In late 2023, Lanny and I decided we should go on a vacation in 2024 since we had such a great time with Japan this year. Our destination? Southeast Asia. But the question was, where exactly? After a quick search on the internet using the keyword “where to go in SEA,” Lanny stumbled upon Taiwan and more specifically, the Taiwan Sky Lantern Festival. Celebrated annually around the Lunar New Year in February, it quickly became our chosen mission.
Preplanning
The fun thing is, we hadn’t mapped out our itinerary or even thought about accommodations in advance. Our main goal was to travel from the north to the south of Taiwan, with just a basic idea of what we wanted to see in each location, but without any concrete plans. In fact, it wasn’t until I met up with Lanny in Frankfurt, a day before our flight, that we decided to book a last-minute hiking tour for the day after we arrived since that was the only free time slot left. So, we based the first half of our tour around the Sky Lantern Festival and the spontaneous hike, while the second half was a more relaxed do as you go methodology. So off we went, with just one hotel booked yet and a rough idea of our Masterplan. To be honest, this spontaneity is what I love most about traveling – the freedom to do as we wish, despite the risks it may involve. Fortunately, Lanny knew a good friend who would stow away our luggage for the time we travel across the country, so at least that was one concern less.
Arrival – Taipei to Hualien 21-22
We landed in Taipei at Taoyuan Airport on the 21st of February around noon. It cost us 150 TND p.P. and took about an hour to reach downtown Taipei. Once there, we quickly met up with Lanny’s friend, Albi, an old school buddy who’s been living in Taiwan for five years and is fluent in language and culture. We dropped off our luggage at his place, taking only the essentials for the next ten-ish days. He also handed us an IC card, which later would come in super handy, as we were able to rent the local youbikes. After enjoying a vegetarian dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant (Taipei surprisingly has quite a few), we headed out to catch the train to Hualien. As we’d planned, a hiking tour would await our calling on the next day.
The hike we were set to embark on was the Zhuilu Old Trail within Taroko National Park. Starting at an altitude of 250 meters above sea level, we would ascend to 750 meters within 3 miles. The trail ends on a narrow cliff with a steep drop-off. This is probably why access is limited to about 100 people per day, and you must enter between 7 AM and 10 AM (Zhuilu Old Trail Guide). For us, this meant waking up super early for a 3-hour hike right after arriving in Taiwan. Despite the early start and jet lag, we were in high spirits, and our group was easy to get along with. This hike remains a fun and somewhat absurd memory from the first moments of our vacation, which was planned to actually seeing the lantern festival. The hike was enjoyable, with many stairs built into the trail, although one group member struggled with knee issues on the stairs. It was exhausting, and by the end, even my legs started to shake. We finished our hike in the early afternoon – and went for a 4-hour nap. In the late evening, we attempted to explore the local Dongdamen night market. However, we were too exhausted and the rainy moody weather didn’t help either, so we ended the day early, ready to depart for Jiufen the next day.
Jiufen 23
The next day, we headed to Jiufen, the town rumored to have inspired the movie “Spirited Away”. There’s no direct train, so we transferred in Ruifang to catch a bus up to Jiufen. This city sits at a higher altitude, and while Ruifang barely showed the sun, Jiufen was engulfed in deep fog and rain. Our hostel was conveniently located in an alley right next to Jiufen Old Street, so we were smack dap in the middle of the tourist hot spot.
After a quick tour through the streets and having lunch, I felt a deep low stemming from the weight of jet lag and yesterday’s exhaustion. As my energy level dropped quiet low, I opted for a short nap, in which I transcended into another world, while Lanny was exploring Jiufen in the current world on her own. Unfortunately, I woke up around 7 PM, just as things were closing, so I didn’t get to see much of the city. Despite this, the small alleys and lights were incredibly picturesque and inviting. Its interesting how far ambilight can go. We ended our day early, taking just a few photos, as the main event of our trip awaited us the next day.
Fun Fact: The Sky Lantern Festival
The Lantern Festival in Taiwan is often associated with releasing lanterns into the sky, but it’s more than just that. It’s a nationwide celebration, taking place in several cities over days or weeks, with each city offering its own unique take on the festivities. These can include lantern sculptures and elaborate decorations. Specifically, the event where masses of lanterns are released into the sky happens only in Pingxi. In 2024, this event was scheduled for the 17th and 24th of February.
While individual lantern releases happen in Pingxi regularly near the train tracks every day, the mass release occurs in a specially designated area. This event starts at 6 PM and includes a show; every 20 minutes, groups release their lanterns into the sky. In between, as new participants get ready with their lanterns, the show goes on, featuring dance performances and a host to keep the audience engaged. To participate in the mass release, it is necessary to get a free ticket on the day of the event, but like with everything amazing, be prepared for a long queue.
Furthermore, a different city in Taiwan is chosen to host the National Lantern Festival each year, which in 2024 falls on Tainan.
source: https://www.taiwanobsessed.com/lantern-festival-pingxi-taipei-taiwan/
Pingxi and the Sky Lantern Festival 24
We left Jiufen early for Pingxi, which took us around 1.5 hours such that we arrived around 09:30 AM. It is said, that you can participate in the mass lantern release at the event in the evening for free. The catch is, that you have to register in advance. Registration would start at around half past 10, however when we arrived, we already witnessed a literally 1 km queue. We had somewhat already resigned ourselves the day before to not participating directly in the mass release, and seeing the queue solidified our conviction. This gave us the chance to explore the local sights early in the morning while most people were still queuing. After completing our sightseeing, we enjoyed a hearty lunch and grabbed coffee at 2 PM. By then, the area was getting busier, but the main event wasn’t set to start until 6 PM. With no other plans for the day, we decided to do the old “arrive early and reserve a good seating spot” trick. Actually, not surprising, many people already set up their cameras and tripods there but we still managed to secure a good spot and settled in to wait. Fortunately, I had downloaded some movies, which helped me pass the time. Meanwhile, the event crew was busy with last-minute preparations and rehearsals on the stage, allowing us to catch a sneak peek of the show.
The show featured an impressive lineup including a dragon dance, drum performances and slow dance by elderly people, all managed by an engaging MC. The event was broadcasted on, what I believe, national television, and the MC took the time to introduce the crew and chat with participants, making everyone feel part of the celebration. The mass release of the lanterns was accompanied by warm and soothing music and with every release a wave of admiration was visibly heard through the crowd. Among the planned performances, was also a K-pop choreography, however we could only watch it during the rehearsal as we needed to leave early.
Our decision to leave early was out of logistic necessity. When we arrived in Shifen, we stored our luggage at a coffee shop and promised to pick it up by 19:30, even though the show was scheduled to end at 21:00. However, that worked out for us, because we wanted, to catch an early train to Taipei anyway, as we weren’t able to get accommodation nearby because everything was fully booked. As a matter of fact, the city is quite small and probably doesn’t expect many people except for this one event per year. That wasn’t so obvious when we arrived in the morning, but was now more evident when we tried to leave the venue.
The only road leading out of the venue was overwhelmed, creating a bottleneck. Thousands of people were stuck, and at times literally unable to move. Trying to be in time for our luggage we also ran past a huge line of people, who were waiting for a shuttle bus service leading to Taipei. In that moment, I thought to myself, that that’s probably irrelevant for us, as we would go by train. Little did I know, that the train station was equally, if not more, congested than the shuttle bus queue.
Getting back to the coffee shop, located directly at street leading to the train station, was a test of patience in itself. The narrow path, merely 2 meters wide, was packed with hundreds of eager travelers all heading towards Taipei. After navigating through the crowd, we finally collected our luggage. Turns out, we didn’t even need to stress out that much as the coffee shop was still happily serving to all the late-night customers. What’s normally a 1.5-hour journey from Shifen to Taipei stretched significantly longer due to the crowd. After an hour-long wait just to board the train, we departed at 09:00 PM and arrived, exhausted but happy, at our hotel at around 11 PM.
Tainan 25-27
Today we were off to Tainan a city located in the southern part of Taipei, from where we planned to travel northward again. The train ride was smooth and highlighted how small the country is, taking just 4 hours (and 40 euros) on the national high-speed railway.
Fun Fact: Meaning of Taipei
Tainan translates to “south of Taiwan” (simplified Chinese: 台南), reflecting its geographical position. Similarly, Taipei means “north of Taiwan” (台北), and Taichung signifies “center of Taiwan” (台ä¸). In these names, the first character “Tai” is in simplified Chinese, while the second character denotes the cardinal directions. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taichung)
Finally, the vacation part starts now and some more easy days lie ahead – well not just yet though. We barely scratched the very cherry top of Taiwan’s Lantern Festivities. Another main event would be the National Taiwan Festival, hosted by Tainan this year, and located across two main venues: the Anping District to the northwest and near the Tainan High Speed Rail Station to the southeast.
We cleverly picked a hostel close to downtown and Anping, making it easier to dive into one of the main festive venues upon our evening arrival in Tainan. After checking in, we grabbed some bikes and headed straight to Anping. Coincidentally, a drone light show was scheduled for today, however we just barely made it to see the last half.
Nonetheless, there was plenty more to see. Numerous outdoor light exhibitions decorated the lawn area along the river and a big stage on a plaza with at least 100 food stalls of varying food options surprised us when we arrived at the event location. After taking our time in exploring the exhibitions and food variety, we returned relatively early to our hostel, satisfied with today’s more laid-back adventure.
On our second vacation day, we slept in until past noon. Today’s goal was to give the other festival venue a visit, which is located a little bit further outside the city at “ICC Tainan” just next to the Tainan Highspeed Railway. Boarding a bus, we attempted to pay our fare but got a bit tangled up trying to pronounce “ICC Tainan.” The driver, realizing our destination, suggested we were heading to the High-Speed Railway station. Turns out, we had boarded a shuttle bus meant for railway customers, offering free rides with a high-speed railway ticket. With many people going to the lantern festival, the driver kindly let us and other passengers on without charge.
Although you could get a glimpse of the festival venue from the train station, it wasn’t obvious at first, before we really arrived, that the place was massively huge. I am not good with measures or football, but I assume it has had to be the area of at least 8 football fields combined. Our very first goal was to locate a very specific tourist information booth, which would hand out free merch exclusively for foreign tourists! Happy with our howl, we then continued discovering the festival area.
On our third day in Tainan, we went all easy and did some classic sightseeing. We strolled around the Tainan Park and spend some time there just to enjoy the weather. Contrary to the rain we experienced in the north, here in Tainan it was rather warm and sunny. Our tour included historical sites like the Chihkan Tower, formerly erected by the colonializing Dutch as a Fort back in 1653, later used by the invading Japanese as a hospital in 1895 and now restored and served as a historic landmark. Next we gave the Hayashi Department Store a visit, which is located in “ Suehirochou Nicchoume known as The Ginza District of Tainan” and one of the first fashion department store with elevator opened in 1932. Today it offers a variety of Taiwan specific crafts and traditional clothing, albeit at a steep price. Our final stop was the Shennong Street, which had quite a vibe. By then, we had racked up around 18k steps and were already exhusted to explore further, so we cut our trip short and headed back early as we would prepare to depart tomorrow in the morning.
It was not quite clear yet, where we would go. Our masterplan dictated that we would just need to be in Taipei at the end of the day, making a half day trip to another city a charming activity. We initially decided for Taichung, which is located halfway to Taipei, but Kaohsiung, a big city, located a little bit further to the south, was introduced to us during our trip as an interesting alternative. However, we eventually made a last-minute discovery on google maps of a super-secret and exciting place not even listed on TripAdvisor, which became our next destination.
Taichung 28
It’s an Anime Street! It is a street, well more of an alley, filled with graffiti of various anime shows. It was surprisingly neat and clean, with a mix of popular and obscure, old and new anime references everywhere. I was a bit unsure about it from just a Google Maps find, but it was exactly as cool as hoped, even featuring a big Haikyuu mural. The alley was short, only about 50 meters, and not crowded at all, sometimes it was just us checking it out We got to Taichung around lunch and headed straight for the anime street. After exploring there, we were pretty happy and satisfied and started wandering around downtown to see what else we could find.
Walking down a main road, we saw these big building blocks on both sides. More by coincidence I discovered, that I would be able to take a picture of a theme I’ve always hoped to get: a kind of optical illusion, making you wonder which building was in front of the other.
In the evening, we made it back to Taipei and checked into our new hostel in Ximending, which would be our base for the rest of our trip.
Taipei 29 3
On our first day back in Taipei, we decided to come full circle and finish our trip the way we started: with a hike. The weather in Taipei was drizzling with small rain drops, but we were still eager to step up the elephant mountain. The stairs were steep, yet the ascent was manageable, taking us less than an hour to reach the peak. From here we could get a good view on Taipeis cityscape with the Taipei 101 tower standing out prominently almost right in front of us. The cold, rainy and misty weather added a mysterious note to the scenery and despite those conditions, we were not along. Four other onlookers joined us, as the view transitions from day to night.
The day wrapped up with a gathering of friends and acquaintances living in Taipei, all of us bonding over Hot Pot. Among them were two Taiwanese guys, Anrew and Justin, the latter I’d befriended in Japan back in 2019, Max, a friend of Lanny’s, and Albi along with his girlfriend, who kindly brought our luggage. Such an exciting situation, that a mix of very different people made it out to come together and share their experiences of Taiwan. Obviously, as we were only tourists, we had just had a surface level perspective in comparison to Albi and Max, who had settled into life here, and of course, the local Taiwanese. It was fascinating to see how well Max and Albi had integrated, fully grasping not only the language but also the nuanced aspects of Taiwanese culture and politics.
Fun Fact: Taiwanese as a language
As some might be aware, there’s a significant conflict between Taiwan and mainland China, which even extends to language perceptions. While Taiwanese people often consider Taiwanese to be a distinct language, those from mainland China might see it as merely a very wild dialect. Indeed, they explained that Taiwanese Hokkien significantly differs from Chinese Mandarin, much like how Dutch differs from German. Understanding Chinese doesn’t guarantee comprehension of Taiwanese, with maybe only about 20% overlap. Some characters are even used differently. Although, about 80% of Taiwanese people speak Taiwanese Hokkien, the two young Taiwanese guys we met mentioned they barely knew it. It wasn’t part of their standard school curriculum but was available as an optional course.
Fun Fact: “Chinese is actually easy”
Something which surprised us was when both Albi and Max shared the opinion that Chinese is “actually easy”. They explained, that obviously that language has a steep learning curve, because you would need to know the most essential vocabulary in pronunciation and writing first. Beyond this initial hurdle, they pointed out, the language is surprisingly straightforward, largely due to its minimal grammar—there are almost no cases or declinations as you’d find in languages like German. Syntax structure matters, but once you know the words, understanding the sentence’s meaning becomes much simpler. Of course, that only covers the most basic aspects of the language. They also mentioned, that a single character, especially older ones, can encapsulate a story worth more than 1000 words. Additionally, the nuances of word usage, which dictate the appropriate contexts for different terms, introduce another level of challenge.
The next day, exhausted from all the walking of the past couple days, we swore to take it easy and we slept in until very past noon. And because we already finished the souvenir shopping yesterday and it was such a rainy day, it was totally justified to just stay lazy. Not to mention, that our masterplan even included for a buffer day. Yet, accustomed as we were to being on the move, idleness didn’t suit us for long. So, we set out for a short stroll to see the Dihua Street, which would promise even more souvenirs (especially dried fruits) and some of the oldest buildings in the area. And I cannot remember why and where the drive came from, but we ended up walking a whole lot more – from XimenDing to the Dalongdon Baoan Temple and back, and then again around XimenDing for dinner, all in all netting us a total of 16k steps.
The last day was upon us. The weather, unfortunately didn’t change much but we were determined to see all the remaining sights. So, first of in the morning to the national museum. We had a moderate time budget, so we did a 50% museum run, meaning, absorbing as much information as possible without lingering too much.
Fun Fact: Jade
Although similar in appearance, jade actually refers to two distinct mineral families: nephrite and jadeite. Nephrite, the original jade, is known for its toughness and creamy texture, traditionally used in carvings and tools. Jadeite, discovered later, is valued for its range of colors, from vibrant greens to blues and reds, and its exceptional translucency. Despite their differences in appearance and texture, both types of jade are celebrated for their beauty and cultural significance, especially in Asian art and jewelry.
Afterwards we headed to the Chiang-Kai-shek Memorial. To be honest, the history here gets a bit complicated. Chiang Kai-shek was a key figure as a former President of the Republic of China and the leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), which was forced to relocate to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War to the Communists. In Taiwan, he played a pivotal role in the island’s economic development. However, his tenure is also marked by controversy, including criticisms for human rights violations. Anyhow, the memorial sits on a vast plaza, with a broad path leading up to it, flanked by two huge buildings on either side: the National Theater and the National Concert Hall. While it was raining outside, we even saw young people dancing and practicing orchestra under the shelter of the national museum.
In the evening, we manage to create some beautiful last-minute postcard before packing our bags, preparing for our departure the next day. We met up with Albi one final time to say goodbye and returned his IC cards. Then, it was time to head back to Germany, though our journey included a 8-hour layover in Beijing. Unfortunately, we arrived at 7 PM, just after the shops had closed at 6 PM. Despite this, we managed to make it through the long wait and landed in Frankfurt on Monday morning at 6 AM. Departing at night and flying west, effectively lengthening the night, turned out to be an excellent strategy for minimizing jet lag.
Arriving in Frankfurt marked the beginning of our separate ways—me heading back to Dresden, and Lanny to her flat in Frankfurt. Our goodbye was a mix of exhaustion and a whimsical notion that now the real vacation could begin. Yet, this trip, with its shared experiences and adventures, would continue to live on as a source for many many inside jokes and stories.