10 Best Things to Do in Taipei

Shilin is the biggest night market in Taipei and the one most first-time visitors head straight for. The covered food court sits underground beneath Cixian Temple, while the street stalls sprawl across Dadong Road and the lanes off Jihe Road above it. Order the oyster omelette (o-a-tsian) at around TWD 80 (about EUR 2.30), a fried chicken cutlet the size of your face at TWD 90, and tianbula, the Taiwanese take on tempura served in sweet chilli sauce, at TWD 60.

Come on a weeknight. Friday and Saturday crowds turn the narrow lanes into a shuffle, and the clothing stalls at the northern end are not why you made the trip. Most food stalls open around 16:00 and run past midnight, while the underground court winds down closer to 23:00. Carry small notes, since plenty of stalls still take cash only.

The National Palace Museum holds the largest collection of Chinese imperial artefacts in the world - close to 700,000 pieces, moved out of Beijing's Forbidden City between 1948 and 1949 during the Chinese Civil War. Only a fraction is on display at any moment, so the galleries rotate every few months and the official museum site lists what is currently out. Admission is TWD 350 (about EUR 10).

Two objects pull the crowds: the Jadeite Cabbage and the Meat-Shaped Stone, both small enough that you queue behind tour groups for thirty seconds of viewing. The ritual bronzes and the calligraphy galleries are quieter and, for most visitors, the better hour. Allow three hours as a minimum. Large bags go into free lockers at the entrance, and photography is banned in several rooms.

The white octagonal hall at the head of Liberty Square opened in 1980 and is still the largest single monument in Taipei. Eighty-nine steps climb to the main chamber, one for each year of Chiang Kai-shek's life, and a bronze statue sits beneath an octagonal blue-tiled roof. Entry is free. The same plaza holds the National Theater and the National Concert Hall, two red-columned buildings facing each other across the paving.

The changing of the honour guard runs hourly on the hour between 09:00 and 17:00 and takes about ten minutes of precise rifle drill. The site's meaning is openly contested in Taiwan, and the ground-floor exhibition now covers the martial law period rather than only the general's career. By late afternoon Liberty Square belongs to skateboarders, kite flyers and dance groups practising in the shade of the arch.

Longshan Temple was founded in 1738 by settlers from Fujian and has been rebuilt after fire, earthquake and an Allied bombing raid in 1945. This is a working temple rather than a monument: incense smoke, chanting at 06:00 and again around 17:00, and worshippers dropping crescent-shaped jiaobei blocks on the flagstones to ask the gods yes-or-no questions. Entry is free and the gates open at 06:00 daily.

The rear hall mixes Buddhist, Taoist and folk deities, which is why students pray to Wenchang for exam results in one corner while single visitors leave offerings for Yue Lao, the matchmaker god, in another. Photography is fine in the courtyards, but stay quiet during services. Bopiliao Historic Block, a restored Qing-era shophouse street, sits five minutes east on Kangding Road and costs nothing to walk.

The climb up Elephant Mountain is 20 minutes of steep stone steps and it produces the postcard view of Taipei 101 rising out of the city grid. Roughly 600 steps separate the trailhead from the first viewing platform at 183 metres. A little further on, the Six Giant Rocks give you flat boulders to sit on with the tower directly ahead, which is why photographers claim them early.

The path is paved and lit, so coming down after dark is straightforward, but it is genuinely sweaty work from May to September. Bring water: there is a vending machine at the base and nothing above it. Carrying on past the platform links into the Four Beasts Mountain trails towards Nangang, which adds two hours if you want a proper hike instead of a viewpoint.

Beitou sits on a geothermal field at the northern end of the Taipei MRT Red Line, and the Japanese built the first bathhouses here in the 1890s. The Millennium Hot Spring public baths charge TWD 60 (about EUR 1.75) for a timed session in terraced outdoor pools running from 38 to 45 degrees. Swimsuits and caps are required in the public pools, unlike the private single-sex baths in the older guesthouses further up the hill.

Thermal Valley, five minutes uphill, is a milky green lake steaming at close to 90 degrees. You cannot swim in it, but the walk explains the sulphur smell hanging over the whole district. The Beitou Hot Spring Museum, housed in a 1913 Japanese bathhouse with a tatami lounge upstairs, is free and worth twenty minutes. Bring a towel from your accommodation rather than renting one.

Raohe Street runs 600 metres in a straight covered line between two ornamental arches, which makes it far easier to work through than Shilin. The Fuzhou pepper buns at the Songshan Ciyou Temple end are the reason people come: pork and spring onion sealed in dough, slapped onto the wall of a clay tandoor, TWD 60 (about EUR 1.75) each. Arrive before 19:00 or budget twenty minutes in the queue.

Work down the lane from there. Medicinal spare-rib soup simmered with herbs, grilled milkfish belly, sticky taro balls and stinky tofu all have their own long-running stalls, and prices sit between TWD 50 and TWD 120. Songshan Ciyou Temple at the entrance dates to 1753 and is dedicated to Mazu, the sea goddess; it stays open while the market trades, from 17:00 until roughly midnight.

Ximending is Taipei's pedestrian shopping district and the closest the city gets to Tokyo's Shibuya. The car-free grid around Hanzhong Street and Emei Street fills from mid-afternoon with students, street performers, tattoo studios and cinema queues. The Red House, an octagonal brick market building from 1908, anchors the western edge and now holds design shops, a small theatre and a cluster of bars in its rear courtyard.

Come for the street food and the noise rather than the shopping, which is mostly chains. Ay-Chung Flour-Rice Noodle on Emei Street has served the same thick, vinegary intestine noodle soup since 1975 for around TWD 65 (about EUR 1.90), eaten standing on the pavement with a plastic spoon. Weekend evenings after 18:00 are chaotic in a way that is either the point or the problem.

Jiufen is a former gold-mining town stacked up a hillside above the Pacific, and it is the one entry here that needs a full day. Jishan Street is a narrow covered lane of tea houses, taro ball shops and souvenir stalls, while the Amei Tea House and its red lanterns on the Shuqi Street steps supply the image everyone has already seen. Hayao Miyazaki has denied that the town inspired Spirited Away, which has stopped nobody from saying so.

Stay for dusk, when the lanterns come on and sea fog rolls up the valley. Taro balls in hot ginger soup run about TWD 60 (roughly EUR 1.75), and a tea house pot with refills and a view over Keelung Bay costs around TWD 300 per person. Weekends make the main lane close to impassable. The Gold Museum at Jinguashi, ten minutes further by bus, is far quieter and covers the mining history properly.