What to Do in Taiwan

If you only do one thing in Taiwan outside the cities, make it Taroko. A marble canyon on the east coast, carved by the Liwu River over millions of years into a narrow, high walled, jade green river gorge with walls striped in white and grey. The road tunnels through solid rock in places and hangs off the cliff edge in others. You can drive it, bus it, cycle it, or walk stretches of the old highway and the Shakadang Trail. The scale is hard to grasp until you're standing underneath 500 meters of sheer marble. Taroko has been hit by major earthquakes and sections close and reopen on a rolling basis. Check the park website before you go. Even with restrictions, it's one of the most impressive natural landscapes in Asia.

This is the postcard moment of Taroko. A small memorial pavilion built directly over a waterfall on the cliffside of the Liwu gorge, dedicated to the 226 workers who died building the Central Cross Island Highway through these mountains in the 1950s. It's the first big "wait, what" moment on the drive into the park. The classic view is from across the valley: the shrine clinging to the rock face, the waterfall pouring through its base, marble cliffs rising behind it. There's also a trail up to the shrine itself and a small tunnel/suspension bridge system that lets you see it from multiple angles. The area has been affected by earthquake damage and closes periodically. Check current access before you go.

Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world from 2004 to 2010, and it's still one of the most recognizable skyscrapers in Asia. The bamboo inspired silhouette, with eight stacked segments (eight is the lucky number), looks better in person than in photos. The observatory on the 89th floor gives you a panoramic view of the city and the famous 660 ton tuned mass damper, a bronze sphere that keeps the building from swaying in typhoons. But the best view of Taipei 101 isn't from inside it. It's from Elephant Mountain, a short but steep hike that starts right at Xiangshan MRT station. Go at sunset. The tower lights up in blue at night, and the whole Xinyi district sparkles below. Xinyi itself is Taipei's modern commercial heart: designer malls, public plazas with red dog sculptures, and weekend shopping crowds.

The largest glass artwork in the world, and it's inside a subway station. Formosa Boulevard station sits at the intersection of Kaohsiung's two main MRT lines, and its central concourse is covered by a 30 meter wide stained glass dome created by Italian artist Narcissus Quagliata. The four quadrants represent water, earth, light, and fire, and the whole thing took 4.5 years to install using 4,500 hand crafted glass panels. It's free to visit. You just walk in. CNN once named it one of the 14 most beautiful subway stations in the world, and it's the only one on that list that Taiwan casually tossed together as public transit infrastructure. Go at one of the scheduled light show times (posted at the station) when the dome runs through a six minute sequence of changing colors set to music.

A cluster of old harbor warehouses on the Kaohsiung waterfront, converted in the early 2000s into one of Asia's liveliest arts districts. Pier-2 runs along the harbor next to the light rail, and it's genuinely walkable: galleries in old storage sheds, public sculpture in every courtyard, independent shops, cafes, and a painted apartment building that stops you in the street. The scale is the thing. You can spend half a day wandering, stop for coffee, see a gallery show, walk across the harbor bridge, and still feel like you missed things. Kaohsiung's Songshan, except larger, harbor adjacent, and somehow more creative. On a nice evening it's one of the best places to be in southern Taiwan.

The Kaohsiung Music Center is the kind of building that makes you pull out your phone before your brain has caught up. A series of curving, fluted white concrete volumes on the harbor, designed by Spanish firm Manuel Álvarez-Monteserín Lahoz, opened in 2021, and lit up in changing colors every night. It looks like concrete waves freezing mid break. Seen from across the bay, lit pink after dark with the skyline behind it and the water reflecting everything, it's one of the most photogenic pieces of architecture in Asia. Pair it with a walk across the Great Harbor Bridge nearby, a sleek white pedestrian bridge that curves over the water and gives you the best shot of the whole harbor redevelopment. Evening is the right time for both.

This is the best coastal landscape in Taiwan, and most people have never heard of it. A series of grassy bluffs on the eastern edge of Kenting National Park, where the land plunges from 100 plus meters down to the Pacific. No guardrails, no ticket booth, no crowds. You walk out across the grass, find a spot near the edge (at your own pace, please), and the ocean just opens up below you. The bluffs are uplifted coral reef, still technically moving. The wind hits you from every direction. Sunrise here is legendary. Sunset is quieter but beautiful. On a clear day you can see down the entire eastern Kenting coast. Budget an hour minimum; you'll probably end up staying longer.

Nanwan, meaning South Bay, is the main swimming beach in Kenting National Park. A clean crescent of coral sand, water that genuinely looks like a postcard, decent surf on the right days, and enough space that even in peak summer you can find a quiet corner. This is what most people mean when they talk about "tropical Taiwan": warm water almost year round, coconut palms, sunburn if you're careless. Rental shops along the beach road handle stand up paddleboards, boogie boards, and sun umbrellas. On a weekday in shoulder season, you can practically have the place to yourself.

Maobitou, meaning "cat nose head," is the southwestern tip of the Kenting peninsula, a headland of raised coral reef that drops into the Pacific in a series of pale cliffs and sea stacks. The name comes from a rock formation that supposedly looks like a cat's face; I couldn't quite see it, but the view is the view. A small paved walkway leads out to the viewing deck and down to lower viewpoints. The water directly below is an unreal bright blue, the rock shelf is full of tidepools, and on a clear day you can see all the way across the Bashi Channel toward the Philippines. Combine it with the lighthouse at Eluanbi at the southern tip and the rest of the Kenting coast loop.

The Gold Waterfall sits just outside Jinguashi, an old gold and copper mining town on Taiwan's northeast coast. The water tumbles down a green hillside in rust orange terraces, stained by copper and iron minerals from the old mines upstream. It's small by waterfall standards, but the color is unlike anything else: a full spectrum of ochre, red, and iron oxide yellow. The surrounding area adds more weirdness: the Yin Yang Sea, where runoff from the mines tints part of the bay a completely different color from the open ocean, and the abandoned smelter ruins clinging to the coast. Combine all of this with Jiufen next door for a solid northeast coast day trip from Taipei.

Liberty Square is the formal, ceremonial heart of Taipei. A huge open plaza flanked by two mirrored Chinese style buildings (the National Concert Hall and the National Theater), with Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall anchoring one end and a massive blue tiled gateway at the other. The plaza is built at imperial scale: wide, symmetrical, and empty enough that you can feel the city drop away for a few minutes. The memorial hall itself contains a museum on Taiwan's modern history, and a changing of the guard ceremony happens every hour on the hour, precisely choreographed. The architecture, the ceremony, and the scale are all quietly striking. Morning visits with better light are recommended. Combine with the nearby National Taiwan Museum or a walk through the 228 Peace Memorial Park.

Dongao sits on the east coast of Yilan County, a few hours south of Taipei, in a bay where dark grey and black sand meets steep tropical mountains that drop almost straight into the Pacific. This is not a tourist beach. Few vendors, minimal infrastructure, usually empty except for locals out for a weekend. The water is cooler than Kenting and the sand is coarser, but the scenery is quieter and moodier: green ridges in the background, driftwood strewn across the shore, and shells and sea creatures in the tide pools. It's the kind of place you come to walk for an hour and not say anything. If you're driving the northeast coast south from Taipei toward Hualien, Dongao is worth the detour.