TL;DR: the place is great to visit! Very friendly folks, utterly brilliant street food, flawless public transport, great natural beauty with excellent hiking opportunities.
My partner and I, plus two friends, spent 2 1/2 weeks in Taiwan recently, arriving shortly after they opened up post-Covid lockdown. Stayed in Taipei for a few days, then went down the east coast visiting aboriginal areas and eating the local food - a highlight of which was, BION, ferns which they use in stir fries and as general salad vegetables quite a bit.
We traveled by train mostly, but also used buses, cabs, cable car, ferry, hired van (with guide and driver) and bicycles. ALL public transport we used on the island was fast, reliable and spotlessly clean.
From Taipei we went down to Hualien on the east coast of the island which is less developed and less fertile, so has the largest aboriginal population. Some really wild weather there on one day so we mostly stayed in the van that day! The weather for the rest of the trip was okay to great, no problem.
Then Yuli and Taitung; as each stop our guide took us along the best local hiking trails. Apparently Taiwan has more high mountains then the whole of the rest of east Asia put together, and I can well believe it! Walking through forests of ghost bamboo shrouded by mist, hearing it creaking in the wind, was really something.
Then round the sound of the island to Kaohsiung, and so up the more populated and fertile west side of the island back to Taipei, again stopping to do walks in towards the centre of the island; one of them the other end of a trail we’d done the other end of from the west. That whole trail takes 6-7 days to do so that was out of our reach, and in any case parts had been damaged by a recent earthquake and heavy rains, so was not really traversable. We got good advice everywhere on where it was okay to go, or not.
The only real disappointment was we didn’t really find much interesting local modern art (my partner is an artist). The street food is so good it seems hardly anyone eats at home, in the big cities at least, it’s cheaper, easier and more interesting to go to your nearest night market.
There wasn’t as much command of English as I might have expected, but that was no real problem; most people in hospitality trades spoke at least some, but the Google Translate app came in handy a few times! There was good 4g or 5g coverage everywhere, even on walks, except for the very most remote ones.
I do highly recommend it as a friendly, safe (for women in particular), inexpensive, and spectacular destination.
Happy to answer questions or give recommendations if anyone’s interested!