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Asia #WanderlustJUL 23, 2017 @ 06:00 PM2,973
Three Trending Taiwan Hotspots You Won't Find In The Guidebook
Ralph Jennings , CONTRIBUTOR
Ralph Jennings
Old street, old houses on the main island of Kinmen.
Arrivals to Taiwan from China dropped 18% last year with more dismal figures to date in 2017, but that’s a single-source political problem. Arrivals from other countries grew nearly 17% last year, part of a steady up trend since 2010. So many of the 5,703,000 non-Chinese foreign visitors who came in 2016 crowded better-known tourist spots on the already densely populated island that they'd harsh your trip. It’s simply best to avoid sweaty-shoulder-to-sweaty-shoulder places such as the seaside boardwalk at Danshui near Taipei on weekend afternoons and resorts on the island’s southern tip without a reservation.
But Taiwan teems with places that are relatively obscure to most foreign travelers. Oddly, you don’t need a guide or even a private car to reach them. Here are three particularly worth seeing:
Central Keelung: Few places are easier to reach from Taipei than Keelung, yet the downtown part of this northern city of some 350,000 people gets ominously few tourists thanks to its festering reputation as a downtrodden port town-cum-bedroom community for Taipei commuters. Those who ride the local train or public long-distance bus in from Taipei (no advance tickets needed) will find after the 45-minute ride more than a washed-up city. The walkable downtown starts with a redone boardwalk with views of docks and hulking cruise ships that still dock there. Streets behind it teem with coffeehouses and if you know where to look, an old sailor bar. The yellow lantern-festooned Miaokou Night Market, which is also open by day, offers crab soups, as reviewed by this food and travel blog.
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Kinmen: Get to these outlying islands on a 50-minute flight from Taipei. Planes leave regularly because Kinmen acts as a gateway for Taiwanese business people who board ferries for China. Xiamen is close enough to see, but the real attractions are on the big island of Kinmen itself: War memorials such as the Guningtou Battle Museum and Zhaishan Tunnel underground naval passages dot the island, recalling battles in the 1950s and 1960s when Communist forces tried to take Kinmen from the Nationalists. A lot of Kinmen is national park land, minimizing construction in favor of forested mountains with foot paths. A lot of tour groups come by day from Xiamen, but the place dies down at night. That gives you the pick of rooms at inns fashioned from the island’s signature Chinese-style courtyard houses along cobbled streets guarded by sculptures known as wind lion gods, which are supposed to hold off evil. Getting around Kinmen without your own wheels requires following the local bus schedule. Look for a master bus station in Jincheng Township on the main island..
Taitung City: A lot of tourists just transit here for better known spots Green Island and Zhiben hot springs. But one who lingers in the 107,000-person city itself, getting around by foot or local taxis, will find sights reflecting the history of southeastern Taiwan where Taitung is the anchor city. Taiwan’s Austronesian aboriginal Puyuma and Amis tribes settled the coastal plain that’s now Taitung before the 16th century, and today travelers can visit the National Prehistory Museum to see how they lived. Standing exhibits show how that settlement unfolded and depict the migration of indigenous Taiwanese. A Taitung visitor keen on indigenous history can walk the trails of an archaeological site called Beinan Cultural Park to see ston