First impressions of Taipei
Taipei 101 seen from the newly opened Dome arena
After we passed on Malaysia, we never thought we’d find the familiarity of being at home so soon. And our next destination, Taipei, was certainly the last place we expected to find it. Yet, here in the capital of Taiwan we found it after all. We got the vibes of a familiar city like New York, but we feel completely safe walking the streets, day or night. Everything is close together, you can find anything you want immediately around the corner, the Metro system is just as great as the one in Munich - everything is so organized and how it should be, of course always also with some (positive) surprises thrown into the mix.
There’s also a lot here that makes us painfully aware of the fact that we’re not home. For example, we entered a yellow taxi at the iconic Taipei 101 tower wanting to go back to our hotel, but communications with the taxi driver ended the trip abruptly just around the corner as he confessed, using hand signals, that he had no clue where to drive us despite our attempts using google translate and google maps.
Thankfully, Uber works in Taipei, so I pulled out the trusty app and hailed a ride. Why not just use Uber in the first place? Well, convenience, for one. The taxi was already parked on the curb. Also, for the experience, which turned out more interesting than anticipated.
Everyone on the MRT does something with their phone
The Metro system in Taipei is fully built out and clean as a whistle. Most of the time, we just hop on the train, but sometimes we encounter a crowded station where people queue on clearly demarcated paths and we have to pack ourselves into the car.
The MRT is more extensive than in Boston and definitely less malodorous than NYC. And it only costs 60 cents a person to get practically anywhere in Taipei.
Uber can be a more convenient option for the exhausted traveler, and usual fares run around $5 to $6 per trip, so an excellent alternative. Sometimes we’ll take an Uber to our destination and the MRT back, or if within a 30 minute walk, we’d just hoof it.
Our first excursion outside of our hotel was to the Lungshan Temple, one of the first and most important Buddhist temples in Taipei. Lungshan Temple was upgraded into a National Historic Monument in 2018.
Milling with people, we were the only obvious foreigners in the crowd. Taipei is not a hot spot destination for tourists for some reason, but it should be.
Food offerings are so common, there’s even a vendor on site to purchase fruits
Gitty and I both partook of the fortune telling ritual where you pick either a yellow or red numbered stick, toss 2 lucky stones on the floor and if they don’t land with alternate sides face up, you select another numbered stick. Once you’re happy with your choice, you go to a chest full of numbered drawers and open the one indicated by your stick. Inside is a slip of paper with Chinese writing (your fortune) which you take to a window elsewhere in the temple to be interpreted for you - for us of course in broken and barely comprehensible English.
We stopped for a photo with the Taipei 101 tower during our Taipei Eats Classic tour
We participated early on in a food tour hosted by Taipei Eats. This introduction to the Taiwanese food scene lasted four hours and took us by foot to 10 different locations including a wet market (vegetables, fruits, meat and fish) and some local shops we would have otherwise avoided. All of the food tasted delicious and none of it would have been on our radar, so the tour was a huge success and we highly recommend it to others. I particularly enjoyed the stinky tofu, the pork belly bao with bbq sauce, cilantro and peanuts, and a bowl of noodles with (very, very clean) pork intestines (sounds worse than it tastes). We also experienced our first Bubble tea with pearls of tapioca, first invented here in Taiwan. A sweet treat.
Jiǎozǐ (dumplings) - what more needs to be said! Our hotel concierge recommended Din Tai Fung near Dongman Station which was a short walk from our hotel. When we arrived, I got a numbered ticket and found the wait time to be 75 minutes. And a lot of people milling around outside indicated that the wait was worth it. At the entrance to the restaurant was a glassed-in area where employees wearing all white (clothes, aprons, caps) made fresh dumplings in a human assembly line. Exciting to watch!
Also, you could monitor your position in the queue on a phone app and pre-order your courses for when you are seated. Six items was barely too much food, but an eggplant appetizer, hot and sour soup, and several different orders of dumplings (5 to an order) made the wait worthwhile. The dumplings tasted so fresh - what a difference that can make! Of course, they had also a huge variety of fillings to choose from. We loved our choices!
Ning Xia Night Market, our first and still one of our favorites
So far our favorite experiences in Taipei involve the night markets. There are so many spread throughout the city that we’ve only just scratched the surface, but we have months to check them all out. The food is safe to eat, and our experience in the Taipei Eats tour taught us a lot of what to expect! Along with some more established restaurants among rows of shops, many carts are set up in the street with so many food options, it can be overwhelming.
We walked from one cart to another choosing wraps, buns, soups, and noodles all made fresh on the spot and filled with ingredients prepared that morning. Everything looked so appealing! We would order something and share it before moving further down the street. Most items cost around $2 and after consuming five different choices, we were stuffed. Dinner for 2 and it cost under $15. We’ll spend more on drinks later.
On our way to a speakeasy, we observed the iconic Taipei 101
Speaking of … for those who have perused some of our earlier blogs, cocktails have been a surprisingly (or not if you really know us well) important part of our evening routine. In Italy, it was Aperol Spritz. In Malaysia, fancy fruity drinks at hidden bars. In Taipei, we’ve settled on Negronis as our go to nightcap. Near the Taipei 101 tower, which has an awesome observation deck to view the expanse of buildings making up the city, there’s an excellent speakeasy if you know how to find it. Enter the Marquee lounge across the street, walk up a flight of stairs and down a dead-end hallway and knock on a bookcase that hides the entrance to the Alchemy Cocktail Bar, a joint reminiscent of a 1920s speakeasy. They play live Jazz music on Wednesdays. It turns out hump day (American slang) here is a cause for drinking and a lot of bars have live music on that day. The Taiwanese call Wednesday “Little Weekend”. Alcoholic drinks usually cost the same here as they do back home, so no worries.
Well, we’re not even a few weeks into our stay in Taiwan and will certainly have much more to blog about before moving on, so 直到下次 (until next time)!
Wishing everybody happy holidays
Taipei 101 tower shooting fireworks as the New Year arrives
Happy New Year to all of our friends!
