Highways & Byways is the title of my weekly travel column in Taipei Times, Taiwan’s leading English-language newspaper (and a paper I wrote several articles for, including this one, back in the first decade of the 21st century). When Richard Saunders, a regular contributor of travel articles to Taipei Times, decided to move back to the UK, he asked me if I was interested in taking over his spot. Without hesitation I said “yes.” A key reason for taking on this job is that these months I’m busy updating my Bradt guidebook. The third edition is due out in the first half of 2019, so I’ve been traveling all over the island, seeing what’s changed, what’s new and deserves to be included, and what can be dropped.

The first installment of Highways & Byways came out on August 3, when I wrote about historic buildings in Tainan’s Anping District that are open to the public but fail to provide much in the way of information. Among the places I’ve covered since then have been a couple of hiking routes in Chiayi County, the delightful old town of Beipu near Hsinchu (where I took the photo here), and sites related to local food history in Kaohsiung’s Gangshan.