Many of you know that I am Taiwan Obsessed! I began this journey to reconnect with my Taiwanese heritage and to recreate some of my favorite childhood experiences with my own children. One memory in particular is my grandma taking me to a park in Yangmingshan, where kids caught tiny shrimp in an ice-cold creek while adults cooked eggs in the hot springs. I had no idea where that place was, so about ten years ago I started searching online.
There wasn’t much in English back then, but I eventually stumbled across a blog post about wild hot springs. At the time, it was one of the few English resources documenting family life and travel in Taiwan. The blog was detailed, reliable, and full of heart. I reached out to the writer on Facebook and even took the time to respond to my messages. His advice not only helped me get accepted into an ad network but also encouraged me to keep building my blog.
Today, I’m excited to share my interview with Nick, the creator of Taiwan Obsessed, one of the most comprehensive English-language travel guides to Taiwan. I hope his story will inspire you to explore Taiwan with your family and experience the country’s diverse culture, stunning landscapes, and rich traditions.
Interview with Nick Kembel
Who are you and what is your background?
My name is Nick Kembel, and I’m from Edmonton, a city in the Canadian prairies where the temperature ranges from -40°C in winter to +40 °C in summer (-40 to 104°F). I studied cultural anthropology and Asian religions at university.
On my first backpacking trip 25 years ago, I fell in love with travel and knew I would dedicate my life to it. Over the next decade, I traveled to over 50 countries before I started slowing down. I explored many parts of the world, but Asia was always my favorite.
Moving to Taiwan
When and why did you first come to Taiwan?
After a relationship failed at home, I decided to move abroad to teach English. I started in China, where one of my friends was living. But China was becoming a little tense in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, so together we decided to hop over to Taiwan.
That was a while ago – how did you end up staying so long?
When I first arrived, I still had a backpacker mentality, so I planned to teach for a year, explore the country as much as possible in that time, then move on to a different part of the world.
But then, in my last few months, I met my future wife 佳佳 on the Taipei MRT (she talked to me first and then wrote her number on my hand!) and that changed the course of my life. I actually did leave Taiwan as planned, did some more traveling, but then came back for her (and for Taiwan itself).
In the end, I would end up staying in Taiwan for 11 years. While one full year had initially seemed like a long time, by the end of it, I realized I was only just getting started learning the language, making friends, and visiting every corner of the country. It’s very easy to grow comfortable in (and fall in love with) Taiwan!
Alas, in 2019, our little family made the tough choice to move to my hometown in Canada, but now we come back for around one month every year.
Creating the Best English-Language Taiwan Travel Blog
How did you first start writing about Taiwan?
In my early years in Taiwan, I had a travel blog, but blogging was very different back then. People just journaled about their travels rather than writing “guides”, and no one was making money from it yet.
It was Emily who first encouraged me to write a book about my early experiences in Taiwan. After I published Taiwan in the Eyes of a Foreigner (老外愛台灣) in 2011, I had a brief moment of celebrity in Taiwan.
This led to job offers from Taiwanese textbook publishers, writing for local travel magazines, and even a few gigs for the likes of CNN.
I first started my Nickkembel.com website as a platform for advertising my book. I put out a few blog posts, but then we had kids, and I became a stay-at-home dad while Emily ran her cram school in Taipei. I still did occasional trips all over Taiwan to write magazine articles, but my own blog was put on the back burner.
Around 2018, once we were past the toddler years, I decided to fire up the blog again, but with a more serious approach aimed at monetizing it.
After a full year of working basically full-time on it (which, as a stay-at-home parent, I was fortunate to be able to do), the traffic and income started skyrocketing. Quite ironically, this happened right around the time that we moved to Canada.
Then, the moment we arrived in Canada and bought a house, COVID started, and travel to Taiwan essentially ceased for 2.5 years. I kept working on my Taiwan blogs the whole time, pouring out my 10+ years of experiences in the country. When Taiwan opened its doors to tourists again in October 2022, my website took off again big time.
What inspired you to start Taiwan Obsessed?
My blogging journey was similar to many others. We started out with “general blogs” covering all the countries we’d been to, “nomadic” style.
But then Google algorithm changes dictated that it would be better for us to niche down and be experts in a single destination. This was accelerated during COVID, when many of us were stuck in one place.
For me, my general site was already heavily slanted towards Taiwan, and I know Taiwan far better than any other place, so making a new Taiwan-only site was a no-brainer. I waited until after COVID, launching the site in 2023 with over 100 articles from the get-go about every aspect of planning a trip to Taiwan.
I was able to take my years of experience in the field, with many lessons learned along the way, to produce a website that I felt would become the #1 online resource about traveling in Taiwan. Within a month, it was outperforming my 10-year-old general site, and within a year, it was getting over half a million views per month.
I also sell an ebook, “Nick’s Taiwan Travel Guide,” and Taiwan travel itineraries, which also do very well.
So, why “Taiwan Obsessed”?
Well, I truly am obsessed with Taiwan. Living there was a big chunk of my life, I got married to a Taiwanese and had kids there, our family and many best friends are still there, and we spend all year looking forward to our next trip back.
My website is not only my full-time job but also my life’s passion. I spend every day thinking, reading, writing, and answering questions from my readers (via various platforms, especially my “Taiwan Travel Planning” group on Facebook) about Taiwan.
What are your top articles on Taiwan Obsessed for hidden gems in Taiwan?
While articles like top things to do in Taipei and night market guides will always get the most traffic, the ones I’m most proud of are focused on offbeat corners of Taiwan that I absolutely love but had little-to-no English coverage before I first wrote about them.
Nick’s Favorite Hidden Gems:
- Shizhuo & Eryanping tea plantation hikes (hiking trails through oolong tea plantations)
- Sun Link Sea (a remote park with stunning waterfalls)
- Offshore islands like Matsu
However, the articles that I think readers most appreciate are those that tackle difficult aspects of getting around Taiwan, for example, how to reserve buses to Alishan. Since the reservation system is totally in Mandarin, without my guide, foreign travelers would have no way to navigate it.
How much is traveling with kids a part of your content?
I only have a couple of articles on each of my websites that are specifically aimed at travelers with kids, such as this list of my kids favorite places in Taiwan and our favorite DIY activities in Taipei.
However, my kids often appear in my other articles because they make good models (now that they are almost teens, I get their consent for this), and I don’t really love being in photos.
But also, I think it lends authenticity to my content – if I visited a place with my kids, then I’m going to mention it. And since a lot of my readers visit Taiwan with kids, too (especially my top readers – Singaporeans), I think they appreciate this angle.
Taiwan’s Language and Culture
Did you speak Mandarin before moving to Taiwan, and what challenges did you face?
I started learning introductory Mandarin in the few months I lived in China before moving to Taiwan. But the move slowed me down initially, because the accent and so many words are totally different between China and Taiwan.
As time passed in Taiwan, another challenge was that many locals in Taipei wanted to practice English, so when I tried to practice my Mandarin with them, they’d often reply in English.
But once my Mandarin reached a certain level, this was no longer an issue.
Over time, I feel I reached an intermediate or functional level. I could say everything I needed to travel around or chat with taxi drivers freely, unless the discussion strayed into niche topics that I hadn’t studied. At the peak of my language ability (where it’s no longer at), I even gave a few speeches in Mandarin and could conduct simple interviews for articles.
Compared to my group of expat friends, I did better than some but not as well as others – I was pretty much right in the middle. I never quite made it to the point of feeling comfortable using Mandarin in my daily environment.
At home, I get frustrated when I can’t easily express exactly what I want to say when it’s so much easier to in English. But if I’m traveling, or we have Taiwanese friends over, somehow I instantly feel comfortable switching over. I know it’s a bad habit, but that’s how I’ve always been.
Are your kids learning Mandarin? If so, how are they learning Mandarin while living in Canada?
My children’s overall Mandarin ability is good, but it’s not on par with native speakers in Taiwan.
Interestingly, my kids get more Mandarin practice in Canada than they did in Taiwan.
In Taiwan, they were at home or traveling around with me 90% of the time, so we mostly spoke English. My wife and I mainly conversed in English, too. When we moved to Canada, they were just starting school, and we chose a Mandarin bilingual program. Also, to help them maintain their language, we use it more at home now, and my wife speaks to them almost exclusively in Mandarin.
Growing Up Taiwanese: Fostering Heritage & Identity Abroad
As a Canadian married to a Taiwanese, how do you balance both cultures at home?
It’s different in that I’ve experienced both sides. After we got married in Taiwan, I lived with her family for several years. This really helped me to understand her culture and the way they do things differently than in my own culture. Without that knowledge, some of those things could be potential sources of annoyance or conflict.
From the day she found out she was pregnant, the way we’ve raised our kids has been a constant negotiation between our cultures, and we get to choose whichever one we prefer. What to eat or not eat while pregnant, whether to let the babies sleep with us or not, how to dress them in different temperatures, the foods we make for them, screen rules, and so on – our cultures often do these things differently, and for each instance, we just decide together which one makes more sense.
Today, we live in Canada, but we eat probably a 50/50 mix of Canadian (which is really just a hodgepodge of cuisines) and Taiwanese food. We are in a Canadian environment, but we visit Taiwan often, celebrate festivals from both cultures, and the kids are exposed to Chinese language and culture at school. My daughter is even learning lion dancing right now.
Having said that, 佳佳 and I do, of course, have occasional little cultural conflicts or misunderstandings, which I think is inevitable.
How has traveling in Taiwan influenced the way your kids see their heritage?
My kids have a limited number of memories from living in Taiwan, as we left when they were 4 and 5, but they have enough that I think it forms a solid foundation.
But most of their memories are from trips back since we left. Travel is, of course, my passion, but for them, the thing they look forward to the most now is the food.
We don’t eat out as much in Canada, mainly due to the cost, but also a lot of the foods we love just aren’t as good in Canada. So we’re constantly telling our kids things like “let’s wait for our Taiwan trip to go for sushi – it’s just way better there!”
I don’t think my kids really see their Taiwanese heritage as something separate from their Canadian heritage, given that almost all their classmates are of Chinese/Cantonese/Taiwanese background, and many have a similar story to them.
But my kids are now getting old enough to notice real cultural differences when we go back to Taiwan. Some aspects of Taiwan are extremely familiar to them, given their background, so, for example, standing on the front of a scooter in crazy traffic won’t faze them.
I look forward to the coming years, when they develop even more awareness as to parts of their culture that are unique or that they carry with them in Canada.
What are your family’s most memorable experiences in Taiwan?
Some of my kids’ earliest memories from when we lived in Taiwan include funny ones like the time my daughter (as a toddler) threw a broom off our 5th-storey balcony in New Taipei City. They also remember the time I took them on a trip around Taiwan (my son remembers the color of the gondola car we rode at Sun Moon Lake).
On recent visits, snorkeling with sea turtles and going to cat cafés have been their favorites. They also know all the names of the cats living on Agong’s (grandfather’s) street.
They also reminisce endlessly about the conveyor belt sushi, rides on the MRT and High Speed Rail, and endless 7-Eleven visits.
What’s next for Taiwan Obsessed?
I consider my job to be a dream come true – doing the thing I love most, helping others travel, and making a good living from it.
Thus, my current approach is to keep doing exactly what I’m already doing – spending every day working on my Taiwan content, answering questions from readers, and planning epic trips back to Taiwan every year.
I want to keep introducing my kids to their country as they enter their teens, inspiring them to appreciate and love it as much as I do.
Blog-wise, I plan to keep updating my current articles and ebook as things change so that it can remain relevant, plus putting out new articles to keep things fresh.
As much as I have explored Taiwan, I still have an ever-growing list of new sights, activities, hikes, and restaurants to try on every trip, plus places I want to return to because it has been too long.
Someday, 佳佳 and I talk about possibly retiring in Taiwan or living 50/50 between the two countries. One idea is Chiayi, her parents’ hometown, but we’d head to the hills where it’s cooler, possibly in the Alishan region, which is my personal favorite place in Taiwan.
Finding the Place from My Childhood Memories
For those of you wondering, I finally found the park! It happened just last year. My cousin took us to Yangmingshan to visit a cafe with alpacas/llamas, but it was far too crowded, so we jumped back in the car and stopped at the next park we came across.
As we wandered around, it felt so familiar. Then my cousin asked, “Is this the place grandma used to take us in the summers?” It looked a bit different, but I think it was! The park had been renovated several times since our childhood. Hot springs have been relocated, and you can no longer wade in them because of runoff from nearby hotels.
Yet, the stream still runs, and we saw children scooping up tiny fish with nets, just like we did decades ago. It’s real! And not just a dream!
If you’d like to see it for yourself, check out more details in this Instagram video:
