TAIWAN
The island
Asia forgot to tell the world about
Taiwan is the best-kept secret in Asia. A mountainous island with some of the finest food on earth, trails through gorges of marble and cloud forest, hot spring towns that have been welcoming tired travellers for centuries, and a capital city that combines the warmth of a small town with the sophistication of a great metropolis.
JUST A SMALL GLIMPSE OF WHAT IS POSSIBLE IN TAIWAN
Tainan is Taiwan's oldest city and its culinary capital. The night markets here are not tourist spectacles — they are where Tainan eats dinner. Oyster vermicelli, coffin toast, shrimp rolls, and milkfish belly grilled over charcoal. The best food in Taiwan is in Tainan, and the best of that is in the markets.
The Liwu River has cut through the Central Mountain Range for millennia, creating a gorge of white marble that in places narrows to a few metres. The trails that run through it — above the river, through tunnels carved by hand — are among the most dramatic walks in Asia.
High mountain oolong, grown in cloud and mist at 1,500 metres, is one of the world's great teas. The farmers of Alishan have been cultivating it for generations. A morning among the gardens — the mist moving through the bushes, a cup prepared the way it should be — is an entirely different relationship with tea.
An hour from Taipei, the indigenous Atayal community of Wulai has been welcoming visitors to its hot springs for centuries. After a walk through the surrounding cedar forest, the water — colourless, odourless, and precisely the right temperature — is the finest possible ending to a day.
The valley between the Central and Coastal mountain ranges is flat, fertile, and almost entirely free of traffic. Rice fields, pineapple plantations, and indigenous villages line the route. By bicycle, at the pace the landscape deserves, it is one of the great easy rides in Asia.
Taiwan's religious festivals are extraordinary — percussion, dragon dances, incense so thick it turns the street orange, mediums in trance states, gods carried through neighbourhoods on palanquins. They happen constantly, in every district, and are almost entirely unvisited by tourists. We know the calendar.
A FEW IMAGES. TIME TO MAKE YOUR OWN.
READY WHEN YOU ARE
Let’s talk about your
No obligation, no rush. Just share what you have in mind — we’ll handle every detail.