Travel Diary: Taipei

Here’s a list of Do’s and Don’ts for visiting Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.

Do get a travel buddy. Meet mine: G. Last year we tackled Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This winter we took on Thailand, Hong Kong and Taipei. Our raison d’être while on the road: meet everyone, eat everything and never sleep.

Do find a guide, speak Chinese or risk complete bamboozlement. I live in Korea yet wield the vocabulary of a five-year-old, which means I’ve grown comfortable with a certain level of confusion and general helplessness. But even a traveler acquainted to daily bewilderment risks total stupefaction in Taipei. Taipei is not English-Friendly. Many street signs stick to Mandarin. You’re lucky to find a menu with pictures, much less English and most folks raise their eyebrows at any English outside of “Hello,” “Thank you” and “How much,” although the younger generations are more English-savvy. Even with the language barrier, Taipei is too thrilling a place to skip. The solution: Find a guide or make a friend who can show you their city. Lucky connections got us hooked up with nineteen-year-old Romeo, a university student and Taipei local. As a guide, Romeo helped us buy subway cards (it saves you money) and navigate Taipei like natives. As a friend, Romeo showed us the country’s biggest gem is the kind-hearted, buoyant Taiwanese people. The runner-up? Food.

Don’t smell the Tofu. Unless you’re the sort of person who regularly lifts old sneakers to their face for the fun of taking a hearty sniff, close your nose at the first sign of Taiwan’s trademark street-food nosh, “stinky tofu.” The traditional method for producing this famous snack is to ferment milk, vegetable and meat brine for several months. This brine, when fried with tofu, concocts an offensive smell similar to a fart or ogres’ breath.

Do eat everything that comes on a stick and/or from the street. Taiwan is not a country for the small-stomached. I daresay Taiwanese love to hunker, snack, and taste more than Koreans — a true feat. Eating is as much an activity in Taipei as riding to the top of the world’s third tallest building, Taipei 101. Romeo crafted every adventure around what we could nibble. After a few days of impressive stomach-stretching, G and I ate it all: soy-sauce marinated quail eggs, seasoned sweet potatoes, peanut ice-cream, pig-blood rice paddies, oyster omelets, tempura, pork balls, braised pork, Taiwanese-style hamburger, pineapple cake…the list goes on (and includes stinky tofu). An English teacher living in Taipei told me the city has over 40 streets dedicated to street cuisine. This country snacks on an epic scale. Follow the locals: it’s as ubiquitous and stylish to hold a paper-wrapped, fried treat in your hand as it is to sling a designer bag around your shoulder. 

Don’t drink Bubble Tea in the subway. Street-food should fill your stomach and Bubble Tea should quench your thirst. I didn’t even like Bubble Tea before I walked Ximending District’s trendy neon streets. The Ximen experience is a satisfying cross between Seoul’s throbbing Myeongdong and off-kilter Hongdae. Add a more impressive medley of street food, languages and clothing-styles and Ximen has that unique, Taiwanese personality. The goods are flashy; the people flashier, and everyone drinks bubble tea. (Don’t believe me? Youtube: Bobalife by the Fung Brothers). But don’t carry your swanky prize too far. Taipei has strict subway rules, which read in bold English that no passenger may “spit phlegm, smoke, drink, eat, chew gum or betel nuts within Taipei Metro.”

Don’t plan on saving your money at the night markets. Roahe, Shihlin, Linjiang, Tanshui: every market has its own selection of eats and threads. Addicted to the rows of free samples and sea-side landscape, G and I went to Tanshui twice. You’ll find recommendations for Shihlin in all the guidebooks but we scored the best loot at Roahe. It doesn’t matter. The night market experience is about smells, sights and people-watching more than shopping. Do save some packing room for all your bounty. We ended up toting extra bags on the flight home.

Don’t sleep but do find a good bed. My advice for pocket-pinchers and high rollers alike: The Meeting Place hostel. G and I are not “hostel-types.” We prefer to hunt for economy rooms that come without 15 other people, but the reviews were too glowing to resist and we booked some nights here. It was the best decision of our trip. The Meeting Place is flooded with generous, sage travelers. Many have been living in Taipei for months and love to share their Taiwan experiences, advice and fun with newcomers. A night at the Meeting Place begins wrapped around the hostel’s kitchen-table with a guitar and band of backpacking troubadours. It ends on the streets of Taipei, drinking (weak) Taiwanese beer and dancing at a local bar with new friends. G and I never believed much in sleep; since Taipei, we’re true anarchists.

Do make a wish, Taiwanese style. Take a train into the mountains. You’ll see a sky full with a hundred lanterns. Buy a lantern. Hold a heavy, black paintbrush. Write your wishes. When you’re ready and the lantern is painted full, stuff it with paper money. Light the money on fire. Because it is fighting to rise, you and your travel buddy and your guide must stand on different sides to hold the lantern down. Then, “one-two-three,” you release the lantern and it lifts fast as heat into the air. All around you locals and travelers will cheer. They’ll jump and hoot and clap their hands. Arch your neck up and count slowly as the lantern ascends. Until — breath held and fingers clung tight around friends’ fingers — it disappears with the others, another striking sight to remember.