We arrived in Taipei around lunchtime, dropped our bags at the hostel, and decided to grab a drink at the café next door while planning how to spend our afternoon. The café was a postcard café— even the menu was on postcards. You selected one to make your order and got to keep it for free. We also picked up a few others and spent time writing them while sipping our drinks.
We then found a lunch spot—a local cafeteria where you mark a cross next to what you want on a laminated menu. We chose some beef and chicken dishes with no real idea of what they were, but as always in Taiwan, they turned out to be super tasty. After lunch, we decided to kick off our sightseeing with Taipei’s, and possibly Taiwan’s, most famous building: the Taipei 101 skyscraper. It was the world’s tallest building in 2004 and, between 2004 and 2015, had the world’s fastest elevator, reaching a speed of 1010 m/s! Not sure if it was going that fast when we used it, but our ears popped and we felt weightless as it decelerated—very cool.
We paid to go up to the observation deck and got a real sense of just how large and sprawling Taipei is. It was fascinating to see. They also have the exposed movement-dampening weight that reduces the tower’s sway in high winds or earthquakes, and we watched videos of it moving during previous quakes—really interesting.
In the evening, we joined a food tour at one of the city’s night markets. Taiwan has loads of night markets, so we figured it would be a great way to learn about all the tasty things we could be eating.
We started with sweet, donut-like balls made from sweet potatoes—very nice. Then came my favourite: a pork belly bao bun, a soft, steamed bun filled with pork belly, cabbage, and crushed peanuts. It was incredibly tender and delicious—so good it’s even earned Michelin recognition!
We also learned that this market, like several others in Taiwan, originally started near brothels. When prostitution was outlawed, people used the loophole of “just buying food” and then “falling in love with the chef.” Eventually, the food became more popular than the other services. That’s also why there are still traditional shops selling snake-based products—rice wine mixed with snake blood, bile, venom, and even semen, to fuel the men up for round two! Our guide joked that Westerners had too weak a stomach to try them, and Grace dared me £10 to prove him wrong. That’s how I ended up drinking a shot of rice wine and snake semen. Thankfully, it just tasted like rice wine! Having single-handedly restored Western pride, we moved on.
Next were soup dumplings—always delicious, no matter how many times we’ve had them. At this point, I was very full, but we were only on stop 5 of 10. Next came oyster omelettes, made with egg, oysters, and a rice paste. They were okay, but not something I’d rush to eat again, especially when already stuffed. Grace didn’t touch hers, but our guide boxed it up with the rest of the extras he’d collected to give to homeless people later. That made us feel better about not finishing everything.
After that was a drink stop where we tried winter melon juice. The fruit is absolutely huge. It tasted fine, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to have it again.
Next came deep-fried fish paste, which sounded a bit grim—it had strips of boiled egg inside—but it was actually quite pleasant. Then we had scallion pancakes, a mix between an omelette and a pancake with spring onions. Grace loves them and had already had one for breakfast that morning, so I skipped this round.
Our final food stop was stinky tofu—fermented tofu with a very strong smell. We’d been smelling it at every market and genuinely thought it was sewage! We even had conversations about why no one sorted out the plumbing near the markets. Turns out it was just the tofu. It’s super popular here, so I figured it must taste better than it smells. I was mistaken. It tasted horrible—less strong than the smell, but still very unpleasant. I managed to swallow it with a poker face and convinced Grace to try it as payback for the snake semen dare. She immediately gagged and spat it into a tissue. Only I and a Korean woman in our group kept it down—she even liked it, but said she was used to strong fermented foods.
Our last stop was actually a 7-Eleven, which are everywhere in Taiwan and most of Asia. Despite being an American chain, they’re even more common than McDonald’s here. This was one of the most interesting stops for me. Our guide introduced us to popular Taiwanese snacks. First up were Guai Guai, which roughly translates to “obedient” or “well-behaved.” They’re coconut crisps that taste a bit like a fruit-flavoured version of Rainbow Drops from the 90s. But more importantly, they’re used symbolically—people write names on the packet and leave them unopened as a way to ensure that person or even a computer server behaves. They’re even placed next to machines in Taiwan’s semiconductor factories.
The other two sweets had less lore but were just tasty. One was chocolate-covered jelly bean-like sweets—unusual but nice. The other was a slightly harder, more rigid puff pastry filled with a sweet, custardy filling. Delicious, and dangerously cheap and accessible!
We also learned why Taiwan is so keen on receipts. All receipts here are entered into a lottery. The government announces winning numbers monthly—it’s a clever way to ensure all transactions go through the till so taxes are paid correctly, enforced entirely by people insisting on their receipts. Genius!
The tour was so good we signed up for another one the next morning—a historical walking tour of the city. It was brilliant. Despite being three hours long, we probably only walked for 20 minutes, as we stopped frequently while our guide, a history student, explained Taiwan’s fascinating past. He talked us through the island’s various occupations—Dutch, Japanese, and then the ROC after retreating from mainland China following the communist uprising by the People’s Republic of China. He explained how Taiwan still officially uses the name Republic of China (ROC) because of long-standing treaties and the sensitive politics involved in changing it.
We also learned about the decades of martial law under ROC rule and how badly the local population was treated, including the horrific 228 Massacre. On February 28th, 1947, army officers beat a widow selling cigarettes to feed her family. The sale of tobacco was restricted to government vendors. When a crowd gathered to defend her, soldiers fired into it, killing a man. Protests escalated, and the military continued for weeks following with more shooting into crowds, eventually leading to an estimated 18,000 to 28,000 deaths. It was a sobering but very informative tour. The guide’s passion really showed—we were only meant to go for two hours, but thanks to everyone’s questions, we went on for three.
The tour ended with a couple of food stops. We visited a traditional ice cream shop that’s been around for years, Ice King. I tried their pork flavour—odd but not entirely unpleasant, with bits of jerky in it! Grace went for jasmine tea flavour, which was also good.
Our guide invited us to join him afterwards for lunch, where we got another pork belly bao bun—this one had a fried bun instead of steamed, and it was amazing. Definitely Michelin-worthy too.
We met a really nice Aussie guy on the tour named Jacob. After chatting about our plans, he asked to join us for our evening hike up Elephant Mountain to catch the sunset, so we exchanged numbers and said goodbye for now—he went off to nap some jet lag away.
We then headed over to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a huge plaza surrounded by impressive buildings honouring the ROC leader who retreated to Taiwan. Feelings about him are very mixed depending on age, social class, and how people were treated under his regime. The memorial strikes an interesting balance—there are two museums inside: one that praises him, and another that criticises him. You can choose which one to walk through—they’re on opposite sides of the same building. We had a quick look at both, but since we don’t speak Mandarin, we didn’t take much in.
In the evening, we met up with Jacob again and hiked up Elephant Mountain. It was a lot of steps, but the view was worth it. It was too smoggy to catch much of a sunset, but the skyline lit up at night was really cool.
Afterward, we found a small restaurant with a huge menu. The owner spoke some English and offered to read the whole menu to us, but we asked her to just pick us a few of her favourites. She brought us deep-fried crispy noodles, two small prawn omelettes, spring rolls, two types of steamed dumplings, chicken in broth, and spicy chicken feet—which I had actually wanted to try at some point. Everything was tasty—even the chicken feet!
Afterwards, Jacob asked if we wanted to join him at an open mic night at a local comedy club. It turned out to be great fun, although one American guy seemed more mentally unstable than funny—he ranted about the US government racing sperm. Wild, but it made for great material for the comics that followed!
The next day was another jam-packed one. We took the train to Jiufen, a mountain town to the north east, joined again by Jacob. Jiufen is known for its tiny, winding market streets and traditional teahouses. When we arrived, it was absolutely rammed—turns out it was Labour Day and a public holiday! We shuffled through the market in a sardine-like conveyor belt of people, sampling teas and snacks. We grabbed a sausage on a stick along the way, and when we’d had enough of the crowds, we ducked into a traditional teahouse. We were shown how to properly steep the tea and spent a lovely hour chatting and sipping.
Afterwards, we had lunch at a restaurant with a stunning mountain view. As expected in a touristy spot, the food was overpriced and mediocre, but the view made up for it.
Next, we hopped one stop down the line to Houtong Cat Village. It was fun to see cats wandering everywhere, although most looked a bit fed up with being petted by strangers. We only stroked the ones that seemed keen and left the rest too it, much to Grace’s disappointment.
Our last stop of the day was Shifen, another old town built around railway tracks. The popular activity here is releasing paper lanterns on the tracks, which then float into the sky. We watched people do this for a bit before heading to the nearby waterfall. The walk was beautiful and peaceful, except for the old lanterns scattered everywhere. We also saw beautiful long-tailed blue birds—very picturesque.
We took a taxi back to Taipei and headed to another night market, again super busy. We tried deep-fried boneless ribs, more chicken feet (less tasty cold), deep-fried mushrooms (very tasty), pork blood sausage (mostly tasted of peanuts), and of course, our favourite, more soup dumplings. We spotted another Michelin-recognised stall and had to try it, but somehow ended up with a massive block of flavourless jelly. Still not sure what the deal was—maybe we ordered wrong? At least we tried!
Bellies full, we headed home for the night, said goodbye to Jacob, and got ready for our next stop—Alishan National Forest.
Can’t wait to tell you all about it soon! Love, Alice x
