Dulan

Dulan is a strange, small pleasure of a town about twenty minutes north of Taitung city, built around a defunct sugar refinery that shut down in the early nineties and has since been colonized by artists, surfers, and a handful of Amis indigenous families who never left in the first place. There’s no single reason to visit — no marquee attraction — which is precisely why I ended up staying three nights instead of the one I’d planned.

The Sugar Factory, Reborn

Dulan Sugar Factory is the town’s anchor: a cluster of old industrial buildings now housing studios, a small brewery, a weekend market, and a stage where local bands play on Saturday nights to an audience that’s part backpacker, part off-duty surf instructor, part grandmother selling betel nut from a folding table. Lia and I bought two bottles of the factory’s own craft beer and sat on a low wall watching a five-piece Amis band work through a set that moved fluidly between traditional call-and-response singing and something closer to reggae. Nobody seemed to find that combination strange except us.

Surf Culture Without the Attitude

Dulan’s beach break is considered one of Taiwan’s most consistent, and the town has built a genuine, unpretentious surf scene around it — a handful of board rental shacks, a couple of beachfront cafes serving smoothie bowls, and an early-morning ritual of paddling out before the wind picks up. I don’t surf well, but a shop owner named Ah-Dai lent me a board anyway and gave me exactly one piece of advice: “Don’t fight the current, just go where it takes you and paddle back later.” It turned out to be decent advice for the rest of the trip too.

When to go: October through April brings the most reliable surf swell and dry, mild weather. Summer typhoons can flatten the waves or make paddling out dangerous; the Saturday night market at the Sugar Factory runs year-round but is liveliest outside peak tourist season.