Taiwan

Published on May 18, 2026

Rob and I spent a week in Taiwan at the start of this month.

Alishan High Mountain Oolong tea fields in Shizhuo.

At the beginning of the year, we got invited to my cousin's wedding in China, and we wanted to attend. It didn't necessarily make sense from a pure logistical perspective to attach Taiwan to this trip - it's somewhat far from Northeastern China - but it's somewhere that I've wanted to go for forever, so we decided to go there after the wedding.

The reason that I really wanted to go to Taiwan runs a little deeper than your typical tourist desires, although those were certainly a part of it - has anybody who's heard about the night markets not wanted to go to one and eats loads of delicious food? But for me, the fact that Taiwan is a gay-friendly country with gay marriage, where I speak the language and also look like everybody else, has a significant draw. I won't get into it too much here, but I grew up in and live in a strange world where gays hate Asians, Asians hate gays, and both groups are tiny minorities within a straight white America. In my head, Taiwan was a mythical land where I could exist most as myself, and spend much less of my day-to-day life feeling out of place - an alternate reality where I realistically could have been raised and spent a lot less time trying to sort myself out.

So my main goal for visiting Taiwan was to get a real sense of what life in Taiwan is actually like, and maybe just for a few days, cosplay as a resident and see how it felt to simply exist in the place that I believed most aligns with who I fundamentally am. Obviously, all the tourist attractions and good food were a strong draw as well.

Needless to say, I had very high expectations for this country. I am happy to report that I was not disappointed. In no particular order, let's get into my experience there...

The Language

This was a fun one. I speak reasonably fluent Mandarin Chinese, with a Northeastern accent. I knew that the Taiwanese accent was different (and had heard it a fair amount growing up from one of my best friend's parents), but during our first few days in Taiwan it really threw me for a loop just how different the Taiwanese Mandarin was from my own.

There are the pure accent differences. This is not a legitimate description at all, but to me, Northeastern Mandarin sounds "wet" and Taiwanese Mandarin sounds "dry". Sometimes I felt like a hillbilly speaking with my rhoticity, and sometimes I had to ask somebody to repeat something if they spoke too fast.

Then there are the differences in vocabulary. There were a lot more of these than I expected and it was a bit jarring to hear so many words that I literally didn't know. Two examples that immediately come to mind are 内用 ("internal use") for dining in, and 蚵仔 (sounds like "moth"...) for oyster, but there were way more. Occasionally I was kind of dumbfounded but able to figure things out based on context, and towards the end I had picked up on a lot of the more common differences and was feeling more fluent.

One interesting little side note is that I realized during a conversation with somebody that I didn't know the word for "China" (in the current Western understanding of China and Taiwan) in Taiwanese Mandarin, because to say what I would typically say (中国) seemed like it would be a major political faux pas. What I ended up doing was picturing my Taiwanese friend's mom talking to me, and lo and behold, the phrase 大陆 ("mainland") popped into my head which I immediately understood to be the correct word to use.

Finally, there were the differences in writing. The traditional characters rendered me even more illiterate than I already am with simplified characters. I had naturally picked up some basic mappings between the two over time, like the 訁vs. 讠radical for words pertaining to language, but I didn't realize just how many words had gotten simplified. One character, 鬱 instead of 郁, appeared on an ad on the train into Taipei from the airport, and really got to me in particular for its complexity. I quickly realized that to try to learn every traditional word I saw was not going to be worth it for the short amount of time I was there.

Beyond the written characters, there were also the transliteration systems. I know Hanyu Pinyin extremely well. In Taiwan, transliteration of characters was massively inconsistent: Hanyu Pinyin was a minority mixed in with Wade-Giles, and what I learned is called Tongyong Pinyin, both of which were different enough to significantly confuse me at various points. Further, sometimes the transliteration wasn't romanized at all, but instead appeared in the form of Zhuyin which looks like "ㄅㄆㄇㄈ" and was utterly foreign to me.

A restaurant in Alishan providing a simple example of the writing differences. "Jiou" vs. "Jiu", and "廳" instead of "厅".

Ultimately, none of this was that big of a deal. Even if you don't know Mandarin at all, it seems like enough people know enough English (especially in Taipei and popular tourist areas) that you can get by perfectly fine. I used Mandarin because I thought it was still lower friction than English, and also I wanted the practice.

The Culture

Compared to China, Taiwanese people felt way more chill. It's hard to articulate precisely, but people in China (or at least Northeastern China) generally give off a more uptight vibe than people in Taiwan, like they're a little stressed out all the time. I think the East Coast vs. the West Coast of the United States might be a good analogy here.

As far as gay-friendliness goes, Rob and I existed as a gay couple in Taiwan - not super overt with PDA but not actively concealing our relationship like we were in China - and everything felt completely fine. We saw some pride flags here and there, and while we didn't make it to any gay bars, I saw a ton on Google Maps. I also spotted a number of men (bears and twinks and more) who were dressed in a way that very obviously pinged my gaydar, which I didn't notice in China. It felt like being in a liberal area of America: it was just totally fine and no-drama to be gay, and I can't really hope for much more than that.

A glasses shop in Tainan. The caption on the two men with a dog says: "Men can also be tender. Happiness is just that easy."

Active practicing of Buddhism was much more prevalent than I expected in Taiwan. Temples featuring Buddhist deities were absolutely everywhere, and they were always lively. My family didn't practice Buddhism, so I couldn't fully appreciate all the symbolism. But I know what to do with incense ceremonially, and I figured out enough of what the altars were about, to participate briefly but genuinely a few times, and also show Rob how to do it.

The Food and Drink

I cannot do the food scene in Taiwan justice in this post. To do so would be to write an entire novel. I feel that Asia in general has such exceptional food, and Taiwan in particular is known for its good eats.

Very happily full after trying probably 10+ stalls at Raohe Night Market.

All I want to hammer home here is that yes, the food really is as good as everybody says it is. At best, it was a revelation and some of it quite literally brought me to tears. At worst, it was still really delicious food that I would happily eat any day. I did find Northern Taiwan's food to be more up my alley than Southern Taiwan's - I tend to prefer food less sweet and Tainan's food was much sweeter in general than Taipei's - but again, I immensely enjoyed it all.

Spots that I particularly enjoyed:

Tea was absolutely everywhere and the selection was incredible. From the fridges in 7-Eleven to the boba shops to the freshly roasted leaves at the tea farms, the amount of good tea (and good beverages in general) completely puts America to shame. We came home with over a pound of tea and we wish we'd gotten more.

I would also like to note that there seems to be a small but very nice cocktail culture going on in Taiwan. We went out to a bar one night and had some incredible locally made Taiwanese liquors made out of ingredients native to the island.

The Logistics

There were a few things that were crucial to smooth travel in Taiwan that I'd like to note here:

Get an EasyCard as soon as you get there. We were able to use it on every public transportation system we tried (except for the high speed rail and the Alishan train), and other miscellaneous places like vending machines as well. We got ours at the information desk of the Taoyuan Airport MRT station. You can refill it at any convenience store. Wherever you add money, you need to pay with cash, which leads me to my next point.
Not every ATM will dispense currency to foreign cards. This got us a few times. We found that ATMs at 7-Eleven (as opposed to other chains like FamilyMart) worked for us every single time, so we ended up seeking out 7-Eleven branches specifically.
You need a lot of cash in general to pay for things.
The lockers at the train stations are really convenient if you need to store things for a bit of time. Our carry-on roller bags just barely fit into them.
However, if you're leaving Taipei for a few days and don't want to bring everything, Taipei station has a dedicated staffed luggage storage center which is much cheaper than the lockers.
Uber is cheap and works well.

The Places

Taipei

Taipei was fantastic. Everywhere we went (and we checked out numerous corners of the city), it felt full of life. The public transit systems were great. We had 2-3 days here total, depending on how you count, and we could easily have filled up many more.

Jiufen

We wavered a bit on Jiufen because it has somewhat of a reputation as a tourist trap. What we ended up doing was taking the train out on a Monday morning (not a weekend, and before the crowds arrived), and it was pretty great. The old street was fun to wander around and the Amei teahouse was a relaxing experience with a fantastic view.

The view from Teapot Mountain.

We also hiked up Teapot Mountain, whose trailhead is a short bus ride away from the old street. I thought this was super worth it - just look at the view. Even in drizzly weather, it was awe-inspiring.

Alishan

We took the train up to Alishan from Chiayi. I think if you're a railfan, there are all sorts of interesting things about this train line, but we aren't really, so I'm not sure this was worth it, to be honest. The train was super slow, and not very comfortable. The landscape with the copious areca palms and massive tree ferns was fascinating, but also became monotonous. If we had to do this all over again, I would have rather taken the train partway instead of taking the entire 5 hour trip, maybe getting on or bailing at Fenqihu.

Speaking of which, I will say that 1 hour of the 5 hour train ride was a stop at Fenqihu, which was a pretty quirky stop. At the old street there, you can find some unique stuff like wasabi roots and aiyu.

Alishan was neat, despite the fact that it was generally foggy and rainy while we were there. We did the thing where we took a train even further up at 4:20AM to see the sunrise, and I'll let you judge how worth it that was below. We later learned from a local that there's only a 1/3 chance of actually seeing the sun at sunrise.

"Sea of clouds" sunrise at Alishan, but you're inside the sea.

The trails were well worth a walk. The massive ancient cypress trees were an amazing sight and the whole area had a mystical feel about it that was nice to just soak in. We did see an entire family of wild monkeys jumping around as well.

Shizhuo

I'd say that Shizhuo was the highlight of the trip for me. As you can see at the very top of the post, the landscape was absolutely stunning. It's kind of hard to really, truly impress me with scenery these days, in a way that gives me goosebumps, but Shizhuo pulled it off.

There's a whole network of trails in town. The climb up is strenuous, but absolutely worth it. We started with the Mist Trail and then connected to the Tea Trail. The Tea Trail immediately goes into a massive bamboo forest which I found very cool to hike through. After the Tea Trail intersected with the first road, we turned off and started hiking back down. From there, we ultimately connected with the Sunset and Sakura trails before ending up back in downtown Shizhuo.

Bamboo forest on the Tea Trail.

Much of the motivation for visiting Shizhuo was also to learn about and obtain some tea, right from the source. Rob had found the Lin Yuan Tea Factory, so we went there and were greeted by one of the members of the family who gave the two of us a comprehensive tea tasting based on what we wanted to try, including some of the newly harvested spring batch upon request. We really enjoyed speaking with him and he gave us a brief tour of the tea factory as well. Like I mentioned before, we ended up buying over a pound of tea across four different kinds to bring home.

Tainan

Tainan was fine. If I visited Taiwan again I'd be in no rush to go back. I already talked about how the food is much sweeter than in the north, which isn't my personal preference, but I still liked it. However, it was unbearably hot already even in early May, and outside of the food scene there just wasn't that much to see or do; the main tourist attractions in the city kind of paled in comparison compared to everywhere else we'd been.

Getting to places that were even slightly far away invariably involved a taxi, since it was so hot and the public transit there is terrible. I will say that some of the smaller streets and alleyways were pretty interesting to wander around.

A particularly narrow alleyway in Tainan.

The End

Thus ends my loosely structured stream of thoughts about Taiwan. Like I said, I expected a lot from this country going into it, and it certainly delivered. My primary goal was to just see what it's like to exist there as a fully open version of myself, and I think I got a good sense of that. I would happily go back; if I did, I'd like to spend some more time exploring the Taipei area, the eastern side of the island, and also some of the smaller outlying islands.