Top Ten: What to Do in Taipei (Part 1)

Taipei doesn’t get enough credit as a destination. With the friendliness of Seoul, quirks like Tokyo, opportunities for pricing as found in South Asia, pervasiveness of English like HK, and the (sometimes fraught) connections to China, it’s an accessible place to get transported into an experience like nowhere else.

To both share where I went (send me a note for my day-by-day agenda!) as well as digestible tips, I’ve put together a Taipei Top 10 list. Here’s the first half – the top five will follow.

#10 Taipei City Mall

Kicking off my Taipei Top Ten is the Taipei City Mall, a crash course on one end of the spectrum of what a mall in Taipei can be.

Under the intersection of the Daan and Zhongzheng districts, the underground Taipei City Mall stretches 825 meters, with access to the metro station and regular, high speed, and airport train stations. It’s packed with arcades, video game shops, stores filled with merchandise of global animated figures (from the local Spirited Away to Finnish Moomin to Disney favorites), food vendors, and 28 meticulously labeled exits to the world above and the adjacent maze of transportation.

Pair your visit with Dihua street, the City God Temple, and Ningxia night market. Key nearby meals for the full Taiwanese city experience include Hot Star XXL (Taiwanese flat fried chicken as big as your face) in the train station, Tiger Sugar Zhongshan (boba), and of course all the goodies at the night market.

#9 Shifen Sky Lantern

Number 9 on our countdown is a day trip from Taipei.

If your idea of sending off a lantern representing your hopes and dreams into the sky from Taiwan’s famous Shifen Old Street is set in an atmosphere that invites a peaceful, introspective moment of reflection, you’re going to need another venue.

Shifen is home to Taiwan’s annual Lantern Festival in February, but also runs a booming lantern economy the rest of the year. Far from thoughtful, the scene is organized, amusing chaos – person-sized lanterns, which you can purchase and paint your wishes on for a nominal cost, are churned out and hurled into the sky every minute, even in windy and rainy conditions when they might not survive takeoff, sending your painstakingly decorated lantern burning into the ground, or worse – a neighbor’s balcony.

And this thriving economy is built on a fully operational railroad track – meaning when the signal goes off, everyone scatters to allow the train to chug through the station, only to reassemble immediately.

Come by private tour of Northern Taiwan for moderate to luxury trips (~$60pp for a full day), take a combination of buses and trains to get here on a budget. Option to send a flammable, but apparently environmentally-friendly, lantern into the sky, or just buy an endearing mini version as a souvenir display or night light. If you’re not fluent in Mandarin, do ask what your souvenir lantern says before buying.

#8 Xinyi District

Home to gleaming malls, the W Taipei, and the 101 (which I’ll get into later), this is where you shop at name brands, whether designer or fast fashion, compared to the free-for-all of the night markets. Take some time for pampering at the W’s spa, or just pop in for a drink at the top floor, and swanky, Yen Bar for city and 101 views.

#7 Dihua Street + Ningxia Night Market

Dihua Street is your spot for dried goods (teas and fruit, and many, many other things) in settings ranging from open-air, crammed community go-tos to sleekly-presented loose leaf shops behind push-to-open sliding glass doors. There’s also high-end shops for buying formal tea sets, and an occasional shop with fun Taiwan-themed tchotchkes. Start at the south end in the afternoon and work your way up past the City God Temple, home to the most deities packed into a single temple, until the shops end and you can head east toward Ningxia night market.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Ningxia had my favorite menu of food of all the major night markets. Make sure to get flame-grilled beef, fried taro balls, braised pork rice, popcorn fried chicken, and most importantly (not all markets have this, and sometimes it’s not an original recipe) scallion pancake with egg.

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Along the way, stop in at Mikkeller for the locally curated beer selections of this Danish international brew house.

#6 Chiang Kai Chek + Zhongzheng

Put your name down for lunch at the original Ding Tai Fung (a cult favorite and elegant restaurant for soup dumplings and other Taiwanese specialties, and often referred to as DTF) in Zhongzheng and walk down the street to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial and Liberty Square. The memorial was constructed in the honor of the former President of the Republic of China – and a vicious actor in Taiwanese history. Through renaming discussions, the massive plaza accompanying it (and site of key pro-democracy movements) became Liberty Square. Historical considerations aside, the imposing white memorial with its blue ceiling and the scale of the plaza and flanking buildings and gates is worth a stop.

Head back and your ~80 minute lunch wait at DTF should almost be up. Enjoy the globally-celebrated soup dumplings, and anything else that speaks to you in the menu. Complement your meal with a Táiwān Beer. Cheers!

That’s my top 10 to 6 from my awesome trip. #5 through #1 to follow soon!

Do you have any questions about visiting Taipei? Had some general thoughts on this article? Leave a comment below or DM me @anchoredandadrift on Instagram. Thanks for reading!