Our Taiwan road trip started in Taichung where we left the city and headed into the mountains for the Chinese New Year. The public holiday meant that hotels had hiked their prices up so our budget went out of the window and the most basic hotel cost triple what we were paying previously in Asia. Our hotel in the Meishan area felt a bit like camping with beds on the floor and a restaurant with a fire to keep warm but it was full of character. The meals included cabbage at every meal which was surprisingly nice! Sophie loved the chinese version of porridge which is basically watery rice. The scenery here is amazing and we managed to trick the girls into a bit of a walk. 

From the mountains we headed back towards the coast to Kaohsiung. Whilst driving through the mountains we received a ‘Presidential Alert’ warning of an earthquake in the area but luckily we didn’t feel anything and no further action was required! We had a random but fun time sweeping salt in a salt field and climbing Qigu Salt Mountain which was an underwhelming small snowy looking salt hill.

Kaohsiung has impressive looking dragon and tiger pagodas which were accompanied by another street food market (there are many in Taiwan). We visited the British Consulate and saw a monkey steal someone’s bubble tea which reminded us of Sophie’s apple juice incident in Kuala Lumpur!

We all love Taiwan – the cooler climate makes outdoors easy and there is no lack of family pleasing food at the street markets and convenience stores. Next the road trip continues around the island and on to Kenting, up the east coast and past Salt Moon Lake – see part 2 for the rest of the journey!