Onward to Kaohsiung. Wild monkeys! Kaohsiung is the major city in Taiwan's south. Like Seattle, it's a bustling port city with wide avenues and a beautiful waterfront. Unlike Seattle, it's home to wild monkeys that run around like squirrels.

We went to the Shoushan Zoo, which was really nice. Admission cost 50 cents for adults, 20 cents for kids. But the real attraction was just OUTSIDE the zoo gates, where we found wild formosan macaques in a park popular with hikers. They are completely unafraid of people, and we got SO CLOSE. The more I watched them, the more I thought, we're not so different.

HSR to Tainan! Tian Gong temple, National Museum of Taiwan Literature, Confucius temple and Koxinga shrine

National Palace Museum, Taipei Children's Amusement Park, Tamsui.

If your goal is to make your kids fall in love with your birth country, take them to an amusement park! Leofoo Village is part zoo, part amusement park, a whole lot of fun.

Leofoo Village is split off into different themed areas. The big waterpark was closed for the season, but there was more than enough to do in the other four areas: South Pacific, African Safari, Arabian Nights and the Wild West. The boys INHALED cheeseburgers and fries in the American Wild West restaurant. (Easy guys, it's only day 5 in Taiwan.)

*Pictures by my awesome cousin and cousin-in-law!

Literally the beautiful beach I have ever seen in my life. Qixingtan faces the Pacific Ocean, with turquoise water and the prettiest smooth stones. The waves were legit Little Mermaid-style crashing into the rocks.

Paul stacking rock sculptures.

This guy was taking photos of the waves… then a big one surprised him and he got soaked.

Tones of blue in the Pacific Ocean

SUPER windy!

Taiwanese fighter jets taking off every couple of minutes. It was like having our own private Blue Angels show.

Love the gray with white stripes. Took some pictures instead of taking rocks home.

I am a wierdo who dislikes sun and sand. (Too hot! And sand always gets everywhere.) So Qixingtan was perfect; overcast and rocky.

OMG. Look closely. This lady has a BABY in a stroller under her rain shield in the front of her scooter.

Apparently all the swallows in Taroko's Swallow Grove left to hang out on the telephone wires in Hualien.

Captain Paul

On a random weekday morning, we had Liyutan (鯉魚潭) almost all to ourselves.

A crane of some kind?

Feeding the carp.

Most young people in the cities speak English to some degree, but it's Taiwanese only for older people in the countryside. Our driver was appalled/amused I can't read the menu (or speak Taiwanese) so he ordered for us.

Must try in Hualien: deep-fried shrimp cake from a roadside vendor.

The breathtaking Taroko Gorge is a must-see. We took an early express train out of Taipei Main Station to Hualien.

The beautiful Yilan countryside, seen from the train.

The weird thing about Taiwan is that public trash cans are few and far in between! BUT there is hardly ever litter on the ground. The few businesses with trash cans are really quite territorial about them. Most people carry their trash around with them? I don't know.

If you know me, you know I am a bathroom nut. The single most horrific Taiwan memory I have was from 16 years ago, the Hualien train station restroom. I cannot tell you the horror that was inside. On the walls, even.

I am happy to report the Hualien train station was recently renovated and expanded (maybe 2, 3 years ago, according to our driver). It is now a glistening, modern facility with FANTASTIC restrooms. ADA restrooms, family restrooms, the works. The family restroom even has little toilets and little sinks, and a child seat. (I don't know what that last thing on the end is.)

Most places have both the Asian style squatty potty and the Western style seated toilet. Almost all were clean and provided toilet paper! This was not the case the last time I was in Taiwan.

The entrance gate to Taroko. No admission fee!

Shanyue Suspension Bridge, spanning the Liwu River, is the longest and highest suspension bride in Taroko National Park. It's fully accessible for wheelchairs and strollers. Outside the restrooms, we saw another family dressed in shorts. They were visiting from Vermont.

Yanzikou (Swallow Grotto) no longer has actual swallows living inside, thanks to climate change.

The windy two-way road was so narrow, in some spots, only one car could pass at a time. Our driver told us the road was built by hand. There's no machine for this. You can still see the chisel marks on the rock wall. It was originally built, with American money, as a quick escape route from Taichung on the western side of Taiwan in case of a mainland Chinese invasion. You're still on an island, but at least you've got a mountain range in between to buy you some time.

The potholes on the marble cliff are leach holes hollowed out by groundwater seeping into the gorge.

Liwu River, which continues to carve out this gorge.

Baiyang Trail ended up in a dead end due to a recent landslide. But we got to see beautiful butterflies along the way. It's like we were at the Tropical Butterfly Room in the science center, except this was for real nature.

Surprise visitors at the parking lot: Formosan macaques! Don't let them see you opening your backpack or your car trunk, or they assume you have food and will follow you.

Qingshui Cliffs is a long stretch of rock that rises nearly vertically out of the Pacific Ocean. Like the rest of the island, these cliffs were created by the collision between the Philippines and the Eurasian tectonic plates about 6 million years ago. It's so pretty it doesn't even look real.

Our driver is a man of many talents; he's also a part owner in an ATV rental/pony farm/photo studio place. Exhilarating and probably not very safe! We got very wet and had an amazing time.

If there's one thing Taiwanese people excel at, it's posing for photos. They call it "pai zhau" and all the sweet old aunties and uncles will give Tyra a run for her money. The setup was kind of kitschy, but the photographers were efficient and nice. "Cross your right ankle over your right! Point your toe! Tilt your head!" I'd forgotten about the Taiwanese poses: the V for victory fingers and the chef's kiss. These were taken on an iPhone resting on a mirror.

We took an early train to Jiaoxi in Yilan County to try our hand at shrimp fishing and soak in the hot springs. The train ride featured views of the Pacific Ocean on one side, and rice fields on the other.

Ok, it's a bit of stretch to claim we were shrimp "fishing" because it's stocked tank in an indoor shrimp farm. And we were so terrible at shrimp fishing the owner dumped a bucket of shrimp in the water next to us. Then we continued to be so terrible he supplemented our meager catch when he grilled it up.

Hot springs all over the city. From public pools to hotels with private rooms to single-sex nude bathhouses. We chose to just soak our feet with little fish!

A trip 14 years in the making. I have been waiting literally the boys' entire lives to take them for their first visit to Taiwan.

Over 16 fulfilling days, we explored Taipei, Jiaoxi, Hualien, Taroko, Kenting, Kaohsiung, Tainan, Chiayi, Alishan and Jiufen, returning to the U.S. just in time for Christmas. The trip was a whirlwind of meeting family who'd only ever seen the boys on Facebook pictures and experiencing everything in the country of their heritage.

I'd been hearing a lot of "I don't like Chinese!" (Ironically, in Chinese.) My goal was to show the boys a REALLY GOOD time.

I ran the kids hard, morning to night, every day. We had a lot of ground to cover! Taiwan is a tiny island nation, about the size of Maryland, and I wanted them to see it all. When we returned to Seattle, they slept 19.5 hours straight, and would've kept going if I hadn't woken them up. My plan worked, because after our trip, all I heard was, "台灣好好玩哦。下次什麼時候去？Taiwan is so, so fun! When are we going back?"

Taiwan stole our hearts: exceptionally safe, delicious, clean — and the U.S. dollar goes FAR.

Day 1: Taipei 101 and Sun Yat-Sen Memorial

Upon arrival in Taiwan, our first order of business was a long-awaited visit to Taipei 101. The best piece of advice I heard was no matter what, to stay up and resist the urge to nap. These bleary-eyed boys took a 13-hour red-eye and made it to Taipei 101 and the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial before collapsing.

Last time I visited (14 yeas ago!) the top level of Taipei 101 was a private club, inaccessible to the public. Now it's accessible, for a price. It's quieter, and feels a bit more exclusive. But the view is practically the same, and the windows at the 101st floor are high up so it's actually harder for a kid to see outside. You're just there for bragging rights.

Peaceful, laid-back, inspiring. Taking the ferry over to Bainbridge Island never fails to feel magical.