I’ve selected this photo as a moment during our visit to Taiwan that sticks in my mind.
On our way over to Europe last year we had about an 18 hour layover in Taipei. We decided we would try to make the most of it and jam in as much sightseeing as we could before our next flight.
We signed up for a half day guided tour visiting the quaint town of Sanxia with its traditional architecture, the beautifully ornate Qingshui Zushi Temple and Yingge, an old ceramics town with numerous pottery stores. This was a nice and cruisy way to start our day in Taiwan, with pick-up and drop-off at the airport included and, best of all, it was all free! Woohoo!
Following the tour we made plans to head back out to the city to do more exploring of our own. This included stops at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, Shilin Markets to sample some local delicacies and Taipei 101 to check out the night views.
This was my partner’s first visit to Taiwan and I was really plugging the idea of visiting the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. I had vivid childhood memories of watching the changing of the guards on previous family holidays and wanted to see it again for nostalgic reasons. When we got to the Memorial we were met with an inflatable recreation of the iconic Tiananmen Square Tank Man scene. I was surprised to see such an openly political statement being made given the relationship between Taiwan and China, especially at such a highly visited tourist attraction, but I kind of liked how it was so in your face. At that point, I hadn’t realised it was the anniversary of this historic event. But it made more sense when we got inside the building to the museum where there was an exhibition on the Tiananmen Square protests including the events leading up to it and the aftermath.
We were there for hours and probably could’ve spent more time perusing the museum. But alas, we only had so much time and needed to get moving. It was decided that Taiwan needed to be on our “must visit again” travel list.
