Taipei, Taiwan – Travelling Cooks

It took us much longer than expected to get through passport control, meaning we didn’t get into Taipei city centre until very late. We anticipated that Taiwan would be much more organised compared to India, although in hindsight it was approaching Chinese New Year which may have contributed to a bit more chaos than normal! After checking in, we got food at a nearby curry restaurant – yes you’ve read that correctly, we’ve just left India and we are already going for a Taiwanese curry. Keen to stretch our legs, we had a small wander around the block and called it a night.

Day 1 – Beipu

The first task of the day was finding brkkie – McDonalds for James and some street food for me.

The second thing we needed to figure out was how to buy train tickets. We queued up at the counter to speak to someone, where we used Google Translate to find out the most economical way to get around the city with the various stops we wanted to take.

Outside the train station was a little train museum which was completely up my street.

We wanted to visit the hot springs in Beipu, but unfortunately when we went to pay for entry James was denied entry as he didn’t have “Speedos.” The guy who refused us entry told us to keep it to ourselves, but James could borrow some; James politely declined. Instead, we just had a wander around the town, still half asleep from not getting a proper night’s sleep. We stocked up on caffeine at a FamilyMart to help us through the day – a Coke for James and a tea for me. This was my first Taiwanese tea experience, which I soon found out wasn’t up to either the British or Indian standards of tea; the tea was a dehydrated sachet with pre-mixed milk and tons of sugar. It was super sweet, which made it taste a little better. We continued our walk to get to the hot springs we could walk around.

The walk through town to the hot springs

Positioned above the hot springs were meditation seats which stayed warm from the steam.

We then went to Tamsui Old Street, where we struggled to find food which accommodated both of our food preferences. Eventually, we settled on a Vietnamese Bánh Mì. There wasn’t a huge lot to do around here, so we just wandered through Tamsui Old Street and down by the river close by. We enjoyed our lunch outside whilst listening to some very bad busking! As usual, I wanted to find somewhere to enjoy the sunset. I had originally planned Fisherman’s Wharf, but James had a recommendation via cousin Phil to take a small walk up Elephant Mountain to view the sunset there. Once we made the decision to head for Elephant Mountain, we had a small rush getting there in time, but we made it and saw such a beautiful sunset.

We circled around and around, struggling to find dinner for the evening. We ended up going to the food court, thinking we could pick food from different stalls. However, nowhere did a single bit of vegetarian food, and one place even laughed at me when I asked for their vegetarian options; I was told “nowhere around here will serve such food.” Thankfully, one of the restaurants I approached said they could make a vegetarian fried rice, which was where we ended up settling for dinner.

Day 2 – Houtong Cat Village, Jiufen Old Street and the evening in Ximen

Our second full day in Taipei was another day trip. It was really noisy in the hotel again. We are not ones to complain about a bit of noise but we did resort to asking the reception to see if they could help quieten things down a bit; other guests were constantly going in and out of their rooms (apparently doing laundry at 1am), which meant their doors kept opening and slamming, violently waking us up each time. Once we finally managed to pull ourselves out of bed in the morning, we took the train over to Houtong Cat Village. I personally was expecting a swarm of cats for it to be considered a cat village, but instead there were just a small number of cats (unless of course they were all snuggled up somewhere we couldn’t see them). A few of the cats that were around were absolutely huge, which we assumed was a result of the tourists constantly feeding them. It was a cool village, and it was funny seeing cats appearing in the most random of places.

Our next stop for the day was Jiufen Old Street for a well-known food market. It required a quick train and then a swap to a bus. We had to do a quick stop off at a shop to get change, as the buses in Taiwan only accept exact cash. We were surprised that the shops were fine with swapping money for us without us needing to buy anything. The buses were packed to get to Jiufen Old Street. Once we got there, we just followed the hordes of tourists who seemed to know exactly where to go. We were greeted with some quite overpowering smells all just within metres of one another; think different meat markets, all one after the other, mixed in with some nice sweet-type smells. We weren’t too adventurous with our food and drink tastings, but I did make use of all the free tea samples from the market stalls. There weren’t many food items suitable for our limited food palates, but James had an idea to split a milk cheese twist between us which was very delicious. We decided to call it a day and so checked Google Maps for public transport back to the city centre, which was when we unexpectedly noticed a direct coach back, which we opted for instead of a bus and train – it did mean we had to pop into another shop for more change. By taking a direct bus back, it meant we could both finally catch up on some of the lost sleep from the night before.

We had a more positive dinner experience at Rest n Roll, a local pizza restaurant in Ximen. James tasted his first Taiwan beer at the pizzeria. We ended the evening exploring the local district, which was quite lively and interesting.

Day 3 – off to Hualien
Before taking the train to Hualien, we went on a morning run down by the river – it felt amazing to be in 14 °C heat, as opposed to 30-odd the previous week! We grabbed some croissants, tea, and orange juice before making our way over to the train station to get the direct train to Hualien. The train was very swish, it felt like we were in ultra first class, whereas in fact we didn’t even reserve a seat.

Taiwan