• Admire the view from the top of Taipei 101, until recently the world’s tallest building. You can take a lift (the fastest of its kind in the world) up to The Observatory on the top floor for the ultimate city vista.

• Take the northeast coastal road, which goes through a national scenic area and offers spectacular panoramas passing the foothills of the Central Mountain Range and overlooking the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Travel through many small villages, little changed since the advent of high technology.

• Make sure you see the spectacular Taroko Gorge, Taiwan’s best-known natural attraction, a ravine with towering cliffs shot through with extensive marble deposits.

• Go birdwatching: Taiwan is home to about 460 different species of birds, including rare endemic species such as the Formosan blue magpie, and the Swinhoe’s and Mikado pheasants. Other wildlife includes the famous Formosan rock-monkey, and about 400 species of butterflies.

• Visit Tainan, the oldest city on the island, which is known as the ‘City of 100 Temples’; there are, in fact, 220, and amongst them some of the best examples of Confucian temple architecture in Taiwan.

• Check out Taipei’s National Palace Museum, which contains the world’s largest collection of Chinese artefacts.

• Discover the East Rift Valley, where the world’s largest continental plate, the Eurasian plate, and the largest oceanic plate (the Philippine plate) meet. This is Taiwan’s largest fault line, a geologist’s paradise - but also a fertile area rich in sediments that has earned the area the tag of the ‘land of milk and honey’.

• Learn about the aboriginal Yami, one of the world’s last surviving hunter-gatherer tribes, on their island, Lanyu (Orchid Island), off the southeast coast.

• Admire the astonishing basalt rock formations of the Penghu archipelago, a group of islands in the middle of the Taiwan Straits. The columns were formed when lava erupting from deep into the earth cooled and contracted, and were then carved by wind and wave erosion.

• Take a look at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, an imposing tomb and shrine to Taipei’s most famous leader, which also houses Taipei’s main venues for the performing arts, the National Theatre and National Opera House, in its large grounds.

• Chill out for a day or two in Kenting National Park, a popular forest recreation area boasting fine beaches, coral lakes and a bird sanctuary, as well as facilities for watersports and golf, all set amidst tropical coastal forest.

See Contact Addresses for further tourist information.

© 2006 Columbus Travel Publishing Ltd. Disclaimer

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