Taipei: The City That Gets Everything Right at Street Level

Taipei is one of the best-run cities in Asia for visitors. The MRT announces stations in Mandarin, English, Taiwanese Hokkien, and Hakka. Street food is extraordinary and cheap. The city is safe at any hour. People are consistently helpful to visitors. It is not flawless - air quality can be poor, summer heat is punishing (35 degrees plus with high humidity from June through September), and some of the most famous tourist sites are more interesting to read about than to stand in front of. But as a base for eating well and visiting a handful of genuinely world-class museums, it is one of the easier cities in East Asia to navigate.

The EasyCard transit card covers the MRT, buses, and most convenience store purchases. Buy one at the airport. Load it with NT$500 and it covers a week of getting around.

The Night Markets

Night markets are the reason many people make a dedicated trip to Taiwan. Shilin (Da Dongmen area) is the largest, with 500-plus stalls operating from 4pm to midnight. The things to eat: stinky tofu (the smell is worse than the taste), oyster omelette, scallion pancakes, taro balls. The basement food court is separate from the outdoor stalls and has more variety.

Raohe Street Night Market in Songshan is smaller and less crowded - this is the one to choose if Shilin feels overwhelming. Tonghua Street (Linjiang) in Da’an is where locals from the neighbourhood actually eat.

National Palace Museum

The National Palace Museum holds the former Chinese imperial collection of 700,000 objects, accumulated across 1,000 years of dynastic rule and transported to Taiwan in 1948 when the Kuomintang government retreated from the mainland. The collection is by any measure among the most significant in the world. The Jadeite Cabbage - a 19th-century carved piece that looks precisely like a Napa cabbage with a locust on it - and the Meat-Shaped Stone (jasper carved to look like braised dong po pork) are in a permanent display that always has a queue but moves quickly. Entry NT$350 (around US$11). Allow 2-3 hours for a selective visit.

Taipei 101

The tower at 508 metres was the world’s tallest building from 2004 to 2010, briefly succeeded by Burj Khalifa. The observation deck gives an aerial view across the Taipei basin ringed by the Yangmingshan mountains. Entry NT$600. Go on a clear day. The Din Tai Fung in the basement mall has the shortest queue of any branch of that dumpling chain in the city; this is the practical reason to visit the base of the tower.

Beitou Hot Springs

Forty minutes north by MRT (Danshui Xinlu line to the Xinbeitou branch). The hot spring district uses sulphurous geothermal water from the surrounding hills; public baths cost NT$40-80, private room rentals in the hot spring hotels run NT$300-600 per hour. Thermal Valley (Diyu Gu) - a bright turquoise geothermal pond that the water is too hot to enter - is free to walk around and genuinely strange to look at. The area feels like a different city from central Taipei, which is part of the appeal.

Where to Stay

Just Sleep hotels (chain) provide reliable modern rooms at NT$2,500-3,500 per night near major MRT stations. The areas around Zhongxiao Fuxing, Xinyi Anhe, and Da’an stations give best access to eating and the things worth doing. Taxis use meters and are honest; Uber works and is sometimes marginally cheaper.