let these guides be just a starting point…follow your senses and try a little bit of everything…be kind, remembering you are but a visitor here
Taipei
I went to Taipei on an inkling. I just had a feeling, as a lover of oolong tea, and as someone who spent 6 hours there in 2018 on a layover in and saw all the airport’s delightful exhibitions on the street food and landscapes of the country, that I should spend a week in the country. I left Taipei wishing I had had another week or two entirely to explore more: to eat more, to escape the city for the country’s stunning mountains or coastline, and to drink more tea. But my days there I will cherish: sunrise wakeups (a result of jetlag), long walks throughout the city eating here and there, a day trip to visit a tea producer, and cup after cup of oolong.
Like most places that have had the unfortunate fate of being passed about between various outside rulers, Taiwan’s food scene represents a fascinating melting pot. In this case, it’s Chinese and Japanese cuisine mixed with ingredients and influences from indigenous Taiwanese groups and the immigrant Hakka people of China. It’s much more than just beef noodles and soup dumplings–though you should certainly seek out those too. Old wooden teahouses dot this modernizing city, nestled into small plots of trees or verdant gardens that seem to come out of nowhere, offering an oasis in each neighborhood.
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