Taiwan
An island state south of mainland China. Formerly known as Formosa (a name given the island by Portuguese explorers and meaning 'beautiful' in Portuguese), it is located about halfway between the Philippines to the south and Japan's archipelago of Okinawa to the north-east. Jump to:
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In terms of dark tourism, most sites of interest here have to do with either the former Japanese colonial era, the long Chiang Kai-shek dictatorship and its political prisoners or with the tensions, and at times military exchanges, with the PRC (see Taiwan’s history). And one is a unique site related to natural disasters (earthquakes – something that Taiwan is very prone to). These are the places given their own chapters on this website:
- Taipei
- Taitung
(水湳洞選煉廠遺址)
- Wanli
In addition, the Matsu group of islands near the Chinese mainland but further north from Kinmen, also boasts military tunnels like on Kinmen that one can visit, as well as few further military-associated sites. The islands can be reached by domestic flights or by ferry. During my three-week-long trip to Taiwan in December 2023/January 2024 I unfortunately did not have the opportunity to go there too.
Lower-key dark attractions can also be found in other places on the main island of Taiwan, such as some of the remaining Chiang Kai-shek statues and bas-reliefs (I saw examples in Daxi), whose days seem numbered, though, as the government is aiming to remove most of them out of public spaces (and probably add them to the Chiang Kai-shek statue park). Whether that will also apply to the giant Chiang in Taipei remains to be seen.
Furthermore there are various remnants from the Japanese colonial era (e.g. Taichung old station), as well as a few WWII war scars from American air raids (e.g. on Lin’s Department Store in Tainan).
A certain dark element can also be seen in the Houtong Coal Mine Ecological Park, an industrial archaeologist’s playground that also covers the hardships endured by the miners and the literally dark, dirty and dangerous work they did. (Reachable from Taipei by local train, open daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., admission free.)
For more historical background on Taiwan and its current complicated position in the world please see this separate chapter:
Travel practicalities:
I had originally planned and booked a two-week plus trip to Taiwan for around Easter 2020, but of course that was thwarted by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, also again in 2021. Taiwan maintained one of the world’s strictest sets of pandemic rules and restrictions even in 2022, so I was forced to postpone the trip yet again. But at the end of 2023 I was finally able to embark on an intense nearly three-week round trip of Taiwan and some of the outlying islands, covering the plethora of dark-tourism sites listed above.
Travel to Taiwan will for most visitors be by plane (unless it’s by cruise ship – that far too popular dirty curse of international tourism). There are a couple of international airports, but by far the largest share of international flights use the capital Taipei’s international airport at Taoyuan (IATA code “TPE”). Taiwan has two national airlines, of which Eva Air is the better one, in fact one of the world’s most highly regarded, and I can only confirm this from personal first-hand experience.
Getting around within Taiwan is greatly facilitated by its excellent rail network. In fact there are two separate networks. The state-owned TRA (Taiwan Railway Administration) network runs a variety of train types, from express trains with few stops to local trains, with fare prices reflecting the quality of the trains. For the express trains of the Puyuma and Taroko types advance seat reservations are mandatory. For all trains you must keep your ticket until you’ve left your destination station, as you may have to show it or feed it through a machine at the exit.
Along the western part of Taiwan there is also a high-speed railway line (HSR) which runs Japanese-bullet-train-like services; these are naturally the fastest but also the most expensive. And their stations are often far from city centres so you’d need onward public transport. It’s mainly for that reason that I never used a HSR train when I was in Taiwan. So I can’t say anything about their quality, but presume they’d be similar to their Japanese equivalents.
Unless you need to get to Kinmen or other outlying islands, domestic flights are totally unnecessary (unless you desperately want to get aerial views of the mountains in the interior). There are also long-distance tourist buses, but these are rather more aimed at domestic tourists and not so practical for international visitors. Hiring a car is also perfectly possible (with all the well-known companies), but the language barrier may make navigation tricky and there have been stories of roadside scams. But you can also consider arranging a vehicle with an English-speaking driver-guide for areas of the country not reachable so easily by public transport. That’s what I did for parts of my 2023/24 trip to Taiwan.
I used a Taiwan-based company that arranged not only the driver-guides for me on Kinmen and for the east and north of Taiwan, but also organized all my train tickets in advance as well as the flights to Green Island and back, which was a great bonus and made things a lot easier than it would otherwise have been. Contact me for details if you want to know more.
In addition I also had a tour with a Taiwan-based author and well established tour guide who is originally from the USA but has lived and worked as a licensed tour guide in Taiwan for many years. Her specialism has long been the indigenous cultures of Taiwan, but a few years ago she also reached out to me with regard to arranging some dark-tourism-oriented activities. So we arranged to meet up in Taichung, where she’s based, and she then took me and my wife in her own car on a tour of the 9-21 Earthquake Museum and other sites related to that event. It was excellent and full of insider knowledge. She’s now considering adding such dark-tourism tours to her portfolio. If you’re already interested in such a dark tour and would like me to put you in touch, contact me!
Accommodation standards are quite high in Taiwan, even in the more budget-friendly section, and the choice in the mid-range bracket is especially wide. I arranged all my accommodation myself online. It’s easy. But do take time to shop around thoroughly and especially pay attention to location.
As for food & drink, I was in paradise in Taiwan! Hardly anywhere else in the world did I feel so well accommodated as a vegetarian/pescatarian. I came to love the veggie buffet-style eateries, where you can choose from dozens or even over a hundred dishes without having to worry if any contain meat; you just fill your plate with as much as you think you’ll want to eat, take the plate to the till, have it weighed and then pay by weight. It’s usually a super-cheap bargain for what you get. Even more formal restaurant fare is rarely expensive except at the gourmet top end. Chinese food dominates – but unlike in mainland China it’s less regional-specific, and you can find all manner of Chinese food styles, be it Cantonese, Sichuan or whatever. Some food trends also try to establish a distinctly Taiwanese cuisine, but I have not targetedly explored that (and stayed well clear of that horrible Taiwanese invention of “bubble tea”). Other cuisines can also be found in the larger cities, with Japanese, Indian and Thai being popular options, and of course Western food is also available but the choices are more limited (that said, though, I had the best Chicago-style deep-pan pizza in my life when I was in Hualien, better than what I’d had in Chicago itself!).
Generally food is extremely important to the Taiwanese and it shows: even on trains most passengers can’t go five minutes without unpacking some snacks and munching on them. Food halls in shopping centres and stalls at night markets and elsewhere are always busy. A high turnover also ensures quality and cleanliness. Outside restaurants that aim at catering for visitors, there’s often no English-language menu if any menu at all. And some of the local food at night markets may look rather off-putting to Western eyes and vegetarians (duck necks, say, complete with the head and bill). On the other hand, I have never been anywhere where the range of things made out of tofu has been wider. As I said, it’s vegetarian heaven.
On the drinks front I was delighted to find that the craft-beer movement has made deep inroads in Taiwan, and especially in Taipei the scene is thriving. But I also tracked down excellent local brews in Chiayi, Taichung and Taitung. Standard mass-produced yellow fizzy lager beer is of course also readily available, everywhere. Taiwan also produces Japanese-style sake, and it is comparatively affordable. Wine is all imported, and there’s a strong preference for red over white in terms of availability (ca. 9:1).
Not so many people outside the country may be aware of it, but Taiwan also produces some of the world’s most highly acclaimed and multiple-award-winning single malt whiskies. The best single-cask bottlings can be expensive, though. A more traditionally local sorghum-based spirit is Kaoliang Liquor, which is produced in Kinmen County and comes in a wide range of variants and strengths, from simple and cheap to extremely collector-priced luxury levels (and then usually in particularly ornate ceramic bottles).
Coffee is readily available, but tea is the real king in Taiwan, with the home-produced Oolong type the most remarkable. Cold soft drinks are the usual sugary concoctions of international or local brands, but I also spotted some types I remembered from Japan. Drinking water in plastic bottles of all sizes is also readily available; it’s advisable to bring a reusable water bottle to fill from larger water bottles or drinking-water fountains for on the go to avoid using too many plastic bottles. Many hotels provide drinking water. Tap water is said to be safe to drink in the cities, according to some water-safety websites, but most Taiwanese prefer to boil the water first, to be on the safe side or if only to get rid of the smell of chlorine.
Money matters: Taiwan’s currency is the New Taiwanese Dollar (NTD), which at the time of writing (2024) is worth ca. 3 euro cents or 0.03 USD. There are coins but prices are often rounded up so you can pay with notes. Paying by card is common too; tipping in restaurants/bars is not (but gratefully accepted by tour guides)
A useful tip: get an EasyCard! It’s a card you can top up on purchase (e.g. already at the airport) and at ticket machines and convenience stores and then use it to pay on public transport – you have to tap the card-reader box both on entering the bus/metro and on exiting. A display will tell you how much value is left on the card. All public transport is extremely cheap in Taiwan, so don’t put too much credit on the card initially. However, you can also use the EasyCard in convenience stores and that is indeed very convenient.
Taiwan has the world’s highest density of convenience stores. They are really everywhere (except in extremely rural corners) and good for buying snacks, drinks, newspapers, etc.; there are various chains but two dominate (7-Eleven and Family Mart). You can sometimes even see two branches of the same chain on opposite sides of a street facing each other. In the large cities you’re never further than a few steps away from a convenience store.
Safety: Taiwan is one of the safest countries you can travel in. Crime rates are low – except burglary, which is why so many Taiwanese houses feature bars or cage-like structures on their windows as if they were all prisons. Violent crime hardly ever affects foreign tourists. But pickpockets can be a risk in busy places like night markets, so keep a close eye on your valuables in such places. Many hotels offer in-room safes.
Road safety is the biggest issue, especially for pedestrians in places that don’t have proper pavements (they are not the norm outside Taipei and Kaohsiung!) so you share your space with all those scooters that are the main form of transport for locals … and they are sometimes used in rather “rough” ways. Take good care when crossing roads – use zebra crossings with traffic lights where possible.
Climate: Taiwan is a subtropical country and summers can be swelteringly hot (except high in the mountains). Moreover, summer is also typhoon season, so there are two reasons to avoid the summer months. Spring and autumn are better but it can still be very hot and humid. I decided to travel in winter. In the south it’s still quite warm without being too stifling (in Kaohsiung it was 27 degrees Celsius at midday) and it’s drier. In the north it can be cool, even in single figures, though when I was there it was usually around 15-20 degrees, which for me is quite pleasant. It can be rainy in the north in winter, though, but I had only two partially rainy days over the seven days I had in Taipei and its surroundings.
Language: those who can’t read/speak Chinese will find Taiwan often bewildering. In Taipei and other larger cities, English is often provided, certainly on public transport and on many restaurant menus, but not always. Not everybody speaks English (or at least not well). So there is a certain language barrier, but it’s rarely insurmountable. And the people are generally friendly and helpful, just like in Japan.
Non-dark-tourism travel:
Of course Taiwan is also an attractive destination for things other than dark tourism. Taipei and Kaohsiung in particular are appealing city destinations with grand architecture, museums, galleries, parks, plenty of good restaurants and bars and so on. And I found that smaller and cosier Taitung also had appeal.
Outside the cities, the mountain scenery of Taiwan is famous and hiking a very common activity, including climbing some of the high mountains (Taiwan has the highest mountains in south-east Asia, the highest summit reaching nearly 4000m, higher than Japan’s Mt. Fuji!). The eastern side of Taiwan is generally the more scenic one than the much more densely populated (and much more polluted) western plains. A particular gem is the dramatic Taroko Gorge just north of Hualien, perhaps the country’s top scenic attraction and well worth it!
There isn’t so much wildlife to be seen in Taiwan, although you can encounter cheeky Formosan macaque monkeys by the roadside in some parts. Birdwatchers are said to be able to find some feathered species worth looking out for (but as I’m not a twitcher myself, I can’t say anything about this). The largest carnivore in Taiwan is the Formosan black bear with its iconic white mark on the chest. You will see images and figurines of this bear en masse, but the real animal is shy and rarely seen. And since such an encounter could be dangerous, that’s actually a good thing.
