Taiwan (former: Formosa) is a beautiful island near the coast of China Mainland. The P.R. China is claiming it as another province of China, the Taiwanese people pro-claimed the Republic of China on this island. These tensions are of world-political meaning, but besides these political disputes, Taiwan offers beautiful nature, friendly people and great beaches and National Parks to spend a wonderful holiday.

Especially if you want to make holidays somewhere “outside” China, but still want to feel like in China, Taiwan is a great place. The flights that we booked from Chengdu were cheap (2000 RMB per person, return!) and it only took us a one-day trip via Hong Kong, and Taipeh to get to the beautiful National Forest Park of Kenting in the South of Taiwan. Beginning of September is said to be the typhoon season, so when we arrived we got into a heavy rain and flooded streets. But after one day, everything went back to normal, the sun was hot and tropical and after the sea calmed down, we could see the true beauty of bright wide sand beaches and a beautiful turquoise sea.

As we took our tent along, we also finally found a spot to stay for a night and enjoy a little camping adventure. Very lucky, we found a beach facing the South West, so we didn’t only watch a beautiful sunset but it also helped to not fry us in the tent too early in the morning after the sun came up.

Camping at the beach was a great experience  but after a while, we were ready return to civilization and spent the last days of our holidays in Kenting Town, which is something like a surfer town with a daily big night market and plenty of little shops.

As Taiwan is famous for its little snacks and delicacies we tried (besides the healthy fruit smoothies) every day something new, such as deep-fried oreos and snickers, chicken wraps, Japanese snacks, and banana pancakes covered in chocolate sauce. Taiwan is definitely not the place for caring of the girly line if you like food!

As we also wanted to explore a little bit of the surrounding, we one day hiked into the National Forest Park and discovered Limestone caves, big wide forests, savannas and got a great view of the southern coastline of Taiwan. On our way, we also saw plenty of animals: from beautiful butterflies to poisonous looking spiders and snakes to huge flying ants. The caves were supposed to host monkeys as well, but fortunately we didn’t meet them. It was a peaceful and adventurous day but as the weather was still very hot, we were happy to take a rest at the end of the day.

My first experience in Taiwan was a great success and I left being sad and happy at the same time: it is easy to get around with Mandarin Chinese, the air is clean and people are very friendly and positively curious about foreigners. But the best is, that for travelling to Taiwan, Europeans and Americans don’t need a visa (upto 90 days stay) so it won’t be for sure the last time that we visited this beautiful island.

Travelling in and around China can be so easy: Just ask our InternChina-team for advise! If you have to leave China after 90 days for your visa for example, you can just go to Taiwan for the weekend. It is cheap and easy to get around there!
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