By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
The first steps I ever took in my beloved Asia were when I touched down in Taiwan. And within 24 hours of arriving, I had already declared it to be my favourite place on the planet. A little premature? Absolutely, but even now, four years on, I still get hit by a wave of euphoria whenever I step foot in Taiwan. Even now, it’s still my favourite place to visit. There aren’t many people who list Taiwan as their favourite country ever, but I can’t stop singing its praises to everyone I meet. Whenever my boyfriend and I would sit down to plan our next stint of travel, I’d vote for Taiwan, but somehow it was always overlooked in favour a country more well-known, usually in Southeast Asia. Taiwan seemed to have taken up permanent residency on our Someday Soon list. When I finally managed to convince him to visit, I was overjoyed. And then I was nervous. Because what if Taiwan wasn’t actually that great? What if I’d thought it was amazing on that first visit because it was my first time in Asia, and just being somewhere that felt foreign was exciting enough? What if Taiwan was boring? I needn’t have worried, because Taiwan was just as spectacular as I had remembered. Maybe even more so because this time around, I wasn’t terrified of the food. And excitingly, my boyfriend fell hard for Taiwan and now counts it among his favourite countries. He enjoyed it so much that we’re ever going to be spending a month in Taipei later this year! Here’s what makes Taiwan so great: During my first visit to Taiwan, I met up with Lia, a Taiwanese girl I’d been chatting with on Twitter. At a cute coffee shop, I happened to mention I’d been hoping to visit Sun Moon Lake, but didn’t think I’d be able to do so (it was both hard to get there and around the lake without your own transport). Two minutes later, she had made a phone call and was eagerly telling me her plan: she was taking the day off work; her mum was taking the day off work; and they were both going to give me a tour of Sun Moon Lake. They spent the entire day driving me around the lake, buying me lunch, taking me to temples, buying me gifts, and refusing to allow me to pay for anything. This wasn’t an isolated incident. When I accidentally stepped off the train at the wrong stop in Taichung and was looking lost and bewildered on the side of the road, with no idea how to get to my hostel, a girl took me under her wing: she led me to her apartment; made me a cup of tea; looked up my hostel online; wrote down the directions in English and Chinese for me; and sent me on my way. I lost count of number of times someone took time out of their day to walk me to wherever I was trying to go — even if it caused them to be late in the process. When I was feeling lonely in Taipei, my hostel owner offered to take me to his grandma’s house to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with his family; when I was the only one staying in my hostel in Hualien, the owner took me on his motorbike to an aboriginal dance show as a treat. I’ve never encountered friendliness like I have in Taiwan. No matter where we went, everyone wanted to welcome us to their country, to help us get to where we needed to go, and to do anything they could to make our stay a pleasant one. One of the things that makes Taiwan so great is that you’ll often feel like you’re one of the only tourists in the country! When I befriended a local on my train from Taitung to Hualien, he added me as a friend on Facebook. Taiwan has an incredible amount to offer. If you’re looking to visit somewhere that has incredible food, is affordable and easy to travel around, has beaches to lie on and mountains to climb, and the friendliest people you’ll ever encounter.