Touristy ... Fisherman's Wharf in Tamsui, just north of Taipei.

Touristy ... Fisherman's Wharf in Tamsui, just north of Taipei. Photo: Getty Images

The room is cavernous, like a beer hall at Oktoberfest. The ceilings are high; large round tables stretch off towards the horizon – which is probably the back wall of the restaurant, but it's hard to tell from here.

One of the differences between this place and Munich, however, is the people. It's the lack of them that's the issue here. There's basically no one eating – just a lonely couple occupying a small corner of one of those tables, the lazy Susan in front of them idling superfluously. Every other seat is empty.

I'm in a big group, however, and we're about to change things. There's about 26 of us, all foreigners, all journalists, all here to try the local Taiwanese cuisine. We pile in and occupy a few tables, taking in the view over the sea from our second-floor position.

The restaurant is part of Fisherman's Wharf in Tamsui, just north of Taipei. It's touristy, there's no doubt about that. Huge places like this often are, set up to handle big tour groups, catering for the travelling masses.







When the reality didn't match up with her fantasy she automatically assumed she wasn't getting the real thing. We're in Taiwan, eating Taiwanese food cooked by a Taiwanese person in a Taiwanese restaurant. What's not real about that? But the nagging feeling remains.

It's the fact that this place is designed for tourists. Doesn't matter what the food tastes like – we've been brought somewhere that's made purely for, well, people like us. For most travellers "real" things are the ones that don't involve any foreigners – apart from you, of course. It's a paradox of travel that often a tourist's ideal experience is one that isn't aimed at tourists at all.

I get that. When you're doing something in another country you want to do it while surrounded by people who are from that country. Not by people from your own. That's what travel is about, surely – experiencing life as other people live it.


Take the Pacific Islands as an example. One experience you could have is in Rarotonga, where a fabricated theme-park-style place called Te Vara Nui Village puts on cultural demonstrations for busloads of tourists each day. There's fire dancing and palm tree climbing, then traditional food with 50 of your new tourist friends. Some people loved it. I ... didn't.


But that concept of "real" is in the eye of the beholder. One person's touristy trash is the next person's experiential treasure. There's no such thing as "real" when you're travelling – only what you like and what you don't.

And I don't really like big restaurants.
