Taipei

Taipei has roughly twenty night markets of varying size and focus. The question is not which one to visit but which one first, because they are genuinely different and the better Taipei food experience involves spreading the visits across two or three evenings rather than doing Shilin once and calling it done.

The Night Markets

Shilin is the largest and most famous, opening around 5pm. Oyster omelettes, stinky tofu, grilled corn, and shaved ice are everywhere. It is good; it is also crowded and quite tourist-oriented. Worth doing once. The cooking at the better stalls is genuinely excellent.

Raohe Street in Songshan district is smaller and less tourist-heavy. The pepper buns here (a crispy baked bun filled with spiced pork and spring onion, cooked in a clay oven) are the specific thing to seek; Fuzhou Shizu Pepper Bun at the temple end of the market has been doing them since the 1980s.

Ningxia is known among Taipei locals for the most concentrated traditional Taiwanese street food of any market: braised pork rice, oyster omelets, fried taro, bubble tea, stinky tofu done at a high standard. Less visited by foreign tourists than Shilin; this is an advantage.

Bring cash. Most stalls don’t accept cards.

Taipei 101

The building was the world’s tallest from 2004 to 2010 at 508 metres. The observation deck on the 89th floor (the fast elevator takes 37 seconds from floor 5) costs 600 NTD and gives expansive views on clear days across the Taipei basin surrounded by green hills. The 660-tonne tuned mass damper visible on floors 88 to 92 is the largest in the world and publicly viewable; it reduces building sway from wind and earthquakes. The damper is surprisingly compelling to stand next to, not because it does anything visibly dramatic but because the engineering logic of hanging a ball the size of a large room on wires to keep a skyscraper stable is specific and strange.

Din Tai Fung original branch on Xinyi Road is a 30 to 45 minute queue at lunch; the xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) are what every other branch worldwide is trying to approximate. Go once.

National Palace Museum

The 700,000-object collection taken to Taiwan by the Nationalist government in 1949 from the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The jade cabbage and the meat-shaped stone (a jasper formation that looks uncannily like braised pork belly) are always crowded. The broader ceramics, bronzes, and calligraphy holdings are more substantial and less mobbed. Budget three hours. 350 NTD entry; closed Mondays.

Getting Around

The MRT covers all major tourist areas and runs until midnight. An EasyCard stored-value card (100 NTD deposit) reduces fares by 20 percent. Most central city journeys cost 25 to 45 NTD. From Taoyuan International Airport, the Airport MRT takes 35 minutes to Taipei Main Station; 160 NTD.