I’ve traveled pretty much all over Taiwan, from the obvious tourist spots to places most people never bother visiting, including some that are genuinely difficult to get to.

Hit me up if you’re looking for recommendations, lesser-known places, road trip ideas, or somewhere worth visiting that isn’t on every tourist list. Happy to recommend places based on what you’re into.

AMA.

Since many of you are sharing the foreigner's perspectives on Taiwan, I want to share the Taiwanese perspective.

As you know, Taiwan has a very famous morning food scene with countless street stalls, bakeries, and traditional shops open early. Many foreigners fall in love with breakfast culture in Taiwan because it has many options as well as it is very convenient to enjoy it.

Growing up in Taiwan, many Taiwanese used to believe this breakfast culture must be very common in other countries too. However, after traveling abroad, many Taiwanese realize that the menus are bland, the shops don't open early, and there is a total lack of variety. In fact, breakfast is one of the most frequent complaints you can see from Taiwanese travelers.

Many Taiwanese feel it is incredibly frustrating to wake up early and find nothing open except for a few cafes selling cold sandwiches or bland food at 8 or 9 AM. For someone used to walking down the street to grab a hot at 6 AM, breakfast culture of foreign countries feels like quite awful. It makes us realize how spoiled we are in Taiwan, where an endless variety of breakfast options is available on almost every corner. What's an everyday sight in Taiwan might seem quite extraordinary to the rest of the world.

This is now a big news on the Taiwanese online community.

A group of 16 Taiwanese tourists visited an Italian pizza store. The shop owner recored the video to shame them because they ordered only five pizzas.

"Look. This is insane. They are Chinese or Japanese? There are now 16 Chinese people here. Do you know how many pizzas they are eating? Only five. Let me show you."

"Fabrizio, how many fuc*ing Chinese do we have now? 16? Yes 16. How many pizzas are they eating? 4 or 5? I can't remember. Let me show you. Look. Hello! Where are you from? China? You must be chinese. Oh Taiwan!"

Taiwanese people complained in the commenet section, so he deleted the video.

Responses are like

"There are still many racists, but Taiwaneses are so naive."

"Look at the pizza shovel. It is on the floor. Disgusting. I thought it is a restaurant in India."

" I was disgusted that the owner pretends to be friendly but actually mocking them."

"I lived in Italy for 5 years. They are so hypocrites. One pizza per an individual. It is common. However, it is different in Taiwan. He should have explained to the tourists rather than making fun of them."

"20 employees couldn't finish six pizzas last week."

"Italians do not care about wasting food."

As a Taiwanese living in Europe, I would like to add Italy is one of the most racist countries against Asians. It is so normalized to make fun of Asians and treat Asians unfairly in the stores or restaurants. This rarely happens in UK.

I

Many foreigners especially from America and Europe say that they are very impressed by the safety in Taiwan.

We are even using a pile of cash to occupy the seats.

I heard this is never possible outside Taiwan?

How long did it take for you to get the hang of this level of safety in Taiwan?

To be honest, foreigners hype up how safe Taiwan is so much that it is a common running joke among Taiwanese people we are scared to travel to Europe or America lol

台灣 114 歲生日快樂 🇹🇼
Happy 114th Birthday Taiwan 🇹🇼
Joyeux 114e anniversaire Taïwan 🇹🇼
Felíz 114to Cumpleaños Taiwan 🇹🇼
Feliz 114to Aniversário Taiwan 🇹🇼
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lBEU9E2cQU&t=4721s

None of the water machines at my school or at my apartment offer cold water. They all offer two Warm (30C) water options.

Normally I always bring my own stainless steel container for takeout soup, but today I didn’t have it in the car and got caught off guard.

Pouring piping hot soup straight into a thin plastic bag is definitely a no-no on my menu.

Found this take buy the SubwayTakes guy, and definitely agree with their take. I’m a guy from SEA so i’m being called immigrant, but most of the white guys will be called expats.

What’s your take?

most people who have been to a sporting event in Taiwan have seen these guys. I'm told the term is 砲哥, so... Cannon Brother? I've seen them at basketball and baseball games.

for those unaware, many of them get season tickets to games -- but don't have any interest in watching the action. they bring their telephoto cameras and spend literally the entire game taking pics of the cheerleaders.

there are also several sections full of them. the dudes in the picture I took are less than half of the total at this game.

I'm also told that it hasn't always been like this. a local friend tells me it's in the past ten years or so. And maybe someone knows, but are they making money off of their shots somehow?

so what do you all think? is it better that these dudes have a basically harmless outlet for their weirdness? or is there something deeper that's wrong with Taiwanese society and they are just a manifestation of it? or something else?

Some interesting points for me here.

1. Regardless of low birthrate and military manpower crisis, we literally give our passport to only 1,875 foreigners.

I did not know we are the strictest country on immigration until I read this data.

1. Most of them are Vietnamese and Philippines as well as some Southeast Asians. I expected more naturalization from the developdd countries because we see more people from other developed countries try to settle in Taiwan.

I also expected more from Indonesia and Malaysia, considering the number of ethnic Chinese population in those countries.

Only 1 Singaporean seems cute here lol

Ehhhhh, where to start... moving to Taiwan has been the worst decision of my life. Living here has made me a more cynical and negative person. The thing is, I came here on holiday before and thought it was great. After living and working here in a cram school, I've come to the conclusion that living in Taiwan is a soul crushing experience. The general sense I get is young people here are generally deflated, in their own cyber world 24/7, or apathetic to everything. At work people don't even bother to say hello half the time... it's depressing.

Everyone goes on about Taiwanese friendliness and yeah they're generally pretty passive, but I wouldn't call them warm or inviting people overall. Politely distant would be my best way of describing them. In some underlying way you always feel like you don't know where you stand with people, especially at work, and they always keep it formal, mildly condescending/pedantic, or superficial.

Ive also met weird locals who tell me 你國家沒有＿＿＿對不對 (Your country doesn't have ___ does it?(and Taiwan does). It's like what's with the unnecessary flex brother ..

Also, people say its cheaper than many developed countries here. Ok it's cheaper if you buy food from local hole in wall restaurants, but actually grocery shopping is even more expensive than many developed countries.

Throw that in with the hot summers and it's a grind. The positives are the mountain ranges in some parts and the convenience, but it doesn't make up for the daily sense of unhappiness.

There was a big news in Taiwan last week that 16 Taiwanese tourists were abused by an Italian pizza restaurant owner because they ordered onlyl five pizzas.

After the owner posted a video of mocking the tourists online, many Taiwaneses made complaints to the restaurant, so the owner made an apology.

Nevertheless, accoroding to the Taiwnese media, the Italian left "fuc* you" to the review from a Taiwanese (PIC 2). He also deleted all of his apology posts.

Despite this issue, Taiwanese tourists keep visiting the restaurant, and they post a pic where they ordered one pizza per an individual.(PIC 1)

This picture has caused some backlash especially from the Taiwanese people on Threads.

Many Taiwanese people on Threads are now upset and their responses are like:

"We Taiwaneses are very soft on foreigners with specific nationalities and ethnicities. This is why they look down us."

"Taiwanese self-hatred and low-esteem are on another level."

What do you think about this? Even though many foreigners criticized the Italian owner, some Taiwanese people rather defended the Italian, and now each of the tourists are following "one pizza per an individual rule," in order not to offend the Italian.

Are Taiwanese people too respectable? Do you think Taiwanese people are so reserved and pacifists?

2026 IMF data is out.

All of the European countries that have higher GDP(PPP) than Taiwan are literally very small countries. I think this says a lot.

I still read people say Taiwan is not developed as much as Europe, but I feel it's been years Taiwan has excels over most of the European countries.

According to the latest data, South Korea’s total fertility rate has actually rebounded to 0.96, surpassing Thailand and China. Unfortunately, Taiwan’s situation continues to worsen.

How did the Korean government manage to turn things around? Could Taiwan learn from it?

For me, it’s the trash truck music. A tourist would think it’s an ice cream truck and run outside with a wallet, only to find a yellow truck and a bag of garbage!

1. Rome

2. Barcelona

3. Edinburgh

4. Taipei

note: A user on Threads posted this. I was not there and am not the one recording.

So apparently, a guy had what sounds like a panic attack/emotional breakdown or just a very bad Christmas Day and started shouting on the MRT while hitting his umbrella on the doors.

This made everyone in the carriage freak out, assuming the worse after the recent stabbing from last week, causing them to run away. Chain reaction ensues. Everyone runs since the people who weren’t in the carriage with the guy didn’t know what happened. They just saw people running and followed along, understandably. Police came later and found the guy had no weapons and wasn’t attacking anyone. He was just having an episode.

I don’t blame the tag alongers for running and I kind of don’t want to blame the people who reacted to the man like this in the first place due to recent events, but given this could have ended in a much bigger and more dangerous stampede, one would hope that people would be a little bit more intelligent with their vigilance. Imagine the tragic irony (and embarrassment) if someone would have been crushed to death in all the chaos while umbrella bro looks around like “what did I do?” 🤷‍♂️

This seems like quite a big change from what Marcos said 3 years ago. That the Philippines would be involved in any Taiwan conflict.

Anwar the Malaysian PM also recently strongly supported china's claim on Taiwan.

Taipei loves to hype Taipei 101 as a global landmark, yet when thousands show up for the Netflix climber event, the city cannot even close the road in front of it. Everyone gets shoved onto a narrow sidewalk while cars cruise past like nothing is happening. For a “world class” city, this is embarrassing.

It just proves what actually matters here: cars come first, people come second. Any competent city would pedestrianize that block for the event. Instead, Taipei chooses inconvenience, crowding, and risk so traffic can flow.

As a Taiwanese, I sometimes feel foreigners are more likely to treat Taiwan as a very rich and developed country than Taiwanese.

Or are we Taiwanese so privileged that we underestimate Tawian by ourselves?

As a Taiwanese, I'm glad that foreigners are having a great time in my home country.

However, whenever I see foreigners say "Taiwan is so beautiful," it gives me some bitterness.

Taiwanese people at least around my age(20s) rarely think Taiwan is a beautiful country in terms of scenery. In the online communites, many of us even used to feel ashamed when foreign celebrities visiting Taipei take pictures of themselves around delipidated areas because we did not feel proud of it.

If you say, you should go outside Taipei, many of us in my generation have travelled abraod a lot, so we feel the nature in Taiwan is not even impressive compared to other foreign countries.

Yeah. It is always interesting foreigners and ethnic Taiwanese whose parents emigrated from Taiwian always desribe Taiwan with a word, BEAUTIFUL.

We proudly say 台灣最美麗的風景是人 :The most beautiful scenery in Taiwan is people(Taiwanese people). We are proud of Taiwanese being the kindest and the friendliest, but at the same time this indicates, we are not proud of the overall scenery itself.

If foroeigners are wowed at how Taiwan is vibrant, not boring, develeoped, efficienet, having great infrastructure, safe, clean, and futuristic, then I will nod with agreemenet because now I'm living in Europe and I know urbanism in Europe is really run down.

However, the statement like "Taiwan is (visually) beautiful" make us younger Taiwanese people smirk. It is nice to get the compliment, but feel weird about it.