Travel Taiwan with a reliable eSIM. 5G coverage, MRT navigation, night markets, and mountain trails - stay connected from Taipei to Taroko.
Taiwan packs a remarkable amount of variety into an island roughly the size of Maryland. You can eat dan bing at a Taipei street stall at 7am, ride the THSR bullet train south to Tainan by noon, and be eating bowl of beef noodle soup in a 300-year-old lane district before dark. The east coast is a different world entirely - Taroko Gorge, the East Rift Valley, and Hualien's quiet pace feel nothing like the capital.
Taipei itself is dense, efficient, and surprisingly easy to get around. The MRT covers most of what you need - Zhongshan for shopping and cafes, Da'an for universities and bookstores, Ximending for youth culture and street food, Shilin for the most famous night market in the country. Beyond Taipei, the Taiwan High Speed Rail connects the western corridor from Taipei to Zuoying (Kaohsiung) in about 90 minutes. Buses fill in the gaps for everywhere else.
The food culture here runs deep. Taiwan is where bubble tea was invented, where beef noodle soup is practically a civic institution, and where convenience stores (7-Eleven and FamilyMart are everywhere) somehow manage to sell things worth eating at midnight. Carry an EasyCard - it works on the MRT, buses, YouBike rentals, and most convenience store purchases.
Taiwan has strong mobile infrastructure. Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile, and Far EasTone all run solid 4G networks with 5G expanding across major cities. In Taipei, signal is reliable underground on the MRT, inside buildings, and in mountain districts like Yangmingshan - though deep in Taroko Gorge, expect patchy coverage in the narrower sections. That is physics, not a network problem.
An eSIM is the cleanest way to handle connectivity here. You skip the airport SIM queue at Taoyuan International (Terminal 1 and 2 both have counters, but they get busy on arrival waves), and you keep your home SIM active for anything that needs your regular number. For iPhone users wondering whether this actually works in practice, this guide on how eSIM works on iPhone walks through the mechanics clearly.
Activation is straightforward. Buy your eSIM before you fly - ideally a day or two out - and follow the setup steps so everything is ready when you land. If you have never done it before, this activation walkthrough covers the exact process without the filler.
Data usage in Taiwan adds up faster than you expect. Google Maps for transit navigation, translation apps for menus and signs, real-time train schedules on the THSR app, weather checks before heading into the mountains. Budget accordingly. A plan with at least 5GB for a week-long trip is reasonable; more if you are shooting video or doing remote work from a cafe in Da'an.
Public Wi-Fi exists at MRT stations, convenience stores, and many cafes. It is usable for light tasks. It is not something to depend on for anything important.
The EasyCard is a reloadable IC card that works on Taipei MRT, city buses across Taiwan, YouBike public bicycles, and as a payment method at 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, and Hi-Life. You can pick one up at the airport MRT station inside Taoyuan Terminal 1 or 2 arrivals. Load it with 500 TWD to start - enough for several days of transit. It saves you from fumbling with coins at turnstiles and makes bike rentals effortless. YouBike 2.0 stations are dense in central Taipei and the first 30 minutes are cheap, which makes them genuinely useful for short hops between MRT stops.
Shilin is the largest and most tourist-heavy - worth visiting once, but crowded. Raohe Street Night Market in Songshan District is smaller, more local in feel, and easier to move through. Ningxia Night Market near Zhongshan is compact and focused on traditional Taiwanese snacks rather than novelty items. If you are in Tainan, the night food scene there operates differently - less structured markets, more individual stalls and restaurants open late. Tainan is arguably the best eating city in Taiwan. Many locals will tell you exactly that.
Getting to Hualien means either flying (short domestic flight from Songshan Airport) or taking the train from Taipei on the Puyuma or Taroko Express - roughly two hours. Book train tickets in advance through the Taiwan Railways app or website; they sell out, especially on weekends and holidays. Taroko National Park starts just outside Hualien city. The Shakadang Trail is accessible without a permit. The Central Cross-Island Highway routes require a permit from the Taroko National Park headquarters, which you can apply for online. Rent a scooter in Hualien for the coast road south toward Fuyuan - the scenery on that stretch is hard to describe without sounding like a brochure.
Written by Texas Bukkens
Founder of eSIMMY. Spent years watching roaming charges eat into travel budgets - and built the fix. About Texas →
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