Like in 2025, I flew to Seattle towards the end of March to attend the MVP Summit, and like in 2025, I continued westwards to East Asia, this time to Taiwan where I stayed two weeks and a half. It was my second visit to Taiwan, and a handful of pictures from that trip are found here.
I spent the first two days in Taipei before I went all the way down to Kenting in the south. I then worked my back by first spending a day and a half in Kaohsiung, the second biggest city in Taiwan. I proceeded to Tainan for three nights. I then went into the mountains and stayed two nights by the famous Sun Moon Lake before I went back to Taipei where I based myself for 5 ½ days, making several day trips to places around Taipei.
Below are 40 pictures that summarise the trip; it is also a kind of best-of collection. To that comes sub-pages for the various places I visited and lastly there is a "temple overflow" page. There is an abundance of temples in Taiwan, and many of them are very colourful and beautiful. But it gets a little bit too much after a while, so the summary and the other nine sub-pages have a reasonable number of temple pictures, and the overflow page gives you the full dosage.
Here is a very short history of Taiwan: Up to the 16th century, Taiwan was populated by a number of indigenous peoples. The first colonial power on Taiwan were the Dutch who started to bring in Chinese people from the mainland. The Dutch were expelled by the Ming general Koxinga in the beginning of the 1660s. Some decades later, the Qing dynasty took over. In 1895, Taiwan was ceded to Japan (referred to as "occupation" on Taiwan) and returned to China in 1945. In 1949, the Nationalists fled the mainland, losing against Mao's communist and set up their government on Taiwan.
Taipei

1. Taipei 101

4. Ningxia Street Night Market

5. Ningxia Street Night Market II
Kenting

9. Beach at Sunset

11. Kenting Forest Recreation Area
Kaohsiung

14. Robot
Tainan

20. Tiantan Temple
Sun Moon Lake

26. Sun Moon Lake
Yangmingshan National Park

29. Qingtiangang
North Coast Scenic Area

32. Yehliu Geopark
Wulai

33. Wulai Falls
Jiufen

35. Turtle on Turtle
Things Taiwan

37. Scooters