Taiwan: good to know
The general-information half of trip planning: how expensive Taiwan feels, what is considered polite, what is not, and the everyday practicalities - alongside our 179 written places.
Japanese orderliness with Chinese warmth; night markets are the evening's main event.
✓ Considered polite
- Eat through night markets stall by stall - it is the national cuisine in motion
- Queue precisely - lines form for everything good
- Use the EasyCard for metro, buses, trains and convenience stores
- Take the high-speed rail - the west coast in ninety minutes
✗ Better avoided
- Tip - not expected anywhere
- Eat or drink on the metro - fined
- Stick chopsticks upright in rice
- Miss the east coast - Taroko and the Pacific cliffs are the wild half
Worth knowing
- Cash still leads at night markets; cards fine elsewhere
- Convenience stores do everything - tickets, bills, coffee, seats
- Free wifi is genuinely everywhere
- Typhoon season peaks August-September - flexible plans then
Plugs and voltage: Wikipedia, «Mains electricity by country» (after the IEC World Plugs list), read 15 October 2026.
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Keep planning
Customs are living things - regions differ, cities relax, generations shift. Take these notes as a friendly head start, watch what locals do, and when in doubt a smile and a greeting in the local language cover almost everything.