Getting into the city
We arrived at the Taoyuan International Airport and took the Airport MRT to Taipei Main Station which takes about 35 minutes. The cost is NT$160 (or $7 CAD) which must be paid in cash using the ticket machine or booth. We usually just go to the ticketing booth to pay for our ticket, so we could also ask the attendant if we are getting on the right train and which way to go to the train platform as some train stations have multiple platforms and can sometimes be confusing so just always good to ask the person behind the ticketing booth. Note that Taipei’s MRT lines are also color coded so if you get into Taipei late at night and no one is at the booth just follow for the signs with the color of the line you are taking.
Our hostel is situated just off Xi’men Station, so we took the airport train all the way to Taipei Main Station and got on the blue line heading to Dingpu and got off at Xi’men Station. Note that there are multiple exits out of the station. Googlemaps would typically show the exit number you should take that would be closes to your destination. For our case, it was exit #4 for Space Inn Hostel.
Our hostel
8 person mixed dorm ($25/night for two people)
I found our hostel really clean, secure, close to a lot of places and very accessible since it’s only a 5-7 minute walk to 2 of Taipei’s MRT line station, blue and red. This hostel was huge and the common space is very large but quite dim since it’s supposed to give you that galaxy/futuristic vibe. From what I saw the kitchen was not that big but it did have a stove and fridge for people who wanted to cook. Personally, we never used it but we saw a lot of people who used it and it seems like they did not have any issues with it. Another thing I found interesting about this hostel is we saw a wide rage of different people group – from elementary kids to elderlies, short stays to people who’s been there for 8 months, leisure travel to business travel just to name a few. Although we saw a lot of different people, the hostel never felt crowded. All their amenities was huge enough to accommodate that many people. Their showers could probably have 20-25 people shower at the same time. Their showers are split between men and women and you would need your access card to get in.
Our room
We loved our beds. It was very clean and the pillow was very fluffy. The blanket kept me warm throughout the night. We slept like babies (maybe because we were jetlagged too haha). Each bunk bed had a curtain which you could close if you want some privacy. There was a mini shelf on the wall right next to your bed that had a USB plug-in which I used to charge our GoPro Hero 7 Camera, 2 electric outlet for charging our phones and other devices, a lamp and a little shelf where you can store some of your important items within your reach. Each person also gets their own lockers and you don’t need your own locks. It is locked and opened by your own access card provided by the hostel for free of charge (you would only pay for it if you lose it).
The staff
All the staff are very nice and helpful. Although I found that only a few of them can speak English well. They were not our best resource in determining things to do in Taipei as we find the language to be a bit of a barrier but other than that they always try their best to help you in any way.
Taipei and its different districts
I have broken down the things we did per Taipei’s districts. Taipei has 12 different districts but we only went to 7 out of those 12 places.
Day 0: Arrival
Xi’men district
Getting around: Our hostel was located in Zhongzhen which is right next to the Ximen District so we pretty much just walked to get to the Ximen district (7 minute walk).
We decided to do the walking tour the next morning as we got settled into our hostel around 6pm the day we landed. We went to the Ximendeng market to get our dinner as advised by our hostel staff. We haven’t done any research at this point so we pretty much follow where the crowd is (especially where the locals are). This market somewhat reminded me of Shinjuku in Japan – neon lights, huge crosswalks and tons of people. It was definitely a very lively market (which Asian market isn’t anyways).
As we were walking down the market, we saw a big line up for a quaint little soup shop. They did not have any tables or chairs for people to sit on (maybe they did, we probably just didn’t see as most people were slurping their soup standing off the side). So in line we go and as we get closer to the counter we found the menu not written in English so we have no idea what we were getting. I just said “large” as soon as we got to the till and handed my NTD$70 (CAD$3.50). We didn’t know what was in the soup besides for noodles but boy it was delicious. It had an odd fishy taste to it – a taste not too familiar. We thought it was some type of scallops or squid. The first few slurps were not the best but then we got acquainted to it and ended up loving it. When we got back to our hostel, we found out that we went to the “legendary” Ay-Chung Fluor Rice Noodle stall where they serve their soup with rice noodles, cilantro, tripe and pig intestines (it was definitely not squid nor scallops). And oh some of you already know that before we went on our trip, we were on a vegetarian escapade so this would have been the first dish that we ate that would have contained animal meat after a couple months.
There are so many other things to eat and do at the Ximendeng market. It can be overwhelming but my advise is just keep on walking and you’ll eventually find something interesting to check.
Day 1: Taipei Walking tour
Breakfast
Our walking tour started at 8am so we had to find a breakfast place that opens rather early. We found one that is highly rated by many called Fu Hang Dou Jiang (or Fuhang Soy Milk). This is a bit far from our hostel and meet up point for the walking tour but the reviews were too good to pass. The reviews also warned us that there is typically a big line up at this place but since we were planning on going right when it opens, we didn’t think there would be a big line up. But behold... there was.
This store opens up at 5:30 am and we got there around 6:15am. The line was quite long, there are about 50-60 people ahead of us. We haven’t been inside at this point so we don’t know what to expect besides the reviews we’ve read. The line moved really quick and we got our food in about 40 minutes. When we got inside, I got really worried because the menu was all written in Chinese characters and we don’t understand any of it. I looked around in line to see if there are fellow tourists who would know what they are getting into and potentially can read the menu for us but most people in line seem to be locals (for that hour of the day at least). This little place is situated inside a food court of a rather small building – it didn’t look touristy at all so I wasn’t surprised not to find any tourist around. They also had a little glass window area in there where you can see the workers make their “shaobing” (in English roasted layered flatbread). As we get closer to the ordering booth, I started to worry because we don’t know what to order yet and the reviews strictly said that we need to have our order ready by the time we get at the front so we don’t break the restaurant’s very effective assembly line which the tourists are known of doing. About 5 feet away from the front, I found a little stand that has 2 english menus (and bonus points for pictures) so I was relieved.
I had to bring the menu with me to the front to show them what I wanted. So how it works (from what I saw at least), you order from multiple people. They have one person in charge for the shaobings, dou jiangs (soy milk), sides like youtiao (their oh so delicious fried dough) and the last person for collecting your money. I tried to order all of my food from one person but she kept signalling me to move and pointed to a different person so I assumed the other person will take that order I was telling her. All of that took less than 30 seconds to get my order – I was amazed how fast they were and my food was fresh and hot. I ordered their shaobing with eggs and sausage (to check), sweet soy milk (doujiang), their salty soy milk and one of their fried doughs and it only cost me CAD$7 and it was enough for two people.
(insert photo)
The walking tour
Every time we visit a new city, we always take advantage of their free walking tours (or some my call tip-based tours). I highly recommend for our fellow travellers to do this. We find these tours help us outline how we will explore the city. It also gives us a little bit of a history about the city we are in and helps us understand more of the country’s culture, traditions and people.
If you share the same love for history like us, give a read of our Taiwan history blog
The free walking tour we did was called the “Nature Tour” operated by Like it Formosa. This is a bit different from the walking tours we’ve done previously as we had to take a bus to get to our actual walking tour. The bus ride was about 30-40 minutes depending on traffic. Basically the tour took us on a temple up a mountain with a great view of Taipei City. Highly recommended!
Link of walking tour: https://www.likeitformosa.com/nature
The tour only took our morning so we still had the entire afternoon and evening to play around with. We went back to our hostel and determined our game plan, we both researched for all the places we wanted to see and visit in Taipei. As we find something that interests us, we mark this on our google map and saved it as “places we want to see”. After pinning all the places we found, we then determined the most efficient and effective way to see these places (e.g. routes, time of day, weather for indoor/outdoor activities, etc).
For the afternoon, we spent most of our time in the Zhongzheng district. On our way to Zhongzheng, we stopped at Da'an district to have lunch at Hang Zhou Xiao Long Tang Bao for their infamous soup dumplings. I heard that most locals prefer their soup dumplings over other restaurants such as Din Tai Fung. There was still a bit of a wait but it wasn't too bad, we came for a late lunch so the line up wasn't too long. We only ended up waiting for about 15 minutes. They probably have the best soup dumplings I've ever had.
Hangzhou Xia Long Bao Address: No. 19, Section 2, Hangzhou South Road, Da’an District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106
After lunch, we went to the Central Art Park and fortunately enough there is an event going on that weekend. We checked out the festivities and saw a few bands perform. We did not understand what they were singing but they sounded great.
After checking out the festivities, we went to Guanghua Digital Mall to check out some gadgets for our GoPro. This store is massive, it has 6 floors worth of electronics. If you are someone who’s into gadgets and technology, you should definitely check out this store. After this we went to VVG Thinking for some tea and desserts. They had a special going on and we misread the special and ended up paying more than we wanted. This is also partly our fault for not clarifying with the server what the special meant. So make sure when a server shows you their special menu, ask for what it actually means since the special menu was not in English. I remember him specifically saying “buy this drink, dessert good” which I interpreted as buy the coffee and you get one free desert but what he actually meant is if you buy a dessert, you can get this coffee at a discount... The amount we paid was not overly expensive. It would have been the same as how much we would have paid back home at a cool hip café like Block 1912. The restaurant was rather quaint, walls were of a red-brick like structure and they have an interesting shop/bookstore on their second floor. Cameron managed to try on one of their suit jackets they are selling. Very unique and interesting looking! Definitely suits him, and I think he did a tad bit better than the model too... LOL
VVG Thinking Address: 100, Taiwan, Taipei City, Zhongzheng District, Hangzhou North Road, 紅磚六合院 C 棟華山文創產業園區
Day 2: Tamsui and Da’an District (Along the red line)
Getting around: We bought the one day transportation pass as we are checking out multiple district in one day and buying a pass would have been more economical for us.
We took the train all the way to the west end of the red line, Tamsui Station.
We walked around for a bit and stumbled upon a bike rental stall. So we rented bikes and explored the area. I was surprised by how good the bike lanes were in this area. I would definitely recommend renting bikes! Cost is around CAD$10 for two hours. We biked along the river banks and through the old street of Tamsui and a Spanish fortress, Fort San Domingo. It would have taken us half a day (maybe less) by foot to explore these areas but with bikes, we managed to do it all under two hours comfortably. We’ve been walking around a lot so our legs and feet were quite tired so biking helped us explore the are at a more relaxed pace.
The Beitou district is right next to Tamsui, so it would have been a good idea to have done Tamsui in the morning and head for the hot springs in the afternoon but we decided to do Beitou the next day after checking out Yangminghshan national park since we will be doing a lot of hikes and it’s always nice treat to soak your muscles in hot springs after a long day of hiking. If you have enough time to do all three areas then that works but I won’t advise it since there is a lot to see in the national park and the park shuttles do not come very often. So I advise doing the national park and Beitou in one day and Tamsui a different day. I will talk about this on our Day 4 of the trip below.
Since we have our metro day pass, we were able to go anywhere within the MRT station. So after exploring Tamsui, we decided to go all the way to the other end of the red line. This is where most pubs and bars are located and so is Elephant Mountain and Taipei 101 – the Da’an and Xinyang districts. Our plan was to go hike up elephant mountain right before sunset so we can get a view of how the city looks like during the day and at night when every building is lit up. However, it was only 2pm when we were about to leave Tamsui so we still had a lot of time to kill before our planned hike of 5pm. So we got off at Da’an first and checked out Taipei’s Kavalan shop. During our walking tour on our first day, we were told by our tour guide that Taiwan won the world’s best whiskey competition two years ago so we had to check out what this whiskey is all about.
Kavalan whiskey showroom Address: No. 2, Lane 23, Rui'an Street, Da’an District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106
After this we went back on the metro and took it all the way to the end to Xiangshan station to hike up Elephant mountain. You could also walk there from Kavalan and it would only have been a 20-30 minute walk but we’ve been walking a lot the last couple days and wanted our legs to relax before we start our 30 minute hike.
Elephant mountain is the closest viewpoint of Taipei City. It is quite touristy so it can get busy at the top. We had to line up and wait 10 minutes to get our photo taken at the top.
After the hike, we still had a lot of night left so we walked to Taipei 101 from Elephant mountain (only a 10-15 minute walk). The streets were bustling – lights, shops, food stalls and people everywhere. Taipei 101 is quite magnificent on its own, although we didn’t go in as we thought it was a money grab the architecture of the building from the outside is still quite magnificent. It’s not New York’s Empire State building but for Taiwan it is quite something.
Day 2: Day trip to Taichung
Check out our Taichung blog here
Day 3: A trip to the national park
"Let's take it easy today"we told each other as we were planning our third day. We had a very busy Day 2 in Taichung and we are also doing another day trip to Jiufen the next day which is about 2-3 hours away from Taipei so we decided to just relax and take things slow today.
But of course that didn't happen as we are not really known to "take it slow" when travelling. We always try to jam pack everything together to make sure we don't miss out on anything. This really needs to change as we will soon start our 7 month trip and having a jam packed schedule for 7 months won't be fun but hey we are learning together. Anyhow, we decided to take an hour train up north to go see the Yangmingshan National Park. We bought another day pass and took the MRT all the way to Jiantan Station and exited out of Exit #1, walked for about 50 meters to the bus station and took Bus Red-5 to Yangmingshan stop. Then bus 108 for the shuttle within the national park.
Unfortunately, the weather was not very ideal. It had been raining all day but this didn't stop us, we bough ponchos to keep us "semi dry" while we go on our 2 hour hike. The good thing when the weather is not great, also means less people so the park was not busy. Our hike ended up being so eerie and magical. We were pretty much hiking in the clouds - i was a little bit terrified because it was also foggy. I could barely see anything 2 meters ahead of me and we were not too familiar of what kind of wild life surrounded us - would there be wolves, bears, hyenas, snakes, etc. The heavy wind gusting through the trees also made the experience interesting.
During the hike, I was soaked inside out. We got lost after going down Mt. Datun and could not find the shuttle station. We walked for 1.5 hours on the main road trying to find a bus but could not find any. We got so desperate that we started waving for cars to stop so we could potentially hitch hike but one bus heading the opposite direction stopped for us because he probably felt sorry for how we looked - lost wet ducklings. Luckily enough, none of us got sick from it and looking back at it now, we actually had fun - type B fun as what other may call it. We were suffering at the moment but when you look back at it, it's actually more fun that you think.
Day 5: A trip to the Jiufen and Shifen from Taipei
Shine and Jiuefen is only a 2 hour bus ride from Taipei City and they are considered to be the "Santorini" of Taiwan. Here's a little clip of our travel to Shifen.
Planning a trip to Taiwan? Give us a shout - would love to give you some travel tips! :)