Taipei in 3 Days — A Night-Market Spine, Plus a Hot-Spring Morning

Taipei's most atmospheric working temple, founded 1738, rebuilt after WWII bombing — and still a genuine neighbourhood temple rather than a monument, which is why morning is the time to come: you will be standing among people actually praying. Free, open roughly 06:00–22:00 daily. Watch the jiaobei moon blocks being thrown for yes/no answers. Photography is fine in the courtyards; be unobtrusive at the altars. Buy an EasyCard before you do anything else — any MRT station or convenience store, NT$100 for the card plus whatever you load. It is about 20% cheaper than single-journey tokens, works on the MRT, buses, YouBike and in every 7-Eleven and FamilyMart, and this itinerary leans on it hard. Two things to know: the NT$100 is a non-refundable card fee, not a returnable deposit, and remaining stored value is refunded at station service windows minus a NT$20 fee. The old NT$1,280 monthly all-you-can-ride pass was discontinued in 2023 and is not worth chasing. Single MRT fares run NT$20–65, so three days of this plan costs roughly NT$300 in transport. Night-market stalls are cash only, so carry notes as well.

A restored Qing-and-Japanese-era street five minutes' walk from the temple — arcaded brick shophouses, and the clearest picture you will get of what Taipei looked like before the towers. Free. Closed Mondays (the alley itself is open 09:00–21:00, but the buildings shut at 18:00 and the exhibition rooms at 17:00, and none of it runs on a Monday). This is one of the two closures that decide where a Monday goes in your three days.

Forty-plus years, one dish, no menu, no chairs — you take a bowl of mian xian (thin flour-rice noodles in a thick bonito broth with braised pork intestine) and eat it standing on the pavement with everyone else. NT$60 small, NT$75 large. Ask for it without intestine if that is not your thing; they are used to the question. There is a permanent queue and it moves fast.

Taipei's pedestrianised teen-fashion quarter, and the easiest place to feel the city's volume without paying for anything. Free. The Red House (1908 octagonal market building) at the north end is the one thing here with actual history and is worth the ten minutes. Skip the tattoo streets unless that is why you came.

Free, and two MRT stops from Ximen. The honour guard changed in 2024: the ceremony was moved out of the upper hall (where it flanked the seated Chiang statue) down to Democracy Boulevard in front of the steps, as a first step in Taiwan's transitional-justice reckoning with the site. It now runs hourly on the hour, 09:00–17:00, about 15 minutes each — so aim to arrive a few minutes before 15:00 or 16:00. Any guide describing a ceremony beside the statue upstairs is out of date. The exhibition in the basement about the site's own contested politics is more interesting than the statue.

The old Dadaocheng trading street — dried seafood, medicinal herbs, tea and fabric merchants in 19th-century shophouses, now mixed with design shops and coffee. Free to walk; budget a couple of hundred NT if you buy tea or dried fruit, which is the thing to do here. Most shops shut around 18:00–19:00, so this slot is deliberately late-afternoon. It is a ten-minute walk from here to dinner.

The right night market to start with: compact, one street, overwhelmingly food rather than phone cases, and the most local-feeling of the three in this itinerary. Roughly 18:00–24:00 daily. Look for oyster omelette, taro balls, sesame-oil chicken soup and the bad wan (Taiwanese meatball). NT$300–500 feeds you well. Cash — night-market stalls do not take EasyCard.

A 1937 tobacco factory turned design campus — galleries, independent shops, a lake and the Taiwan Design Museum, with the Eslite Spectrum bookstore-department-store attached. Grounds free and open daily; individual exhibitions charge separately (typically NT$150–350) and most galleries open at 10:00 or 11:00. A gentle opener that puts you at the north end of Xinyi.

A preserved 1948 military dependents' village — single-storey tile-roofed houses sitting directly under Taipei 101, which is the whole point and the best free photograph in Xinyi. Free, closed Mondays for the indoor exhibition rooms though the lanes stay walkable. Small weekend market. Five minutes' walk from here to lunch.

Xiaolongbao at the branch in the basement of Taipei 101, which is where you want to eat them today because the observatory entrance is upstairs. Note the original Xinyi Road store is now takeaway only — dine-in moved across the road to the Xinsheng branch in 2020, so any guide sending you to the old shopfront for a sit-down meal is wrong. Take a queue ticket and shop the mall while you wait; an hour at peak is normal. NT$400–600 a head for pork xiaolongbao, shrimp-and-pork wontons and greens.

NT$600 for floors 88, 89 and 91; NT$980 for the Skyline 460 ticket that adds the open-air 101st-floor deck, which is the version worth paying up for if the weather is clear and you are not troubled by height. Book online to skip the ticket queue. Do not miss the 660-tonne tuned mass damper on 88 — the gold sphere that keeps the tower still in typhoons, and the most interesting object in the building. Afternoon here rather than sunset is deliberate: you get the skyline from outside it at sunset instead.

Free, open 24 hours, one MRT stop to Xiangshan then a signposted 20–30 minute climb — and it is a genuine stair climb, steep and sweaty, not a stroll. The payoff is the classic frame of Taipei 101 rising out of the city with forest in the foreground. Time it to be at the first viewpoint about 30 minutes before sunset, which swings from roughly 17:15 in December to 18:45 in June, so check the date; then stay for the tower's hourly light show after dark. Bring water and a phone torch for the way down. Busy at weekends.

A 1753 Mazu temple, six storeys of gilt and woodcarving, floodlit at night and standing directly at the entrance arch to Raohe night market. Free. Thirty minutes here is the right amount and it makes the transition from the mountain to the market feel like something other than a commute.

600 metres, one straight lane, stalls on both sides and down the middle — the best-organised of Taipei's big markets. Roughly 17:00–23:00 daily. The thing to eat is the black-pepper pork bun at Fuzhou Shizu Hu Jiao Bing, a Michelin Bib Gourmand stall just inside the temple-end arch, NT$65 each, baked stuck to the wall of a clay oven — join the queue, it moves. Then medicinal spare-rib soup, stinky tofu if you are brave, and Taiwanese sausage. NT$400–500 is a full evening. Cash only.