Asian City Hopping: 4 Days in Taipei

After a couple of fun days in Hong Kong, we set off for our next Asian city, Taipei! Although it rained on us almost every day and we had a few mishaps along the way, it's home to some of the friendliest people, and this city definitely has a special place in our hearts.

View from Taipei 101

Taipei is the capital of Taiwan and does not seem to get much attention from Western travelers in comparison with other East Asian cities; we hadn't ever put much thought into visiting before getting the amazing flight deal that we did. It is true that it isn't easy to get to, but the island of Taiwan is so picturesque, and unique, that it is worth the extra effort.

Taiwan is kind of not really part of China, but it isn't recognized by the UN as its own country. Basically, it's complicated. There's no point in getting into the details of the Chinese Civil War, but when a war ends and no treaty is signed, this is the kind of confusion that can ensue.

So, on Sunday morning we boarded a plane from Hong Kong to Taipei. After some exploring of the area around our hotel, we checked out the Ximending neighbourhood and wandered around the artisan market at the Red House. This was followed up by walking around a pedestrianized area where we sampled some delicious street food: fried chicken with garlic and onions, freshly squeezed mango juice, and sweetly seasoned sweet potato fries.

We hit up the National Palace Museum the next morning, and made it just in time for the free tour in English, which we'd highly recommend. The original Palace Museum was located in the Forbidden City in Beijing, but for fear of the collection being damaged during the Chinese Civil War, over 600,000 of the most valuable artifacts were moved to Taiwan to what is now the National Palace Museum. Needless to say, they have quite a few fascinating items such as Tibetan Buddhist Sutras, a carved ball of ivory that started in one piece but it now a 23 layered sphere, a very valuable jade cabbage, and a 36 million dollar teacup.

Outside the National Palace Museum

For lunch, we went to the museum's restaurant and had dim sum (the Chinese almost-equivalent of afternoon tea). Let's just say we had an interesting time trying to select our dishes from the menu that was all in Chinese...

On the subway ride to our next destination, we decided to pivot from our initial plans and tackled the Elephant Mountain hike. Unfortunately, the weather didn't want to cooperate so we pulled on our wet weather gear and trekked up the trail in the rain. At the main viewpoint, there was a spectacular view of Taipei 101 which is by far Taipei's tallest building. The rain let up for a few minutes so we squeezed in a few photos.

View from the Elephant Mountain hike

Just looking at Taipei 101 from afar wasn't good enough, so we walked back into the city and took the elevator up to the observation deck. Just our luck, when we reached the top it was completely shrouded in cloud but with a bit of patience we got the views we came for. We also checked out the massive tuned mass damper which prevents swaying of the building during storms or earthquakes. The best (read: most hilarious) part was that they have "Damper Baby" mascots to get people interested in this damper. It's kind of hard to explain, but we will admit they are kind of cute.

Finally, after all of that sightseeing, we finished off the day with tasty food at Din Tai Fung and had an early night.

On Tuesday, we headed on a bus just out of town to Yangmingshan National Park. What started out as an idea to hike some trails turned into mass confusion for over 1.5 hours. On the bright side, we were lost in a fairly picturesque place.

Wandering aimlessly around Yangmingshan National Park

The moral of the story is: get off at the right bus stop especially if you're in the middle of nowhere and the visitor information centre is closed and the only restaurant within walking distance has never heard of the bus you're trying to find. However, we did end up at the foot of the trail to Mt Qixing after flagging down a random taxi. What we didn't realize at the time is that the trail to the summit is exclusively vertical steps upwards for 2.5 km.

Even after hiking up halfway, almost to Qixing Park, and having an option to skip the peak, we kept our spirits high and kept on going. As we climbed higher and higher, the air started getting mistier and mistier. As luck would have it, by the time we got to the summit, we could not see anything. Thick fog covered the peak. We're told that the views of both the National Park and Taipei are beautiful from there... To be determined.

At the top of Mt. Qixing

The way down to Xiaoyoukeng was significantly less strenuous, although it was significantly more stinky. The mountain may have been foggy but we could still experience the smell of the Sulphur springs that line the second part of the trail. A fun feature of the area.

At the end of the trail, we finally hitched a ride on the 108 bus that we had been looking for in the morning, but the ride down was crazy; the driver was zooming around the switchbacks in the fog and let's just say the ride left our stomachs a bit unsettled. The bus dropped us off outside a pizza place in the town of Yangminshan and we just went along with it. Boy, that pizza was good.

From Yamingshan, we took the bus to Xinbeitou Station and then a taxi to Spring City Resort for some hot spring action. After a stressful and busy day, it was a great way to relax especially because we had the place to ourselves, AND we got free ice cream and sandals. Then on our way back to the hotel, we checked out Ningxia Night Market where the food was plentiful, cheap and tasty.

Ningxia Night Market

Wednesday was another day of almost fails that ended up working out amazingly well. We set off in the morning for Maokong, which is a village of tea plantations that has a Gondola. Unfortunately, the Gondola was closed for a month of maintenance. So once we had arrived at the station at one end of the subway, we ended up deciding to go to a place at the complete opposite end of the subway, Tamsui. It took just over an hour, and the last ten minutes of the ride provided us with some amazing views of mountains, rivers, and mangrove forests.

Tamsui

​Tamsui is a quiet, seaside district and it was more hectic than we were expecting. Admittedly, we started off our visit there by going to a market which snaked through narrow alleyways and had stalls with everything imaginable, from children's toys to pig's legs.

After making our way through that market alive, we stopped for lunch at a "European Cafe". The most amazing part of that lunch was a bride and groom were getting photos taken outside the cafe and they had people spraying fake snow for the photoshoot so it would look like they were in Europe. We came to the conclusion that it must have been for an ad or magazine of some sort because it was quite elaborate for a wedding. But as the bride and groom walked away hand in hand, we started to wonder if it wasn't "real" after all…

The rest of our afternoon in Tamsui involved walking to Fort San Domingo and exploring the home of the old British Consul. We also checked out Oxford College just behind the grounds, which was also a beautiful building.  

Once we found out there was a ferry that could take you across the harbour to Bali (probably not the one that immediately comes to mind), we jumped at the chance. When we got over to the other side, we rented bikes and rode on a well kept bike trail right along the waterfront. It was awesome. One of our favourite activities of the trip.

Biking around Bali

We concluded our time in Bali with some beers, and consulted our guidebook for somewhere to go for supper for our last night in Taipei. Unfortunately, like many of our Taipei plans before, it turns out that the Drunken Monkey was closed. Permanently, we think. So it was back to Taipei Main Station to finally eat at Tim Ho Wan's Dim Sum. To be honest, it probably worked out for the best. The food at that place was delicious.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Taipei and would definitely recommend a visit. Next stop, Tokyo!

(SLIDESHOW)

In case you missed out first blog post of the trip, you can find it linked below:
Asian City Hopping: 2 Days in Hong Kong
Or check out our blog post from our final stop, Tokyo:
​Asian City Hopping: 4 Days in Tokyo

And check out the travel video we made of our trip! All previous travel videos can be found in the Travel section of our website.