eaten. I was reminded of just how fresh it was when the man pointed behind me indicating the plant he had picked it from. Had I been less civilized, I might have realized I could have picked it for free instead of paying him to make me look foolish.
The highway through the gorge was an amazing feat of engineering. Originally a footpath used by the locals to get across the island and later by the Japanese to invade the eastern side of this mountainous fortress island, the road now bores through rock tunnels and over bridge spans constantly pelted by rock missiles released from the walls high above. The canyon seems to be in a constant effort to take back the gorge from human invaders.
When he exited the van to walk along the previous highway that had given way to nature, he gave us construction helmets to wear and told us not to stop moving until we reached the safety of the other side. Now I’m not a physicist, but I am not sure how constant movement along a dangerous pathway is any safer from falling projectiles than standing in one place since one never knows where the falling rock might loose itself upon the road below, but I guess the overall concept is to spend as little time exposed as possible. It seems there is no end to the opportunities to get killed on this planet so I quickly shuffled along the path as prudently as I’d been wearing my face mask in the hopes that the odds of dying were no greater.
The views were spectacular as we caught glimpses of the turquoise river 1000 feet below. The guide explained that the water took its color from the particles of marble it carried as it eroded several miles from the center of the island. The river itself appeared as marble, a ribbon of light blue flowing through a canyon of white. Just below where we stood, you could see branches left behind from the flooding that can quickly fill a third of the narrow canyon with water, a reason it is closed any time there is risk of monsoon rains and why you also see the remains of earlier bridges that were built too low.
Disappointed that I had not found a way to cross the island through the mountains, I returned to Hualien and took the route I had protested so much: back to Taipei, at the top of the island, in order to go down to the west side of the island. Though not direct, it was the faster option in that the train could do the journey faster than it would have taken me to drive a rental car through the middle. When I got to the west side, I took a bus back up into the mountains to get to a place only 40 miles from the Taroko gorge, at least as the crow flies.
Sun Moon Lake
Sun Moon Lake is a popular tourist destination, a body of water surrounded by mountains. I had asked another traveler, who had been here before, which side of the lake offered the best view of the lake, to which he replied, “all of them”. It was true, I later found out, but when I arrived, it hardly made a difference as the entire lake was blanketed in fog. Still, I was able to enjoy the cool temperatures and fresh mountain air.
The next day I took a boat trip across the lake. It was a good thing I talked to someone in the tourist information office beforehand, as the woman at the boat dock tried to sell me a ticket for $10, when the old woman at the tourist office had told me it should be $5. The value on the face of the ticket was $10, but after several exchanges with the boat dock saleswoman, I got the ticket for $5. It always pays to negotiate.
The first stop for the boat was a pier below a temple. Since it was still early in the day, I opted to climb the 2 miles to the temple perched above the lake. The path was well managed and had stairs where it helped with the elevation change. Though unnecessary for the cool morning, the path was draped in a canopy of green provided by the tall bamboo trees leaning over the trail. There were stops along the way with seats to take advantage of the view as you were climbing. I reached the temple at the top just as the clouds rolled back in and had to quickly snap a couple pictures before the lake below disappeared from site.
Walking around the temple grounds in the fog added a mysticism to the place. The bright red pagodas pierced the fog and seemed to materialize before me as I moved through the clouds. I decided to wait out the overcast morning by sitting for a pot of tea next to the temple. It seemed an appropriate place to stop and do nothing. Two pots of tea later, however, it was clear the sky wasn’t planning on revealing the lake again so I continued on to the village below.
Being midweek, it was quiet, and all of the vendors were eager for my patronage. It’s fun to just walk until something catches your attention and, in this case, it was a sandwich made out of a peculiar collection of ingredients. The woman sliced a steamed bun in half and filled it with a slab of pork belly and chunk of tofu, upon which she added cabbage, cucumber, and what appeared to be bread crumbs. She poured gravy over the thing before handing it to me. It was a sandwich designed for a vegetarian with a weakness for bacon.
I headed to the lake to enjoy my $2 meal and looked up at the temple which was now clear of fog. I pondered whether to make the return trip in order to see the lake from above but figured there was still a good chance it could just fog over again when I reached the top. The rain began to fall on my return boat trip so my guess about the view was correct. I headed back to the lodge and enjoyed the rest of the day looking out the window from my room on the lakeside. Having seen rain was in the forecast for the week, I purposely booked the kind of room that would offer a perfect place to relax with a view regardless of the weather.
Qingjing farm
The more important part of this trip to the mountains was to visit Qingjing farm. It was supposed to be sunny the following day so I had postponed the trip in exchange for spending the time on the lake. When I awoke the next day, I found my decision to be sound and headed out for the bus station just after breakfast.
I was the first one at the buffet and enjoyed a large breakfast including fried noodles, rice porridge, eggs, and milk tea. All you can eat breakfast is always an opportunity for me to save money on a meal, and I was intent on eating enough so that I wouldn’t need lunch.
After breakfast, the proprietor of the lodge offered to drive me to the bus station. I added money to my metro card at the adjacent 7-11 and boarded the bus by tapping my card. One transfer and 2 hours later I was on top of the spine of Taiwan.
All travel brochures highlight Qingjing farm, and it’s hard to resist the bucolic pictures of rolling grasslands dotted with freely roaming sheep. I was not disappointed as you are greeted by sheep the moment you walk into the park. I was equally fortunate to have arrived during cherry blossom season. The trees were bursting with flowers, and pink petals blew across the sky like snow. As you walked beneath the trees, you could hear the electric buzzing of bees gathering pollen from the flowers.
The farm was a little bit of an amusement park, with dutch windmills and heart shaped frames for selfie pictures of couples with the mountains in the background. It seems that a farmer decided to get creative with his income stream and just started charging admission to walk through his sheep farm. It was a clear success as demonstrated by the money used to build the windmills and elevated walkways.
What must be a zoo on weekends was practically deserted, and I managed to enjoy the mountain top farm in relative peace before heading back to collect my bag and catch the bus back to the city. I had originally purchased a round trip ticket from Taichung to Sun Moon Lake, but since I had changed my itinerary, there was no need to return to Sun Moon Lake. The problem is that the Taiwanese are very orderly, and I didn’t know if I would be able to use my pre-purchased return ticket from Puli.
Back to Taipei on the high speed train
In fact, the bus that goes from Sun Moon Lake to Taichung passes through Puli, but so far all my interactions with the bus drivers in Taiwan had proved them quite inflexible. This was a stark contrast to places like Mexico or the Philippines where you could just ask them to drop you off anywhere along the road.
Since Taiwan had the odd practice of not collecting your ticket until you got off the bus, I figured I was safe though. When I got off the bus in Taichung, I doubted the driver would remember whether I got on at Sun Moon Lake or Puli. Besides, he’d probably be in too much of a hurry to argue about it in a language I couldn’t speak.
As it turned out, it was no big deal, and I departed the bus without delay and headed to the ticket counter for the high speed train. It cost a little more than the regular train I’d taken previously, but it’s not often you get to ride a train that flies through the countryside at over 120 miles per hour.
I didn’t have a reservation and was surprised then the agent said there was a seat available on a train leaving in seven minutes. Since I wanted a break between trips to use the bathroom and get a drink I asked him when the following train departed, and he replied “fifteen minutes later”. I couldn’t believe this tiny country has a high speed train leaving every fifteen minutes to Taipei and that’s in addition to the regular train service.
During my trip, I looked up how many high speed trains they had in total and was surprised to learn that they had 30 trains to make the regular trip between Taipei in the north and Zuoying in the south, a distance of 215 miles in 2 hours, including 2 stops! I was also impressed to learn, via the public video messaging display on board, that all trains were being sterilized every night.
I arrived in Taipei for one last night in the Ximen walking district. The first place I visited was my noodle house so I could delight one last time in those perfect noodles. Afterwards, I walked around taking in the city before heading back to my room, a place which offered an astonishing view over the main intersection of the city from not just the bedroom but the bathroom and toilet as well. I could take a shower while looking down over the people crossing below. If only they’d looked up, they might have seen me too.
The next morning I tapped my metro pass to board the train from my hotel and then the express to the airport. Whether it was the corona virus scare or the electronic immigration, I was at my boarding gate 15 minutes after I’d gotten off the express train to the airport. Here again I was impressed with a country, that I’d previously thought to be a developing nation, to have completely automated immigration.
You held your passport in front of a scanner, then your eyes were read by a retinal scanner. Finally, you placed your fingers on a glass scanner. Once approved, the gate in front of you opened, and you were allowed to exit. The thing even took my temperature!
My seven days in Taiwan were enough to convince me that this was a country “developed” to the level of northern Europe with a population as practical. It is clean, orderly and offers a huge diversity of activities while keeping you well fed. In Taiwan, I found an experience that will be enthusiastically repeated!