1 Week Itinerary of Oaxaca

In the age of Instagram, Facebook, and social media, Oaxaca was never on my radar to visit if it wasn’t for a new friend I met in Mexico City who put the seed in my head.

For the time being Oaxaca’s tourism is growing pretty rapidly year to year, and my wishes is for the people of the city to grow in prosperity from tourism, but still somehow keep its charm.

This post only really scratches the surface of Oaxaca, but perhaps will give you some inspiration to explore the unknown.

Where is Oaxaca?

Oaxaca is one of the states in Mexico. However generally when people mention Oaxaca, they mean more specifically the main city area.

Is It Safe?

I never felt unsafe at any part of time, but I generally don’t stay out too late. I walked at night through the zocalo to my hotel, and really had no problems.

The only thing I hear a little bit though is to be careful of being pick pocketed at Central de Abastos Mercado.

Taxi Survival Tips

At the current moment there aren’t any Ubers, so you have to take a taxi. There pretty much are 3 types of tais

Yellow Official: These are yellow official taxis, and you can tell because in the front passenger’s seat you will see their official photo and license. These are considered the safest taxis.

Yellow Unofficial: These are yellow, but unofficial. You can tell by looking at the front passenger’s seat as you won’t see any license.

Red and Blue Taxis: These are more known as colectivos which pick up multiple passengers on the way to a destination. If you don’t specifically as to be alone, you can assume passengers will also fill up in the car.

Many taxi drivers speak limited English so before you go in a taxi, always get a predetermine rate by asking

Cuanto cuesta ir al ___? (How much does it cost to go to ____). You will notice the official ones will charge you more, and the unofficial ones will always be about 20% less. Agree on the price, then go to your destination.

Do I Need To Speak Spanish?

Knowing basic Spanish will make your trip easier. Expect fluency in fancy restaurants, and everything else you pretty much can point.

Day 1: Airport Arrival + Casa Taviche

When you arrive you first go through immigration. After immigration you most likely need to get to the city downtown.

As you walk out, you will see this big taxi dispatch, and you have two options.

You can ride a shared van (colectivo) which costs 80 pesos. There are about 9 passengers in a van, so when it is full you take off. You first buy the ticket then go to the van area. Tell your driver where you are going, and if you Spanish is limited show a Google Map of where you need to go. This is more important if you are staying at an AirBNB where reference points might be harder to get by.
You can book a taxi for 300 pesos directly. Booking a taxi makes sense if you have a group.

There really is no need to prebook a driver as it will actually probably cost you about 500 pesos.

For food planning on this trip I followed a lot of Eater’s Oaxaca Food List
in addition to asking some bloggers for their advice

Casa Taviche
https://www.yelp.com/biz/casa-taviche-oaxaca

It was a small, but really charming restaurant. When walking in I saw mainly locals, but a scattering of very visible English speaking tourists.

They have a revolving daily menu, and hands down Casa Taviche meets the best price point and taste combination. You can get a 3 course meal for 200 pesos (and they do accept credit cards).

In Mexico, a couple key things are key

The salsas they serve you aren’t the crappy salsas we have in North American super markets. Instead each restaurant really expresses themselves in the custom salsa they serve to you in the beginning of the meal. Every restaurant I went to in Oaxaca had a different salsa.
All the restaurants in Mexico make their own fresh tortillas. However, tortillas in Oaxaca are bananas out of this world good with a lot of it made out of blue corn.
Most restaurants have ‘agua del dia’ (drink of the day). These are either fresh fruit juices, blended drinks, or teas. When you enter a restaurant and see agua del dia, ask them what it is.

Agua del Dia – Lemon Leaf Tea
Probably the first time I have ever seen anything this. Makes me wonder why nobody else has done it.

Tylauda de Tasjo – like a quesadilla but with beans and Oaxacan Cheese

Corn Cakes with Nanche Sorbet (a local fruit)

Day 2: Tierra Ventura Guided Hike

A big part of Oaxaca is ecotourism. I always like to try to do hiking wherever I travel, but if I don’t know the area, I usually try to book a tour. After googling around, I decided on booking a tour with Tierra Ventura.

There are quite a few places you can hike to, but I wanted to check out the mountains in the Sierra Norte. If you have time, you can do a multi-day hike through the Pueblos Mancomunados. I only had one day so I did the Llano Grande hike.

I was picked up at the hotel in the morning where our tour guide Claudia gave us some history on the area. Her backstory in itself was pretty interesting. She originally was from Germany then came to Mexico because her husband had some work there. They eventually decided to permanently resettle in Oaxaca.

She mentioned that Oaxaca is one of the poorest regions in Mexico and that many leave to Los Angeles and send money back to Mexico.

Pueblos Manuomunados are a set of self sustaining towns that used to be quasi independent from the government. These towns only had 500 tourists a year, but now get 25,000 a year. That still isn’t a ton, but relatively speaking that is a huge spike of growth.

Wherever I hike, I like using the All Trails app. It gives you the a map where you can check where you are even if you don’t have a cell signal. When I did some solo hiking in Death Valley, those maps on the app were invaluable for me to not get lost.

When we arrived at base camp, a local guide who lives in the town came with us. I opened the All Trails app, and was surprised to see no trails mapped in the area. I was going to hit ‘record’ on the app and perhaps be the first one to record a map for the app in the Sierra Nortes.

But for some reason, a part of me chose not to record the trail head. I guess I might be selfish because I didn’t want random tourists to hike these trails without a local guide. With that, I closed the app and we trekked off on our 4 hour hike. Eventually someone will map out this area and publish it out for the world, but I guess I’ll delay it for a bit longer.

On the hike we would stop every 15 minutes to look at a flower or an herb that I would have walked past. Claudia would point to an herb and mention that the indigenous people would use it to help with their medical ailments such as sickness, headaches, pregnancy, etc. The specificity of the usage of the herbs were quite interesting.

Probably the most interesting part of the hike were these huge agave plants called Century agave plants. They live for about a 100 years and produce more oxygen than pine trees!

When we finished the hike we ended up at a “restaurant”, which kind of resembled someone’s house. As I poked around the house before the meal, I noticed that they had Christmas decorations with a tree that looked like it had a lot of peat moss. Given it was February I was a little curious why they didn’t take it down, but it reminded me of the projection of what Hollywood dictates a Christmas tree should look like. In the rest of the world, pine trees might not be readily accessible, so why not use what you have locally?

We ate together with our hiking group which was pretty small. There was someone here from DC who had time off because of the government shut down, and a couple from the UK who were in their 70s! Really I would aspire to be like that couple still hiking in their 70s.

Las Quince Letras
Website Link

This restaurant is one of many great mole restaurants in the city. Service is pretty mediocre, but prices are pretty good for what you get.

What seems to be pretty common is variations of mushroom soup around the city

They had a 3 mole sampler plate, and I was speaking in Spanish and asked for it “sin cerdo” (without pork). Perhaps because of my intonation or something, they didn’t understand what I was saying. I talked to some people later and they said I should say “sin puerco”.

Well the whole moral of this story is I ordered the mole amarillo de res (yellow beef mole), to make sure I didn’t get pork. Oddly enough, that’s the memory that sticks out when eating at Las Quince Letras

Day 3: Hierve El Agua

While browsing other blogs, I came across a guide to Hierve El Agua. I messaged her and she gave me the number of a private driver she hired. I got his number and we began chatting on WhatsApp. I decided to book a car as a private tour to explore the region of Hierve El Agua (petrified waterfalls).

Jose (named change for privacy) arrived at lobby of the hotel I was staying out and we took off to Hierve El Agua. Being that it was just him and me, we had a couple hours to chat.

On the drive we shared where we were from, and he mentioned he used to live in Los Angeles. I asked how he got there and he said via a coyote (human smuggler). I was surprised, but he indulged me in all of the details of his journey.

What people in Mexico first need to do is to get to Tijuana. Since Oaxaca is quite far, he flew there. When Jose exited the airport, officials asked him his reason of visiting and he would say visiting family and his ID was checked.

When he walked out of the airport he mentioned that there were several chatty and friendly people asking where you are from, and where you are going. These people were pretty much the coyotes trying to strike a deal with you.

The coyotes then would negotiate a price with you to go over the border. A coyote first said it would take $800 USD to cross the border, but he bargained it down to $600 (these are 1993 prices mind you).

After the deal was struck, Jose was ushered to a safe house, where he was separated into different groups. Each group was specific to the destination city such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.

In the middle of the night, Jose was taken to the border, and then when the time was right he entered a hole dug underneath the border fence. He then walked about 3-4 hours where another car picked hi up and drove him into another safe house.

The coyotes called his family in Los Angeles and said, “I have Jose, are you okay with the payment of $600?”. Fortunately they agreed over the phone.

From the drive from the safe house to an agreed meet-up point of a gas station in Los Angeles, Jose was able to talk if the radio was on. Whenever the radio was off, he and the other passengers needed to stay silent to not get caught by immigration.

At the gas station, the family gave the coyotes the money and then left. Jose worked at a fancy restaurant in Beverley Hills for many years after that.

The oddest part of the story, is that when flying home to Mexico, he didn’t need a passport, only a Mexico National ID card which I thought was a little strange.

One thing that I still remember to this day how in English he referred to the border as “the frontier.” I find that quite an apt description as the frontier often means opportunity, unknown, and danger.

Hierve El Agua

After that most interesting chat, we arrived at Hierve El Agua. Apparently there are only 2 places in the world which have petrified waterfalls (the other place is Turkey). Typically there are tour guides where you can just pay a small tip to guide you around the trails, but since I was so early nobody was there.

At the base of the trail head 2 pools. I thought they kind of looked perfect, but after Googling, it does seem these 2 infinity pools were constructed. There is a pretty great and short hike, and fortunately All Trails had this area completely mapped.

When you reach the lowest part of the hike, you have this spectacular view of the petrified water fall.

And unfortunately, lots of people did a lot of tagging in the agave plants

After the hike I took a dip in the pool. It was pretty cold, but since it was a hot day it felt quite good.

From Hierve El Agua, most people visit Mitla. This is an archaeological site similar to Monte Alban.

I looked around for an English tour and didn’t see any so I wondered on my own for a little while. Eventually I saw a tour in progress and I asked if I could crash the tour. The tour guide that that Mitla was used primarily by a family of mystics (?). I think it was so hot I wasn’t paying too much attention.

After Mitla we went to another archaeological site Yagul. It was pretty abandoned and dilapidated. The good thing is that I was the only person there other than a school bus full of kids. There were no guides, only a couple signs on English. You can hike to a high point though.

Continuing the journey we went to Teotilan del Valle. I specifically asked Jose if it would cost money and he said no. It was one of those places where they make rugs the traditional ways.

When I entered the shop, the owner gave me a free demo of how the rugs were made. The owner talked about how they get cotten from sheep in the mountains and natural dyes from local ingredients. It was oddly super similar to a demo I had seen in the sacred valley in Peru.

Afterwards I looked around their rugs, and noticed some rugs with unique designs. I asked and they said they do make custom rugs for 8,000 pesos and it would take about 3-4 weeks.

The final part of the day was a stop by the Tule Tree which is estimated to be 2,000 years old. Kind of strange to see a tree so old.

Mercado 20 de Noviembre
Google Maps Link

This market, just slightly south of el centro had some pretty interesting stuff.

Walking around, I saw one of my favorite fruits, a Sapote. It looks ugly, but as I say in the market, “si es mas feo es mas delicoso?”

Outside the perimeter of the market was a guy selling Cherimoya. When I came back he literally was gone! I realized he had a moving cart so I found him a gain in the centro.

Restaurante Casa Oaxaca
Google Maps Link

Restaurante Casa Oaxaca is a pretty popular and well known restaurant. You definitely need to make reservations in advance, and they are English friendly.

What I remember most is when they were making the salsa, they asked in Spanish, “How many crickets do you want?” I did a double take and asked them to repeat and said a little.

The salsa tasted pretty good as it was made fresh table side. Also I didn’t really taste the crickets at all.

Day 4: Oaxaca City Touring

Rito El Chocolateria
Google Maps Link

Oaxaca is a city with no shortage of coffee and chocolate. I ordered a Chocolate El Agua (hot chocolate) which was made by melting chocolate with hot water. What I learned was that it was not traditionally to have an iced chocolate drink and that only really came in the past couple of years.

Mercado Sanchez Pascuas
Google Maps Link

Mercardo Sanchez Pascuas is a more mellow version of Mercado 20 de Noviembre.

Highlights of the market were Sapote Negro (Black Sapote – a fruit that tastes like pudding), along with some sweet mangoes

Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca
Google Maps Link

At 11am I attended the tour at the Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca. I didn’t expect that many people, but there were at least 100 people there. They were all pretty pale an pastely colored which leads me to believe they were from Canada or such region without sun.

The thing that intrigued me the most was quelite herbs. I always thought quelite referred to a particular herb, but it refers to a class of edible plants. Each herb is used for a particular dish.

Imagine that instead of a bay leaf, oregano, etc, an entire class of herbs existed in Mexico you never knew of.

One of the main attractions is this cactus reflecting pool.

Tacos de Comal
Google Maps Link

Tacos de Comalwas recommended on Eater and has been around since 1974. I am generally pretty wary of street food, but I saw them keep food super hot, and they even wore masks.

I ordered an ’empanada’ which I thought was weird because I got a big tortilla filled with chicken stew meat instead of a triangle.

This empanada was phenomenally good. You can tell the tortilla was freshly made, and the filling with piping hot with herbs. I still dream of these tacos to this day.

Monte Alban
Google Maps Link

From Tacos de Comal I booked a taxi to Monte Alban. When I arrived I asked if there were any English guides and said there wasn’t anyone available.

I saw another tour guide speaking English and decided to shadow the group. One of the ladies introduced herself and asked “are you joining the group?”. I said yes if you don’t mind and I pretty much crashed the party as a fly on the wall.

Monte Alban was some type of capital back in the day, and they don’t know why it was abandoned. The guide talked about some of the rituals and the significance of the buildings. All things considered, I thought Teotihuacan in Mexico City was more impressive as that site seems more intact.

Criollo
Google Maps Link
Criollo is a restaurant run by Enrique Olvera. When you arrive you enter in the kitchen which was kind of weird. I ordered a menu without pork and shellfish and got

1: beef taco, camote, pineapple, leaf of the prickly pear
2: garbanzo bean soup, chayote
3: tostada de mushrooms
4:fish with confit tomatoes
Eggplant and local fruit
5:ribeye with huitlacoche, corn salsa fried mushrooms
6: cacao pulp

I kind of felt that the pacing of the food was way too long, and surprisingly this wasn’t my favorite restaurant in Oaxaca.

Day 5: Food Explorations

I had to do some work on this day so I did some further food explorations.

Itanoni
Google Maps Link

Itanoni is a taqueria which serves tortilla which is made from rare corn varietals. Their menu is pretty simple and has tacos, memelas (like a tiny taco with beans), and tetelas (triangle shaped with beans).

What I found in Oaxaca was that tacos aren’t the small flat tortillas you fold up. Instead when you order tacos, they always seem rolled up.

Destilado
Link

I managed to snag a last minute reservation at Destilado and ordered a 6 course vegetarian tasting. By far, Destilado was my favorite meal in Oaxaca, and maybe one of my top meals ever. My tasting had:

1: cucumber drink
2: sope with guacamole and blue corn – squash flowers
Mushroom sope
3: tortilla leaf tomato stew, rice chicharrón
4: blue corn ferment tomato filled with giant black bean
5: beet mole tart with puma queso and flowers
6: wheat from the mountains, tomatoes, Parmesan Oaxaca from Chipías , fermented chayote
7: avocado leaf ice cream

It was similar to the vein of Criollo, but the aura of the restaurant was more cozy and the food more relatable.

Day 6: En Via Micro-finance Tour

I booked a tour with En Via, but in the morning I had the opportunity to check out some tourist spots.

Museo de Contemporaneo (MACO)
Link

This was a super small museum with some odd art exhibits. I was done in about 30 minutes.

Museo de Las Culturas
Link

This museum talks a lot about the history of Oaxaca and its people. It has a really untraditional layout has it seems to half be in a castle. This museum will take you quite a bit of time to go through as there are many small rooms.

En Via Micro-finance tour
https://www.envia.org/

One of the things I saw on Tripadvisor was En Via’s micro finance tour. En via specifically gives micro loans to women. Microloans are small loans that are issued to individuals to help start businesses.

We left at 1pm and our guide Ida rode to visit people who previously had received micro finance loans. On the trip she explained a lot of things to us about the system.

In Mexico there are a lot of micro loan non profits. One of the crazy things is that the average interest rate is 76%! The reason it is so high is that clients have no collateral so they are not involved in the regular banking systems.

En Via specifically targets women as according to their data they are more likely to pay the money back. They don’t do explicit advertising into villages, and instead are approached via word of mouth for people to apply to them.

Women have to form a group of 3 to apply. The reason for the group of 3 is for support, and to help each other if they have problems paying the money back.

The women also have to take 8 compulsory training sessions before getting their first loan. The classes range from the basics of financial literacy to how to calculate profit.

Type of businesses range from a mezcal bar, restaurant, a reseller, or a cafe owner.

We first stopped at a restaurant, to eat, but I didn’t realize this would be the first tour stop.

After we ate, the owner (the lady shown) gave a talk on how En Via helped. She said her husband was working in Los Angeles working, and the loan helped her expand her restaurant.

The odd thing I learned was that small businesses don’t have to register as an entity to the government nor pay taxes. It makes me think when your government is corrupt and inefficient on how it leads to fewer opportunities for people.

The next stop was to someone who makes traditional dresses and aprons.

The last stop was someone who got a loan to buy cacao to make chocolate.

Origen
Google Maps Link

Tucked the way on top of a hotel is Origen. This restaurant is more French/Mexican based by using French techniques for Mexican food. I ended up asking them to change to a vegetarian menu and got:

Tomato salad
Mushroom taco
Risotto
Some dessert

Overall, I wasn’t too thrilled for the meal after going to Destilado the day before.

Day 7: Farmer’s Market

Pochote Farmer’s Market
Google Maps Link

Everywhere I go, I really love going to farmer’s market. As expected there was some pretty interesting stuff.

What kind of intrigued me the most was there was this Asian person selling momos who spoke fluent Spanish. I just kind of wanted to sit down and ask her. How’d you get here? How did you end up cooking momos at the farmer’s market?

Stamp Museum (Museo de la Filatelia Oaxaca)
Google Maps Link

On the way to a meal I walked by the stamp museum and decided to go on. Lucky for me it ended up being the 20th anniversary of the museum so there was free food and drink.

The stamp museum was pretty intriguing as they showed stamps from all time period and all over the world.

Meson Jalatco
Google Maps Link

A low key restaurant recommended by quepasaoaxaca.com

Overall, probably not one of my favorites. Their mole was pretty good, but vegetables were pretty overly smoked or undercooked.

Day 8: Cooking Classes

Casa Crespo Cooking Class
Link

Last minute, I decided to take a cooking class. Oscar took us around the market to buy ingredients and we headed back to the kitchen.

As part of the class, most things were prepped, but we got to do minor things like cut, and do minor sauteing. I have to admit, the class was pretty smooth. We cooked these dishes

Overall I had a splendid experience and would totally recommend it.

Nieves Manolo
Google Maps Link

Just around the corner from the cooking school is a really interesting ice cream stand.

I ended up ordering the mushroom ice cream.

For my last day, I wandered around the zocolo and saw a wedding. Not sure what the significance of the giant people are

Voces de Copal
Google Maps Link

After randomly wandering around I walked into this art gallery which had some stunningly beautiful pieces.

Zandunga
Google Maps Link

Zandunga is a restaurant that serves food traditional to the Ixptepec region. I ordered the the stewed beef, chicken soup, and hot chocolate. The meal was good, but a bit too heavy.

Stewed beef from the Ixtepec region cooked with fruits and dates

Taiwan Itinerary Guide for One Week

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

Soymilk, Peanut Milk, and salted curdled soy milk with chinese fried donut. For like $3.50

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.

Coincidentally got onto a Hello Kitty train

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.

Mochi and Tsaiyen – a Michelin recommended mochi stall

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.

*Umm…. is the gram worth getting run over? YES!*

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.

Radish cake -okra, charred scallion, fermented pepper

Purple Cabbage – caraway, wild rice, Asian pear

Parisian Gnocchi – meyer lemon, kale pesto, pecorino

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!