[Taiwan] Travel Tips

Taiwan is a great travel destination. There are a lot of places of interest, the infrastructure is great, people are friendly, and while English is not an official language, it's easy enough to communicate with the locals. It's quite easy for tourists to get around. The MRT stations are quite easy to figure out and you can also use Uber here. While my family and I used the MRT stations for the most part, we also did use Uber once. We used Uber to get from Liberty Square to Longshan Temple because the walking distance from Liberty Square to the nearest MRT station was about 10 minutes and the Uber ride was not too expensive so I thought it would be smart to save a bit of time and energy since we still had a long day ahead.

Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Liberty Square

That said, if you don't speak the local language, it might be best to avoid taxis. We saw so many taxis around that my mom suggested that we take one from the Bopiliao Historical Block to the Red House in Ximending (instead of an Uber). I showed the taxi driver the location of Red House on my phone and asked him if he could take us there and he said he could but it turned out we didn't communicate all that well and he brought us to the wrong place. We tried hailing another taxi where we were dropped off but the driver of that next taxi also couldn't understand where we wanted to go. I wasn't sure where we were so I didn't want to get an Uber. We ended up walking until we found an MRT station. That long walk was not too bad though because the weather was cool and we did get to see some parts of the city that we would otherwise not have seen.

Random photo from our walk along the streets of Taipei

I was also initially planning to take an Uber from the airport to our hotel but before booking one, I compared the Uber trip price to that of one of the the car rental companies at the airport. Interestingly enough, car rental was marginally cheaper so I booked that one instead. The man who drove us gave us his calling card in case we wanted a ride to the airport on our departure date and I availed of that offer as well.

A bright and lively sculpture at the Taiwan airport

I mentioned in my previous post that we stayed at the Caesar Park Hotel Taipei because it was right in front of the Taipei Main Station. If you are like buying souvenirs, you won't really find any at the Taipei Main Station. Most of the souvenirs we got were from the places we visited such as Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the souvenir shop right next to our hotel.

Souvenirs from the shop at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall

When you go to Jiufen, make sure you have cash (new Taiwan dollar). Many shops in Jiufen, including Lao Zhen Xiang Bakery with its delicious pineapple cakes, don't accept credit cards. Also, when you go to Jiufen, be ready for the large crowds and tight walking spaces. Be ready as well to go up and down Shuqi Road, which is where A-Mei Teahouse is.

Scenic view from Jiufen

Speaking of pineapple cakes, a few of my friends told me that I need to visit Chia Te because according to then, this bakery makes the best pineapple cakes. You can actually buy Chia Te products in 7-Eleven but the price there is about 50% more than if you buy in their main store along Nanjing E Road so my family and I went to the main store. However, if you go in the very late afternoon - I believe we got there at around 5pm - you need to be ready for extremely long lines. I ended up being in line for about 45 minutes and it took me only about 5-10 minutes to get the stuff I wanted to buy and pay for it. That's a total  of 50 minutes or more at Chia Te. Crazy!

Very long queue outside the Chia Te store

I assume that if you go earlier in the morning, or on an off-hour, the queue won't be too long. However, because I was told that the lines here move quickly, I thought that it would still be okay to wait. That turned out to be "fake news" haha. My friend told me that Chia Te is the gold standard because you will see people buying boxes full of their products but I think that the reason why they buy lots of stuff is because you wait in the queue for so long that you feel that buying more products will make the long wait worth it. And it means you don't have to go back again soon.

A couple bought a box of Chia Te products!

While I didn't get a box full of goodies, I certainly got a whole lot myself. Thankfully, I really do like their pineapple cake.

Chia Te Bakery

I decided to go to Chia Te because I realized that the nearest MRT station to it (Nanjing Sanmin Station) is only on stop away from Raohe Night Market (Songshan Station). So after our shopping spree at Chia Te, we headed over to Raohe Night Market. There are no common seating areas here which means you really do need to be standing on the street while you eat. There are a few shops that do provide minimal seating but you need to be eating at that shop in order to sit down. I didn't catch the name of one of these places where we got to enjoy some xiao long bao and beef noodles. The disposable bowl that my noodles were served in was really cute too!

Cute disposable bowl of beef noodles at Raohe Night Market

A friend of mine highly recommended the popular meat buns at the Raohe Night Market because he loved them. The place that serves these is called Fuzhou Black Pepper Buns and it is a Michelin Bib Gourmand awardee. It was quite easy to spot it because it is near the entrance and they have a sign that says Michelin Bib Gourmand. Strangely enough, when I got there, there was no line so I got my family one meat bun each. (There was a long line later that evening.) We didn't eat the meat buns immediately. I figured since they were wrapped in paper, we could take them back with us to our hotel and enjoy them later in the evening. That would allow us to try other items at the Night Market. Unfortunately, I feel like these buns are better eaten after being freshly made (or warm, at the very least) because when I ate mine, it wasn't as good as I was expecting. Moral of the story: eat the black pepper buns while they are hot!

Fuzhou Black Pepper Buns at Raohe Night Market

A unique discovery at the Raohe Night Market: potato balls. My nephew saw them and thought he wanted to try them and they were surprisingly better than expected. I've never had potato balls before but they are like the Filipino carioca, but not as sweet and without the burnt sugar crust.

Potato balls at the Raohe Night Market

I used Klook to book the two tours we took as well as pocket WiFi. There are a couple of important things to know about booking tours via Klook. First, you need to pay attention to the inclusions. For instance, our Jiufen, Shifen, and Yehliu Geopark tour included a visit to Shifen but not the tickets to the Sky Lantern experience (we booked that separately, also on Klook). The tour also included a visit to Yehliu Geopark but not the entrance (we also booked that separately). That said, you can get those passes while you are on the tour (it's not like you miss out on the chance to enjoy these experiences if you fail to book in advance). The tour guides will also help you out.

Yehliu Geopark

Second, at least for the tours we took in Taiwan, you need to check the email a day before the tour to see the final details. We discovered on our first tour that because there were so many people who booked the same tour, they actually had multiple buses and multiple tour guides. One of the guides told me to check my email to see which tour guide we were assigned to. The guides we had were great. They kept repeating details to make sure everyone on the bus understood instructions such as where we would regroup after going on our own ways and at what time.

Miyahara Ice Cream Store

I will say though that my pocket WiFi rental through Klook was quite risky. This is because the place I rented it from, which has a stall at the airport, required me to write down my credit card details including the CVV code. I raised a concern about this but they said that this was necessary so that they could charge any damage to the rented equipment back to me. I decided to risk it mainly because the credit card I had was expiring soon and I already had my replacement card which I could activate as soon as I got home. Thankfully, I didn't incur any fraudulent charges but I don't think I will recommend renting pocket WiFi here. (My main reason for doing renting is because I was with my family and I thought it would be easier and cheaper to just have pocket WiFi that everyone can connect to rather than to sort out the individual data roaming promos for each member of my family.)

Gaomei Wetlands

If you get to visit the National Palace Museum, try to check the website to see if the two main attractions - the Jadeite  Cabbage and the Meat-shaped Stone - are available for viewing. I would still recommend going even if one or both of them aren't there, but at least you would know up front and won't be disappointed if you don't see them. I told my family in advance that the Jadeite Cabbage wasn't there during our visit so it wasn't too disappointing that we didn't see it. We did get to see a lot of other great stuff. One additional artifact worth seeing is the boat carved from an olive stone. I think I may have seen it but didn't pay that much attention because I have no picture of it. It's amazing to think how much sculptural detail was achieved and how much expertise was required to create that tiny masterpiece, with its moveable windows.

These jade artifacts were on display while the main Jadeite Cabbage was unavailable

The cafe at the entrance of the National Palace Museum is pretty good. My family and I had a late lunch here after spending a few hours going around the museum and we enjoyed our food. It was almost full when we were there but thankfully, we still managed to get a table.

XianJuFu Cafe at the National Palace Museum

I also took a photo of the bus schedules to the National Palace Museum.

National Palace Museum bus schedules

Finally, if you want a bit more convenience, get an Easy Card. You can purchase these at any 7-Eleven (and maybe other places) and top it up at 7-Eleven as well. The empty card cost 150 NTD or about P300 so you need to load money into your card when you buy it but in the end, it did save us quite a bit of time as we no longer had to queue all the time for train tickets. We also used it for the bus to and from the National Palace Museum. When our cards still had some balance on our last day, I used that to purchase stuff from 7-Eleven.

My Easy Card in Taiwan

Next post: Final Thoughts