Regarding outdoors and camping, Taiwan is an excellent place for hiking and camping and snorkelling and cycling . Swimming with turtles, tropical fish , jumping in waterfalls , hiking 3500M mountains and local hills. We are looking at hiking in DaBaJIanShan next. Look it up and tell me that isn’t cool.
My family do a lot of outdoor stuff here . Summers can be tough (this one was a nightmare for obvious reasons ) but otherwise it’s pretty good. And in normal times are getting around south east Asia once to twice a year . My kids get to explore amazing rain forests, caves , beaches and islands…Stuff I could only dream about when I was a kid.
It’s the urban environment that is quite frankly, pretty shit. And schooling is another topic, not great overall but depends what you want, my kids have fluent Chinese reading and writing that’s going to be at least one major benefit of doing some of their schooling here. The rapidly aging society is something that I think sucks a bit but there you go. Apartment housing is also a bugbear of mine but if you live in Asia that’s the way it is.
I would say that yes depending on your circumstances Europe or USA could be a better choice for kids , but raising kids in Taiwan also ain’t bad and the outdoors is very accessible here . If you don’t like the public schools there are private schools.
The biggest issue , for many foreign residents , is they can’t see your side of the family much .
