Hello there! This is a food, nature, and tour guide focused on one week in Taiwan. Enjoy!

Before Your Trip

• Order a Taipei Fun Pass if you plan to see Taipei 101 and National Palace Museum. You also get an easy card which is a special card which also can hold value (think of it as a debit card) you can use at the metro and some convenience stores.
• Book train tickets immediately for Hualien if you want the fastest train the minute the window opens (more on this later) for going to Taroko National Park.
• Book tour tickets for the National Park, walking tours, and any driving tours in advance.
• Make restaurant reservations in advance.
• Install Uber as it is an easier way of getting from point to point.
• Make sure your ATM card works abroad because Taiwan is still mainly a cash based society. A lot of the smaller restaurants won’t accept credit cards.

References

• Guide to Taipei – A pretty good general guide to Taipei
• Eater Travel Guide – Extensive where to eat guide

Why Taiwan?
I wanted to travel to Vietnam, but given the transit time and I only had a week off, Taiwan seemed like one of those places you could potentially pull off in a week. From what I’ve read Taiwan has good food and good hiking, so why not?

Day 1: Airport Arrival and Dragon Inn Dumpling

The first day we landed we picked up two sim cards. You will see competing companies, but they are all mostly the same. Since we bought the Taipei Fun Pass, we picked it up at the terminal.

Our hotel was in downtown so we took the Taoyuan Airport MRT Express to Taipei Main Station. You can load money on your Easy Card (which is also the Taipei Fun Pass to get on the train. Just keep note to take the express train as it is faster than the commuter train.

After dropping our stuff at the hotel, we headed out to one of the places recommended on Eater’s brand new Taipei list. It was pretty fortunate timing as we ate through a lot of the list.

Dragon Inn Dumpling – Google Maps Link

In Los Angeles, I was acclimated to Taiwanese food, but mainly through the views of popcorn chicken and beef noodle soup

(~$3 USD)

To me I think of beef noodle soup kind of like Bún Bò Huế (Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup), except without the lemon grass. This one in particular was good, but a bit fatty with the layer on top.

And of course, there are dumplings

Day 2: Taiwanese Breakfast, National Palace Tour, Taipei Walking Tour

I don’t know the traditions of Taiwanese breakfast, but it consists of fresh soymilk, deep fried donuts, curdled soy milk, or various baos and pastries.

Sihai Soy Milk – Google Maps

Sihai Soy Milk is one of several breakfast options you can go to in the morning. What is nice about Sihai is they don’t have these crazy lines like some of the other shops.

Traditional Markets

As many of you know I love farmer’s markets and fruits and vegetables generally speaking.  In Taiwan, they have something called ‘traditional markets’.  I know it sounds strange, but perhaps it is a weird thing with the translation.  These are markets that are more open air where vendors hawk their produce and food to be consumed.

In Taipei there are quite a few and we crossed by this one

Zhixing Market – Google Maps

This was an interesting vegetable called ‘Birds Fern Nest’. It is available at many restaurants and is stir fried with tiny anchovy like fish.

Just as good as Hawaii, but way cheaper.

National Palace Tour – Link

One of the things Jason loves to do is to take tours at museums. I pretty much have also taken that to heart, so when we travel I try to book the English tours if possible.

Fortunately, you can book free English Guided Tours of the National Palace at 10am and 3pm. We booked the 10am tour in advance.

The National Palace Museum has a huge extensive set of Asian artwork from some of the old Chinese dynasties out there.  Pretty much I think when the National government moved from China to Taiwan, they took all those treasures, but hey at least it is on display.

When we took the tour, initially it was only 5 people, but ballooned to about 12 afterwards. 

The National Palace Museum tour doesn’t cap its visitors so it was the most crowded museum I’ve ever been to in my life.  Hordes of tourists and tour guides giving tours in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and English.  Definitely not a peaceful experience, but when you are in Asia, doesn’t seem like that can be avoided.

The museum has a huge selection of Jade and Nephrite (white Jade).

One of the more meaningful pieces however was this old work.  These would be older characters in Chinese, and they had little annotations of what the modern day character would be.

I remember that when I entered University of California Irvine, that’s when I would be exposed to more “diversity”.  One day in lecture a friend told me that Chinese characters were originally based on nature and the visual sight of how things look.

For example the character for water (river, or lake, I forget) started with a character looking like a river.  Then through time it changed to what it is today. (Sorry if i totally butchered this, trying to recall a memory from 2000).

This story board in the museum told a poignant story of family and treasures.  I just thought it to be so interesting the evolution of Chinese based languages.

Auntie Xie’s – Google Maps Link

For lunch we decided to go with a Lonely Planet recommendation where the food was pitched as traditional style food whatever that means. The restaurant is kind of hidden where you go down one flight of stairs. When you enter you just tell them how many people, and for 400 NTD you get a meat, vegetable, and fish.

What’s nice about Auntie Xie’s is you get free noodles and taro congee you can self serve. The crowd definitively seemed like a local lunch crowd

Taiwan Walking Tour: Tourmeaway Link

In the afternoon we took a walking tour of Taipei.  In most city they have these ‘free walking tours’, where a guide would walk around and you pretty much just give tips at the end.  I did one in Bilbao, Spain and had a good experience so decided to book one here.

We met at the NTU Hospital station and our host was James Ho.

He was born in Taiwan and gives these tours on his free time.  He also doubles as a stunt coordinator and actor on the side.

We did the Old Taipei Walking Tour so we spent 3 hours wandering through where the old city existed.

Initially we spent time learning the history of Taiwan.  This stuff is pretty complicated so I’ll try to distill it to what I learned

• 4,000 years ago indigenous people (most likely from polynesia) settled on the island
• Dutch colonized in the 17th century
• Spanish come
• Immigration for China (??)
  
• World War 2 happens, Taiwan under Japanese rule
• Around 1940 Chiang Kai Shek from China moved the nationalist government to Taiwan(think of Taiwan as a territory)
• Japanese loses war, gives Taiwan back to China
• Taiwan still considered a territory of China, but has their own passport, voting, and president.  Not a fully independent country, but a defacto independent country, and if they ever declared independence, probably would cause a conflict dragging the US and others into a conflict..

Anyhoo, James focused a little bit on what happened under Japanese rule. He said that when the Japanese came they had a pretty big influence on Taiwan as they used the country to experiment on their architecture.  The Japanese would build something in Taiwan, and if they liked it, they would bring it back to Japan.

James also said that Japan would give them education and good hygiene (his words).  

One of the major turning points was called the 228 incident (you will notice there is a 228 peace park also).  On Feb 28, 1945 there was a lady selling tobacco.  Japanese agents took her tobacco and she clamored for it back because she was poor.  She was pistol whipped and one of the agents shot his gun into the air killing an innocent bystander.

At this point there was already a large crowd, and this incident summed up the frustration the Taiwanese were feeling under the occupation.
James also mentioned that Chaing Kai Shek (one of the former leaders of Taiwan), was super paranoid, and that he does still have a lineage to this day, but they are all.. American.  I found that to be super strange.

However the most memorable thing was this path which has these pointy rocks.  James said there is a 90 year old guy who walks it every day and even lies on it.  We tried it, and it is painful, but relaxing (think of it like a massage roller on steroids).

Snow King Ice Cream – Google Maps Link

At the end of the tour we ended up at Snow King Ice Cream.  The owner really didn’t like things sweet, so all the ice cream is on the mellower side.

They really had some crazy interesting flavors such as custard apple and longan.  You could even get sesame oil chicken and pork floss if you wanted to.  However James said don’t get the crazy flavors, they are gross.

The Original Din Tai Fung Xinyi Branch – Google Maps Link

We went to go eat Din Tai Fung with Jason’s aunt and tried out the original branch.  One of the things I enjoyed more is that they have chicken Xiao Long Bao!  Otherwise call me a nay-sayer, I think it is pretty close to the locations in the United States, but the locations in Taiwan definitely has many more options.

What’s nice is that there is a website you can look up the restaurant wait time.

Smoothie House – Google Maps Link

Smoothie House is a franchise in Taiwan, and this is just one of the locations.  The ice was pretty good, but the highlight was the fresh taro balls

Day 3: Taroko National Park

Taroko National Park is about 2 hours east of Taipei via a high speed train.  We were debating whether to stay over the park and to rent a car, but we opted to hire a driver.

When researching Reddit (I know random out of all things) I saw a contact for a driver for hire for $116.  Our driver’s name was Tiffany (Facebook Link) and she drove us to each interesting viewpoint in Taroko Park for a day trip.

The park is super huge and you could easily spend days there.  But to help optimize the time we worked with Tiffany to do a bunch of mini hikes.One of the major things we missed out was this hike where at one point you literally could die since there is a narrow path on one portion – Zhuilu Old Trail.  This hike needed a permit anyways and was partially closed so we chose not to do it.

Stop 1: Qingshu Cliffs

This is actually slightly north of the park.  Your view is a huge cliff surrounded by the ocean.  Oddly enough it kind of reminded me of Big Sur, but without the vast cliff.

Stop 2: Shakadang Trail

This is a pretty easy 1.5 mile trail where you get a great view of the gorge.  Of most interest were the marble wall colors on the rock.

The odd thing about the hike though was at the end of the 1.5 miles there were vendors selling grilled amaranth and rice mochi

I was thinking how random is it for a vendor to be selling food. Kind of imagine hiking Yosemite and then a vendor sells hot dogs kind of out of no where.

The mochi was quite good though.

Stop 3: Swallow Grotto

This is a really small .5 mile hike where you need a helmet and you walk through a grotto that is susceptible to falling rocks.  It is named as such for the birds that past through and nest

Right after Swallow Grotto we got some lunch at a restaurant that serves traditional food.

The meal was quite good and well balanced. Much better than hot dogs you would typically get at an American national park.

Stop 4: Eternal Springs Shrine

Perhaps the most visited vista is this building with a waterfall coming out of it.  

Sadly though, it was one of those things where how you frame the shot is better than the reality of being there (meaning I didn’t think it was that spectacular in person).

Raohe Night Market – Google Maps Link

If you are taking the train back, then it makes sense for you to go to the Raohe Night Market as it is a stop before the Taipei Main Station.

Night markets are basically a bunch of vendors selling food and drinks and are pretty common in Asia.  What visiting the night market confirmed about myself is I really don’t like them that much.  Call me an old curmudgeon, but I’d rather sit in a relaxing restaurant rather than line up for a long time to get food.

The worst part of the market is that every couple minutes I would be like “what is that smell!”.  It would be random whiffs of stinky tofu.  Ug.

One of my favorite booths was one recommended by the Michelin guide. Just really good mochi dusted with various powders.

Day 4: Taipei 101

Taipei 101 is the highest building in Taipei.  Think of it like touring the Empire State Building in New York, meaning check it out once and then never check it out again.  I’ve always been ambivalent about visiting sky rises, but hey when being a tourist, why not?

When you get to the entrance, show your Taipei fun pass and they will exchange it for a ticket.

However unbeknownst to me (but Jason knew about it), one of the things people see is this wind dampener on public display.

This wind dampener is 5 stories tall (with cables), and helps Taipei 101 deal with movement as the building sways.

Really, to me the technological progress of how things have progressed really is amazing.

Sunny Hills Pineapple Cakes – Google Maps Link

Taiwan is known for their pineapple cakes.  There is this store that kind of gets you but giving you a free sample.  After you get a sample and free oolong tea, you really do feel obligated to buy something.

Seating was communal, and there was this younger college aged student across us and asked if we were from the Canada or the US.  She was pretty chatty and then asked us if we could have our receipt for the lottery.

With a puzzled look we asked for more clarification.  She said that in Taiwan when you buy anything you mostly get an additional receipt with a QR code.  Periodically they have lottos where you could win $30 USD to $300,000USD.

The reasoning behind all of this is to help with tax evasion.  Consumers were be impelled to perhaps report or encourage stores that don’t have these QR codes to start generating them.  Kind of an interesting approach to a tax problem.

Talking more with the college student, she studied English and German and I asked if she was on a gap year.  She said it was complicated and I kind of sense she had some crazy back story.  All I was thinking it was pretty gutsy to ask random tourists for their receipts for the lottery.

Addiction Aquatic Development – Google Maps Link

After our “free” pineapple cakes (we did end up buying some afterwards), we took an Uber to Addiction Aquatic Development.

Really I have no idea why it is named so strangely, but it kind of is like a ferry building for fresh seafood.

We stopped by a restaurant recommended on eater – Tresors de la mar where we were standing outside fish on ice.

Fortunately the wait staff spoke fluent English. We had a pretty long chat about which type of fish was best suited for steaming and the taste profile of each fish. We chose a whole fish and picked out some vegetables.

You then go upstairs and hand the wait staff your order.

All the food was quite good at a reasonable price.

Huashan Creative Park 1914 – Google Maps Link

Near our hotel was this super hipster plaza.  For those in Southern California, kind of like “The Camp” in Costa Mesa, but much larger

They had all these cool things like living walls (apparently where people take wedding photos), as well as expensive, but delicious, black soymilk?  Didn’t know soymilk had a black variety.

Dinner – Mume

Another recommended restaurant was Mume.  It kind of is like fancy French/Taiwanese ingredients type deal, and kind of thought the restaurant was stuffy and a little overly modern.  The weirdest thing though was this fish where you can eat the scales.

Next door was a really random surf shop that resonated with me quite a bit.

Day 5: Roadtrip of Yehliu and Jiufen area

Following one of Lonely Planet’s itineraries, we went north to Yehliu then east towards Jiufen.  We hired a driver from Haplay Tours.  Our driver’s name was Stephan Wang and he originally was from Taiwan, but lived in San Francisco for 20 years.  He moved back to Taiwan to take care of his mom.

Our first stop was Yehliu Geopark.  They have these naturally occurring mushroom rock formations

I would have liked this site more, but there were so many people. Every half an hour, bus loads more people would come to check it out.

If you choose to go to Yehliu, I recommend going before they even open to beat the buses.

Jiufen Old Street – Google Maps Link

According to our driver Jiufen old street used to only have 9 families.  But since then it has grown like crazy.

Most guidebooks have these gorgeous pictures of Jiufen, but in reality it is a narrow labyrinth of small streets with shops and such. Think of it as a night market instead in the format of small alleys.

It was okay I guess, but I kept thinking, if there was a fire, we’d be goners in there.

Yiyang Sea

We stopped briefly by the viewpoint of the Yiyang sea.  When it rains there is run off of minerals from the mountain making the sea.. yellow.. color..

Golden Waterfall 

The golden waterfall is another quick viewpoint where rocks shine with a gold color because of former gold mining.

Shifen Waterfall

About an hour away was Shifen waterfall.  For whatever reason there were tons of kids that day visiting..  We crossed two bridges to get this view.

Shifen Old Street

Shifen Old Street is really known for people writing messages on paper lanterns and releasing them.  According to our driver this is a really popular tourist thing.  You would write something asking for health, money, wishes, etc

What really was insane is this takes place actually on a train track.  So every hourish or so you would hear horns honk and people flee the track.  After the train passes people would get back to their business.

The hippie part of me though really was kind of irked on the environmental sustainability aspect of what was going on.  When we went to the waterfall, we saw quite a few of these paper lanterns stranded in the environment.  Call me a party pooper, but we didn’t participate in launching any lanterns.

Chiang Bao Zi – Google Maps Link
We asked our driver to drop us off this street vendor to get some baos.

They were quite good and cheap with several vegetarian filling options

Peacock Bistro – Google Maps Link

For dinner we went to Peacock Bistro which kind of was like a modern French Bistro.  

Maybe one of the weirdest dishes I’ve had was a black chicken with grass jelly.  I don’t think I’ve eaten a meal that was almost completely black before.

Day 6: Chiang Kai Shek Memorial

We were also able to book a tour at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial.  To our surprise we were the only 2 people on the tour (e-mail CC002@ms.cksmh.gov.tw to make a tour reservation)

Chiang Kai Shek memorial is actually a rotating museum space with a historic museum area.  Our tour primarily consisted of learning more about Chiang Kai Shek

Chiang Kai Shek’s parents originally owned a grocery store in China, but he didn’t end up taking over the store and entered the military.

He rose in prominence and it was only until 1936 that China because one unified country.  However it was only a unified countries in show, but there were still a lot of competing warlords with power in the country.

One of the defining moments in CKS’s career was the xi’ian incident where he was held hostage but one of his own subordinates. The incident changed the political power dynamic in China for decades to come.

At the end of the tour of the tour, our guide led us to the changing of the guards.

I mentioned to the guide uhh… this kind of reminds me of Abraham Lincoln in DC.  He said the architect who made CKS Memorial hall was really inspired by that space.

Hangzhou Xiao Long Bao – Google Maps Link

Our driver from the other day recommended this place, and it was kind of like a pared down Din Tai Fung.  You get your own ginger, vinegar, soy sauce, and sides.  Dumplings were pretty good

Gen Creative – Google Maps Link

One of my most favorite meals in Taiwan was at Gen Creative.  All the dishes were really vegetable forward without being too crazy gastronomically complex.

Pumpkin Fried Soup.  These croquettes would actually be full of oozing pumpkin when you broke it open.  The base was coconut, pumpkin seeds, and lemon balm.

Day 7: Saturday – Dihua Street

Fuhang Soy Milk – Google Maps Link
I woke up early and waited in line to get some famous drinks at pastries at Fuhang Soy Milk.  I kind of liked Sihai much better though.

International Adventist Church
One of things I like doing while traveling is to visit the local church.  It kind of gives you the feels of the local culture and a chance to ask more questions on how things are on the ground

The church happened to be located at the back of the Taiwan Adventist Hospital.

However, this Sabbath there was definitely something funky happening.  Apparently some people from the congregation is trying to get the Pastor fired from the conference.  A lot of the service was kind of airing the grievances of many members.  They also had people being baptized give their testimonials.  

It definitely wasn’t a polished service, but was authentic in the sense the church brought up to front kind of the human condition we all have to face.  Things like gossip, getting hurt, and reconciliation.

During potluck, we sat next to people from Saipan. Not knowing where Saipan was we they told us it is a US Territory near Guam. This group of people were from the Adventist school there. The principal told us one of the biggest issues was that in Nov 2018 they got hit by a super typhoon.  I was a little shocked because the main stream media (sorry to bring back memories of our current political climate) really didn’t talk about this disaster at all.

I kind of think it even weirder we have territories in the US.  Just grant them state hood already ugs.

It was also really interesting to hear perspectives of people living on a tiny tiny island.

Wheel Cakes – Google Maps Link

After church we explored Dihua Street

This guy here has been making wheel cakes for 15-20 years and makes 400 a day and stays open until he runs out. They have crazy flavors in addition to sweet potato such as savory radish cakes.

Everything in Taiwan really is framed either in the occupation of the Japanese or Chinese if you look at the architecture or even the food.  Wheel cakes are originally a Japanese construct (from the occupation), but then he made it less sweet (source: Eater).

Puppet Theater

Dihua street has all these weird eclectic places like a puppet theater

Leputing – Google Maps

For our last dinner we went to Leputing which is a fancy schmancy Japanese multicourse meal with local Taiwanese ingredients.

It was good, but a little too much over the top for me.

Day 8: Presidential Palace Tour

On certain days you can visit the presidential palace.  You can also book a tour here (even though it say you don’t have to, I recommend booking a group tour regardless).

After security checks your passport and belongings, you are able to tour the bottom grounds.

The tour turns into a series of exhibits talking about Taiwan’s democracy.  It really is kind of jarring of how weird of a state Taiwan is.  Kinda a part of China, kinda independent.

Weird selfie cam you can take at the end of the tour

Hope Square Farmers Market – google maps link

If you know me, you know I’ll check out the farmer’s market

The market didn’t disappoint at all with bell apples (oddly enough my parent’s grow a variety of this at home)

For a fun import related fact, you can bring fruits back into Canada or US as long as they are cut and in a package.  So we were able to bring back a couple red dragon fruits to enjoy when going home (just be sure not to bring it whole).

I know that was long, but thanks for reading!