Things You Should Know Before Visiting Taiwan: Lessons I Learned

The brief was simple: an offbeat honeymoon destination. We started with Mongolia, but its raw, unforgiving wilderness felt a touch too extreme for a romantic getaway. So we went old school—spread an atlas on the floor and let fate take over. Taiwan caught my eye in a single glance. That was sign enough for me. Twenty minutes later, the boarding pass landed in my inbox. This was going to be impulsive from the start. But there are things you should know before visiting Taiwan – lessons I learned on the go.

Here are things which you SHOULD NOT DO while preparing Your Taiwan Travel Guide.

Taiwan, officially a Republic of China is 91 TIMES SMALLER THAN INDIA, which led me to naturally assume that a trip to Taiwan for 10 days would be enough to cover the whole of it. Little did I know that I was in for a rude shock! While checking for places to visit, I researched the major cities. Since we were to land in Taipei which is in the north of Taiwan, I decided that we would first stay in Taipei for a day and then head to Kaohsiung city which is in the south. And from Kaohsiung City we would travel every 2 days to another major city (now I am certain I must be on bhaang….what the eff was I even thinking)!!! So basically we covered (more like Touch n Go) Kaohsiung City, Tainan City, Taichung City, Hsinchu City (I was particularly keen on this one because it sounded like my name – Sinchu with considering the “H” silent) and Taipei! NEVER DO THIS!! Just because you are going abroad you do not need to make use of every converted currency

Book a hotel considering that you might be travelling late, or your transport might be delayed. You need rest. So, reserve rooms for more days. When we were in Qingjing farm, Ren’ai township in Nantou County our luggage was moved out of our rooms while we were out, exploring the place. That is when I realised hotels everywhere else do not function like India where we can plead at the reception “Bhaiya ek ghanta baad check-out karenge, please manage kar lena”. Naah! It didn’t work that way here. They simply stuffed our items (whatever was lying outside and no discrimination between gendered products!) into our bags and kept them in the reception area!. No hard feelings there – they were just doing their job. Don’t think for a second that Taiwanese are rude people. In fact, they go out of their way to help. All the locals we met during our travel went above and beyond their capacity to help and guide us!

A trip to Taiwan taught me that – lesson learnt.

Now this was neither a pleasant nor unpleasant experience, rather an embarrassing circumstance. The first hotel I booked looked like a distinguished hotel with good clientele. The hotel looked more like someplace preferred by corporates but when we checked into the room, I saw free condoms in a basket (just like you have drinks or food on the house). When I turned the TV on, it was playing pornographic content. The obvious thing was to inform my husband – his reaction “Haan re, aise kaise”. It was evident that the hotel might have appeared to cater to business meetings, but the meetings were definitely of “venereal” nature!!

I checked, I liked, I booked!! This is what I did while making hotel reservations, ignorant to the minute details like the closest MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) station or the closest bus station, the distance to the night-markets (Taiwan is famous for night-markets!). So, we would end up rushing to catch trains for interstate travel or walk for 5 kms to reach the night-markets! When we decided on spending an evening at Starbucks located on the 35th floor at Taipei 101 which holds the title of the Tallest Starbucks in the World, we were informed that tables need to be reserved 48 hours prior!! We had no clue….Why? Because our groundwork was sparse. This should be on your Taiwan trip planning checklist.

Like all tourists we bought a sim from first telecommunications counter we saw (again didn’t research). The downside – we never knew when the data got over, we couldn’t even operate Google Maps, let alone the anxiety we put ourselves through every time we had to communicate with the locals because Google Translate wasn’t working (I mastered Dum charades)!!!

I wanted to visit ALL the night markets, I wanted to shop, I wanted to drink at various roadside bars, I wanted to visit Theme Parks, hike, wanted to take a dip in secluded hot-water springs, visit weird named lakes – EVERYTHING!!!! You cannot do it all in all the places you visit especially if you are visiting for a short duration.

Planning my honeymoon travel and coming back with the regret that I could have organised it better helped me chalk out my other travels better. With Taiwan being one country that I want to visit in future to make up for the mistakes I did during my first trip, I now know what I should not indulge in…Hope this helps you too, especially in places where English is not the language of choice!