My impressions of cities in Taiwan: steamy mountain forests, rivers of scooters on the roads, food smells from street vendors clamouring for attention, and….bingo! On my frequent bus trips between the capital Taipei, and Taichung in the middle of the island, I noticed that in every town I passed through there’d be at least one glowing sight – the letters “B-I-N-G-O” lit in giant, coloured bingo balls parading on building facades.

Compared with the frantic pace of life in the capital, people in Taichung have more time to enjoy life, as the multitude of well-appointed parks, restaurants and shopping malls would suggest. From what I could see, aside from dining out, if you were to give a large number of Taichung citizens some free time, they’d choose to spend it – yup, you guessed it – playing bingo! Certainly, in parts of Taichung, someone walking the streets would be hard-pressed to find a route without bingo halls.

The bingo bug seems to bite even the smallest of the Taiwanese – as a travelling English teacher I found it might take a week to teach my group of four-year-olds to name the contents of their pencil case, but give them fifteen minutes of practice and they were manning their bingo cards like champions. It didn’t matter what was in the squares – numbers, colours, cute cartoon animals – give them a pencil and a grid and they would’ve happily played all day. In fact, I found that with kids aged 3 through to sixteen, playing a game of bingo in class would guarantee whoops of joy and my becoming the most popular teacher of the day.

Besides being home to a large numbers of bingo enthusiasts of all ages, Taiwan also produces a large number of bingo balls and sets for export, spreading bingo to the world – perhaps suggesting that the Taiwanese are so full of the spirit of bingo it’s too much for one small island to contain.

So if you’re a hard-core bingo fan wanting to travel, look no further than Taiwan – and bring the kids!