Summer on the east coast
Tourism, traffic and the towns trying to manage both.
The east coast in summer is two things at once: the most beautiful part of the island and the slowest road on it. This episode goes down the coast to look at both.
The towns along the highway have spent a decade getting better at receiving visitors and are now dealing with the consequence of having succeeded. Accommodation is booked out. The road moves at the speed of the slowest camper van. The beaches that were empty a few years ago are not empty now.
The episode sets out the shape of that argument rather than one side of it. There is a real tension between a season that pays for the year and a season that makes a place harder to live in, and it does not get resolved by either side insisting the other is wrong.
Also, practically: when to go instead. Late autumn on that coast is the best-kept secret in Taiwan, and this episode reluctantly gives it away.
