Taiwan 2026

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, the capital of Taiwan (49 pictures.)

Kenting, a national park in the very south of Taiwan. (36 pictures.)

Kaohsiung, the second biggest city in Taiwan. (54 pictures.)

Tainan, the original capital, filled with temples. (55 pictures.)

Sun Moon Lake, one of Taiwan's most popular mountain destinations. (39 pictures.)

Yangmingshan, a national park just north of Taipei. (27 pictures.)

North Coast National Scenic Area. (24 pictures.)

Wulai, waterfalls and home of the Atayal people. (24 pictures.)

Jiufen, a former gold-digging town. (26 pictures.)

Temple Overflow Page (59 pictures.)

Taipei

1. Taipei 101