Taiwan

We drove the whole island in a month and never spent more than three hours behind the wheel in a day. That is the pleasure of Taiwan. It is small enough to cross on a lazy morning and varied enough that you never arrive somewhere you have already seen. Of eight months in Asia it is the country we expected the least from, and it is the one we have talked about most since.

What we did not expect was how green the cities are. In Taipei and in Tainan, buildings that would be flat concrete anywhere else come wrapped in palms and ferns, with potted trees dragged onto every side street, balcony and rooftop that will take the weight. Whole apartment blocks look mid-negotiation with the jungle. Everyone here is in on it. If you have a doorstep, you put something living on it. The climate does the rest, because it rains half the week and everything grows faster than anyone can tidy it.

The noise matches the green. Scooters stack four deep at every light. Night market smoke reaches you two streets before you find the stalls. A neighbourhood temple sits wedged between a 7-Eleven and a bubble tea stand. Nature and commerce share the same square metre and mostly get along.

The island changes as you drive south. The mountain forests in the north are the densest I have photographed anywhere. A damp mist never fully lifts, and every ridge road vanishes into something out of a folk tale. It stopped feeling like sightseeing after an hour and started feeling like being slowly absorbed. Further down, the coast road turns and the green drops straight into the Pacific. It looks like what I imagine Hawaii looks like, though I have never been.

I changed recipe halfway through the trip. Taipei was shot on my usual Kodachrome 64 variation, but once the loop started I wanted something more pastel, because I had used K64 on almost every trip this year. The new one pushed the greens and blues electric and pulled every other tone back. That turned out to be exactly right for an island this wet.