Taiwan - February 2025

Overview

I had visited Taiwan in the beginning of 2025 with a friend and had a really good time. I brought my new (well, used) camera along with me and decided it would be a really good opportunity to not only take photos to have physical versions of the memories I’d make, but also to practice my photography skills.

I had taken a couple thousands photos on my trip, but here are a few selections that I think are the best. I should also specify I’m not a professional photographer by any means; this is just a hobby for me, but I hope you like these photos too.

Cherry Blossoms

When I visited, I was very lucky to see cherry blossoms in bloom as it’s a very rare occurrence, only happening around 7 days a year. I hadn’t planned for this at all, and it was just an incredible coincidence that my trip’s days had lined up.

Lantern Festival

At the exact same time, the Taipei Lantern Festival was happening in Ximending. Unfortunately that year there were no flying lanterns (which I probably would’ve struggled to take good photos of anyway), but in their place were these beautiful hand-crafted lanterns on the ground that were really indistinguishable from art pieces.

Temples

It was also really interesting to visit the Chinese style temples on my trip, and was cool to see how the more ancient temples compare and contrast to the more modern ones.

Taichung

My time was mostly split between Taipei and Taichung. We had walked around a lot of places, so it was a great opportunity to take lots of photos.

We had spent a lot of time near the Taichung TR train station too since it was inbetween every place we were going. The upper level is the actual railway; the ground level has been decommissioned and turned into a museum. There are a few places to get food around here as well.

Hsinchu

We spent a day travelling to the nearby city of Hsinchu. We got there by train and spent the rest of the day walking around.

The thing I wanted to see the most was TSMC, the biggest semi-conductor manufacturer in the world. If you’re unaware, TSMC is where 90% of the worlds most cutting edge computer chips are produced; it was really cool to know that the SoC in my phone and the sensor in the camera I was using was likely produced in this very building, let alone the rest of the world’s technology.

Their headquarters and visitor museum are based in Hsinchu so that was what our day revolved around. We ended up getting some cool merch from there as well.

Afterwards, we went to get some food. Apparently we got confused as some TSMC employees getting let out early, because after finishing for the day they would do the same thing and walk around the nearby city to eat, haha.

There was a particular place called “Dolce Ducky” that I liked the most. They had little egg waffles shaped as capybaras, stuffed with a whole myriad of fillings. Surprisingly I liked the mozzarella & cheddar waffles the most. Something about the combination of sweet & salty taste and creamy feeling of the melted cheese was just so delicious I had like 10 of them. Would definitely go there again if I went to visit.

Taipei

Another highlight was Taipei. It was mind-blowing to see how big the city actually is, where you could literally travel from one end of the city to the other in a high-speed train for 20+ minutes and you’ll still see nothing but multi-story skyscrapers.

I had seen a few youtube videos of tech markets in Taipei and had really wanted to visit one, so we went to a few which I was super happy about. My favorite was the Guang Hua Digital Plaza, as it was a lot of smaller vendors in a 6-story building specializing in a specific thing. I even got a matte screen protector custom cut for my phone; it felt and looked like an e-reader screen, instead of the cheaper glossy screen protectors you can get from Amazon or eBay.

If I didn’t live overseas, I would definitely go shopping there for cables, peripherals and PC parts instead of just getting them online haha.

There were also night markets, of which we visited a new one every night. Some were permanent setups, and others were more temporary. Sometimes they have a theme, like one that was based around Snoopy where you could buy heaps of merch and get mochi donuts shaped as Snoopy characters. (Taiwan is very into Snoopy, something I haven’t really figured out why)

There was one night market of note in Taichung, which is home to the Angel Face Steak. It’s a massive piece of fried chicken, getting its name from the fact that it’s as big as (or even bigger than) your face. I only managed to get 3/4ths of the way through it before getting full.

Unfortunately I can’t find a picture of it. I was probably too hungry to take a photo of it before eating, hahaha.

Taipei 101

On my last day, we went to go visit Taipei 101. It’s the tallest building in Taipei at 500 meters, and has two viewing decks available; one with with a 270° view behind some tinted glass, and another that was slightly higher and completely out in the open, but with only a 90° view. (There were bars to look through, and barely large enough to fit my camera lens though)

While I like these shots the most, they were the ones that really pushed my cheap budget lenses to their limit. You can see their shortcomings around the edges and corners, where they get out of focus and lose their detail. It also didn’t help that I was half a kilometer above the ground and struggled to stand still.

Plus since the unobstructed viewing deck has a much smaller viewing angle, some of these photos were taken through the tinted glass from the lower deck. I’ve tried my best to color correct them. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy these photos too.

Taiwan is a very pretty place and I’d love to go visit again. I might end up uploading more photos that I took that I like too, but they’ll require a lot more effort to clean up and censor the license plates haha.

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