Taipei Travel Guide: Temples, Night Markets and the 101 View

See & Do

Taipei 101 and Xinyi

Taipei 101 is 508 metres and 101 floors, the tallest building in the world from its opening on 31 December 2004 until the Burj Khalifa passed it in 2009, and still the tallest in Taiwan. The mall underneath is ordinary. The reason to come is the view and the streets around it, where the financial district meets the Xiangshan trailheads; climb Xiangshan in the late afternoon and you get the skyline photograph for free.

The older city

Longshan Temple in Wanhua, the Baoan Temple in Dalongdong, a national historic site, the Xia Hai City God Temple in Dadaocheng, and a Confucius Temple whose history runs back to 1879. Between them sit the National Palace Museum in Shilin, founded in Beijing in 1925 and re-established here in 1965, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, and Ximending, which is shopping rather than history. Shilin is the night market to start with.

Out of the basin

Beitou, the northernmost district, sits on a geothermal valley and its hot springs are a metro ride away. The Maokong gondola, opened in 2007, runs four kilometres from Taipei Zoo into the tea hills. Yangmingshan National Park is 10 km north, for cherry blossoms and sulfur vents, and Jiufen, a former gold-mining town of about 1,600 people above Ruifang, is the day trip people remember.

Eat

What to order

Beef noodle soup is the city's dish, braised or clear, and there is an annual festival about it. Around it: xiaolongbao, oyster omelettes, gua bao, stinky tofu, and the scallion pancakes sold from carts before 10 a.m. Night markets are the cheapest way to eat well, which is why dinner can cost $5.

What it costs

Numbeo (updated 22 October 2026) prices an inexpensive restaurant meal at NT$150, about $4.60, a three-course dinner for two at NT$1,500 ($46), a cappuccino at NT$108.68 ($3.33) and a half-litre of draught beer at NT$95 ($2.92). nomads.com reads dinner at $5, coffee at $3 and beer at $3, which is the street-food version of the same city. Tipping is not expected and tap water is not drinkable.

Where to Stay

Where to base

Zhongsheng South is nomads.com's pick, with Nangang marked as the district to watch, and both are cheaper than Xinyi. Wanhua and Zhongzheng put you in the old city, Da'an is the leafy one. The reviews' most common complaint is not price but supply: furnished flats are harder to find here than in Bangkok or Hanoi.

What a room costs

nomads.com reads a one-bedroom studio in the centre at $989 a month on 23 October 2026; Numbeo's basket for 22 October prices the same flat at NT$31,411, or $964 at today's rate. Outside the centre Numbeo falls to NT$15,000 ($460). One oddity is worth knowing before booking: the median hotel room is $60 a night ($1,271 a month) against a median Airbnb of $94 ($2,865), so hotels are the cheaper short stay. The full arithmetic is on the Taipei living costs page.

Logistics

Taoyuan International Airport is the gateway, linked to Taipei Main Station by the Airport MRT, a 51.33 km line of 22 stations that opened on 2 March 2017. Songshan, inside the city on the Neihu line, handles Haneda, Gimpo and about 15 mainland Chinese destinations. A single metro ride is NT$20 and a monthly pass NT$1,200, and the EasyCard covers metro, bus, rail and small purchases in shops.

Walkability grades Great on nomads.com, traffic safety Okay, and English Bad, though the reviews say shopkeepers managed. The roads, mostly scooters, are the risk rather than the pavements.