Taipei: The City That Makes Everything Easy

Taipei is one of the best-run cities in Asia for visitors. The MRT is clean, cheap, and announces stations in English. Street food is extraordinary and inexpensive. People are consistently helpful. The city is safe at all hours. It’s not without problems — air quality can be poor, summer heat is punishing (35°C+ with high humidity, June through September), and some of the major tourist sites are more interesting to read about than to stand in front of. But as a base for exploring a genuinely distinctive food culture and a handful of world-class museums, it’s hard to beat.

The Night Markets

Night markets are the practical reason many people visit Taiwan. Taipei has several; Shilin (Da Dongmen area) is the largest and most visited — 500+ stalls, open from 4pm to midnight, overwhelming in August and manageable in December. The stinky tofu, oyster omelette (oyster pancake), scallion pancakes, and taro balls are the things worth trying. The basement food area is separate from the outdoor stalls and has more variety.

Raohe Street Night Market (Songshan) is smaller and less crowded, recommended if Shilin feels like too much. Tonghua Street Market (Linjiang) in Da’an is the one locals from that neighbourhood use.

The EasyCard transit card also works for payment at most stalls.

National Palace Museum

The National Palace Museum holds the former imperial collection of Chinese art — 700,000 objects accumulated over 1,000 years of dynastic rule, transported to Taiwan in 1948. The collection is by any measure one of the most significant in the world. The famous Jadeite Cabbage (a 19th-century carved piece that looks exactly like a Napa cabbage with a locust on it) and the Meat-Shaped Stone (a jasper carved to look like dong po pork) are in a permanent display that always has a queue but moves quickly.

Entry NT$350 (around US$11). Open daily 9am-5pm. The permanent collection is enormous — allow 2-3 hours for a selective visit, more if you want the ceramics and bronze galleries.

Taipei 101

The tower at 508 metres was the world’s tallest building from 2004 to 2010. The observation deck (89th floor indoor, 91st floor outdoor) gives an aerial view across the Taipei basin ringed by the mountains of Yangmingshan. Entry NT$600. Go on a clear day; the views are specific to weather.

The shopping mall in the tower’s base is high-end retail. The Din Tai Fung in the basement is the most convenient branch of that dumpling chain and has the shortest queue of any location in the city.

Da’an District

Da’an is the neighbourhood with the highest density of coffee shops, bookstores, and restaurants in a city already dense with all three. Yongkang Street (10-minute walk from MRT Da’an station) has the original Din Tai Fung, several good Taiwanese restaurants, and a string of cafés. Zhongzheng Market nearby has excellent breakfast — dan bing (egg crêpe), congee, and soy milk from 6am.

Daan Forest Park is a 26-hectare urban park at the centre of the district — flat, shaded, with ponds and cycling paths. Useful for an afternoon.

Beitou

A 40-minute MRT ride north of central Taipei (take the Danshui Xinlu line to 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 many hot spring hotels run NT$300-600/hour. Thermal Valley (Diyu Gu) — a bright turquoise geothermal pond — is free to walk around and genuinely strange-looking.

Where to Stay

Mandarin Oriental and Grand Hyatt are the top-end options in the Da’an/Xinyi districts. Mid-range: Just Sleep (chain) does reliable, modern rooms at around NT$2,500-3,500/night. The areas near MRT stations Zhongxiao Fuxing, Xinyi Anhe, and Da’an give best access to the things worth doing.

EasyCard: buy one at the airport or any MRT station. Loaded with NT$500, it covers most transit and some convenience store purchases. Taxis use meters and are honest; Uber works and is often marginally cheaper.