Taipei, Taiwan

Shilin Night Market is the one every guidebook sends you to, and it’s also the one where you’ll pay tourist prices for a version of Taiwanese street food that’s been dumbed down for foreign palates. If you want to eat what Taipei residents actually eat, get on the MRT to Nanjichang Night Market instead. It has barely any English on the signage, barely any tourists, and noticeably lower prices for the same fried chicken and stinky tofu everyone travels here for.

From the airport

Taoyuan International Airport connects to Taipei Main Station via the Airport MRT, and it’s the only transfer method worth considering unless you’re arriving at 3am. The Express service takes about 35 to 38 minutes depending on which terminal you land at, and a one-way ride costs NT$160, a little over 5 US dollars. Buy an EasyCard at the airport station rather than single-journey tickets. It costs a small deposit up front but works on every MRT line, city buses, YouBike rentals, and most convenience store purchases, so you’ll be tapping it constantly for the rest of the trip.

Taipei 101, priced properly

The standard observatory ticket covering floors 88 through 91 runs NT$600, about 19 US dollars. If you want the open-air 101st floor added on, the Skyline 460 combo ticket is NT$980. Buy through Klook or KKday rather than the counter; third-party platforms routinely run a few dollars cheaper than walk-up pricing and let you skip the queue at the 5F ticket counter entirely. Go at dusk if you can time it, since you get both daylight and night skyline views on the same ticket without paying for two separate visits.

Beyond the tower

Longshan Temple is worth visiting in the early morning before tour buses arrive, when it’s mostly local worshippers lighting incense rather than photographers. The National Palace Museum’s collection is genuinely enormous, spanning thousands of years of Chinese imperial artifacts, and trying to see all of it in one visit is a mistake; pick two or three wings and go deep rather than skimming the whole building. Jiufen, the hillside town north of the city sometimes credited as a Spirited Away inspiration (a claim Studio Ghibli itself has never confirmed), gets uncomfortably crowded on weekends, so a weekday morning trip out on the bus is a much better experience than fighting through the narrow lanes on a Saturday afternoon.

Markets and food, the real hierarchy

Shilin and Raohe are fine for a first-night introduction, loud and photogenic, but treat them as entertainment rather than the best food in the city. Linjiang Night Market is smaller, has several stalls with Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition, and draws a much more local crowd. For beef noodle soup, seek out a proper old-school shop rather than the chains clustered near the big markets; ask your hotel for their personal pick rather than trusting the first name that comes up in a search, since opinions genuinely split by neighborhood loyalty here. One practical warning: at busy night market stalls, watch the handoff when you pay. A quick-item swap, where the vendor shows you a nicer piece of food or fruit and then wraps a lesser one while chatting fast, is a documented enough complaint that it’s worth glancing at what actually goes into the bag before you walk off.

Getting around and staying oriented

The MRT is clean, cheap, and simple enough to navigate within a day, with English signage throughout every station. Buses fill the gaps the MRT doesn’t reach but are more confusing for a short-term visitor, so lean on the metro and walk the rest. Uber operates in Taipei alongside local taxis, and taxis here are metered and honest by regional standards, so you don’t need to negotiate or worry about being overcharged the way you might elsewhere in Asia.

When to go and what to pack

Autumn, October through December, gives the most reliably mild weather and is the best stretch for outdoor sightseeing like Yangmingshan’s trails and hot springs. Summers are hot, humid, and prone to sudden typhoon-season downpours, so if you’re visiting June through September, carry a compact umbrella at all times rather than checking the forecast each morning, because Taipei rain shows up with almost no warning.

Keep a printed or photographed copy of your EasyCard balance receipts if you plan to get a refund on it before flying home; the deposit and remaining balance can be returned at MRT stations, but only during station operating hours, not at the airport gate on your way out.