Northern Taiwan Region Guide

Northern Taiwan is where most visitors arrive and where most of them stay, and it packs a great deal into a small area.

Taipei is the draw: one of Asia’s most liveable cities, with the world’s best collection of Chinese imperial art at the National Palace Museum, night markets that are a genuine institution rather than a tourist attraction, and a metro that makes all of it easy.

The city is ringed by mountains and hot springs. Yangmingshan rises straight out of the suburbs with volcanic fumaroles and sulphur pools, and Beitou has been a hot-spring town since the Japanese built bathhouses there.

An hour away, the old gold-mining town of Jiufen clings to a hillside above the sea, and the north coast has sandstone eroded into strange forms at Yehliu.

And it is exceptionally easy: safe, cheap, English-signed, and connected by high-speed rail.

Taipei

The National Palace Museum, holding the imperial collection brought from Beijing in 1949 — jade, bronzes, painting and calligraphy, rotated because there is far too much to show at once. Then Taipei 101, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, Longshan Temple, and the Dadaocheng quarter for tea shops and old merchant houses.

Night markets

Shilin is the largest, Raohe the most manageable, Ningxia the best for food specifically. These are where Taipei eats, not a show put on for anyone.

Hot springs

Beitou, reached on the metro, with public baths, the Japanese-era bathhouse museum and Thermal Valley steaming in the middle of town. Wulai to the south adds a waterfall and an Atayal indigenous community.

The mountains and the coast

Yangmingshan for fumaroles, hot springs and calla lilies, reached by city bus. Jiufen and Jinguashi, gold-mining towns above the sea with tea houses on stepped lanes. Yehliu, where the sandstone has eroded into mushroom shapes and the Queen’s Head.

Pingxi

A branch railway through a river valley, with sky lanterns released from the tracks at Shifen and a waterfall nearby.

Yilan

Over the mountains through a long tunnel: hot springs at Jiaoxi, the Lanyang plain and Guishan Island offshore.

Northern Taiwan is where the island’s many layers sit closest together — Chinese, Japanese, indigenous and American — and where its distinct identity is most consciously expressed.

Layers of rule

Taiwan was Dutch, then Qing, then Japanese for fifty years from 1895, then governed by the Republic of China after 1945. The Japanese period is visible everywhere in the north: in the railway, the bathhouses, the civic architecture and even in loanwords. The mainland influx of 1949 brought the imperial art collection, the regional cuisines of China, and a political settlement that took four decades to democratise.

A young democracy

Martial law ended in 1987 and the first direct presidential election was held in 1996. Taiwan is now among the most liberal societies in Asia — it was the first to legalise same-sex marriage, in 2019 — and civic participation is high and visible.

Indigenous presence

The Atayal and Ketagalan peoples are the north’s original inhabitants, and Wulai remains an Atayal community.

Politeness and order

Queueing is meticulous, the metro is silent and nobody eats on it, and lost property tends to be handed in. Taiwanese friendliness toward visitors is genuine and frequently goes well beyond politeness.

Temples

Folk religion is vigorous — Mazu, Guan Gong and the Earth God — and temples are busy, noisy and central to neighbourhood life.

Taiwan is unusually well organised about waste and it expects visitors to keep up. Recycling is separated rigorously, bins are deliberately scarce in public — you are expected to carry rubbish until you find one — and refusing plastic bags and straws is normal rather than notable.

Bring a reusable cup and bottle. Taiwan runs on bubble tea and takeaway coffee, and many shops discount for your own cup. Public water fountains are widespread and the tap water in Taipei is treated to a high standard.

Hot springs draw on a finite geothermal resource. Use public baths rather than private tubs where you can, and shower before entering.

Hiking in Yangmingshan and the Pingxi hills: stay on the trails, which are heavily used and erode quickly. The sky lanterns released at Pingxi are a genuine tradition with a real litter problem, and biodegradable versions are now used by the better operators.

Use the metro and trains. Northern Taiwan has excellent public transport and there is almost no reason to hire a car.

October to December is the best window: warm, mostly dry, clear air after the typhoon season and comfortable for walking. March to May is the other good stretch, with cherry and azalea blossom on Yangmingshan in February and March.

June to September is hot and extremely humid, with Taipei routinely above 33°C and the basin trapping the heat. It is also typhoon season, peaking from July to September, when a storm can close transport and attractions for a day or two at a time.

January and February are cool — around 16°C — and damp, with persistent drizzle in the north that is the region’s least attractive weather. Hot springs are at their best then, which is the compensation.

Lunar New Year, in late January or February, closes many businesses for a week and fills transport; the Pingxi Lantern Festival that ends it is one of the region’s great sights.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Taipei is cheap for a wealthy city. Food in particular is remarkable value — a superb bowl of beef noodles costs a few dollars — while accommodation is the main expense.