The next morning, we stopped at Fong Da Coffee – a coffee institution since the 1950s – for strong brews and a little breakfast, then hopped on MRT to go to Taipei 101. The plan was to go up to the observation deck, until we realized that the line stretched down two flights of stairs and then across the floor of the entire mall. We decided to skip the observation deck and wander through high-end luxury stores instead, trying on clothes and jewelry until we felt hungry again. We went downstairs to the food court and put in our name for Din Tai Fung, the insanely popular Taiwanese restaurant known for its soup dumplings. We sipped coffees at the Starbucks Reserve until our table was ready, then proceeded to have a really tasty lunch. On the way out, we stopped at the designated “photo spot”, where you can watch the kitchen staff make dumplings.

When we stepped outside Taipei 101, we stumbled upon a pop-up for Omar, one of the more popular Taiwanese whiskey distilleries. In exchange for taking a photo and posting it on social media – clearly Lummi’s responsibility – we were gifted a tasty Christmas cocktail.

Not one to stop the whiskey train once it gets going, I dragged Lummi to the Kavalan shop in Da’an. Kavalan is currently my favorite whiskey, so I was already planning on buying two liters in the airport before our flight out, but the shop has smaller sizes and more variety, which is better for gifts.

After some much-needed foot massages, we walked to nearby Linjiang Street to get our first taste of a Taiwanese night market. We bought dumplings while standing in line behind some Santa Clauses, gawked at all the vendors and street food, recoiled at the poop-like smell of stinky tofu, and I even won a stuffed Pikachu from a claw machine.

While walking out of the night market and trying to plan our next move, we happened to walk by Zoca Pizzeria, an Italian restaurant that was strangely buzzing with lots of activity. A quick search on my phone revealed that it was apparently one of the best pizza places in the entire city. Further inspection of the situation reminded me that a lot of places in Asia celebrate Christmas on the 24th – not the 25th like in America – so all the activity we accidentally stumbled upon was actually Christmas dinner! We decided to take advantage of our good fortune, claimed the last open table on the patio, and drank red wine and ate a legitimately excellent pizza for dinner. Pikachu was shocked at the turn of events.

For “actual” Christmas Day, we decided to take the Maokong gondola and head up into the mountains for some nature and tea tasting. It was a gorgeous day and the long gondola ride offered stunning views of the rolling hills and the city below.

Once we reached the top, we treated ourselves to a cat-themed green tea ice cream – as you do – before ambling along the road, admiring the scenery and taking in the cool, fresh air.

Our walking destination was Yao Yue Teahouse, a well-known teahouse that apparently operates 24 hours a day. You know, for those… late-night tea binges? Jokes aside, it was definitely worth the long walk. The tea and snacks were excellent and the view was all the lush greenness you could ask for. We made sure to buy some extra tea before leaving.

After retracing our steps, taking the gondola back down, and jumping on MRT to get back to the city, we had some snacks and drinks at WOOBAR, the rooftop restaurant and lounge at the W Hotel. Though we had been promised views of Taipei 101 by our guidebook, something was clearly lost in translation, as the iconic bamboo-looking skyscraper was nowhere to be seen. That said, the views of the surrounding skyline were still pretty great.

The next morning was a bit rainy, so I hit the Internet, trying to find a breakfast place in our neighborhood that would require the bare minimum of walking. And that’s when I realized there was a cafe half a block away that was also polar bear themed. What.

The restaurant is called Polar Cafe. Every table has a stuffed polar bear, there’s a polar bear on the menu, they sell polar bear gifts, and, most importantly, they float a sculpted, detailed marshmallow polar bear in your coffee drink. Lummi and I ended up going again before we left Taiwan. The food was alright, but honestly, who cares about the food? A polar bear in your coffee, people!

Fueled by coffee, eggs, and polar bear whimsy, we set off to visit Confucius Temple and Bao’an Temple, two popular temples that I had visited on my previous trip and was eager to show to Lummi. The weather had cleared, blue skies were out, and we spent a couple hours slowly wandering the temple grounds.

After a coffee to recharge, we got an Uber to Huashan 1914 Creative Park, a former sake factory that has been turned into a large multi-purpose space for artists, non-profits, and live productions. On the weekend, the crowds are there to browse all the various goods for sale in the wide variety of shops. Everything is unique and there are quite a few weird, wacky, and fun items among the tables and displays of more traditional gifts.

After getting back to our neighborhood, the highlights of the evening included brown sugar milk tea and a foot massage; the former seems to be all the rage in Taipei right now and the latter is a timeless classic.

Friday was our big field trip day, first to Beitou in the morning and afternoon and then Jiufen in the evening. Beitou is mostly known for its hot springs, so that was our big motivation for going. It’s readily accessible via a relatively short MRT ride, but once you’re there, you feel far from the city. As something of an orientation for Lummi, we first walked to Thermal Valley, a small tourist sight where you can get right up next to the steaming, sulfuric water that flows throughout the town.

We called an Uber to take us to Kawayu Spa, which had been recommended by TripAdvisor and a random blog post I had found. It was a little bit of a drive from the center of town, but definitely worth it. We had a very nice soak for about an hour in a private room, then had an excellent lunch at the restaurant. The grounds are really nice – they look especially magical in nighttime photos – and there was a large koi pond too.

We made our way back to the city and set our sights on our evening destination: Jiufen, an old mining town that has become a major tourist destination due to its narrow, winding streets, hillside location, countless shops, and thousands of lanterns. Its popularity increased a lot after people noticed that it looked like the town in Spirited Away, though I don’t know if there’s indisputable proof that there’s actually a connection between the town and the movie. Nevertheless, the town has run with it, and now Jiufen is teeming with tourists all day, every day.

The crowded alleys were super annoying to navigate and there were way too many people, so I think it’s safe to say that the tourism has been oversaturated here. However, our stop at Jiufen Teahouse made the trip worthwhile. It was beautiful and quiet and calm, so we stayed a while, drinking pot after pot of delicious Taiwanese green tea and eating some small snacks, including green tea cheesecake and some interesting-looking eggs.

The walk back out of the maze of alleys and shops was much more serene than the walk in since all the shops had closed and most everyone had left. We snapped a few photos, then called an Uber to take us back to the city.

Back in Ximen, we went to the local branch of Monga, a very popular chain of take-away Taiwanese fried chicken. I’m not quite sure how they do it, but the cutlets are about $2 and some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. We tried original flavor, spicy, and seaweed flavor and they’re all amazing. The sweet potato fries have extra sugar and salt and are also phenomenal. The whole meal is a crazy calorie bomb but absolutely worth it.

Energized by Monga, we set out for more bubble tea and claw machines, then took our winnings to the hookah lounge next to our hotel. With lanterns overhead, Bruce Lee movies playing on the projector, a full bar, and a huge selection of shisha, it was a great place to finish off the day.

Our last full day in Taiwan was much calmer by comparison, mostly spent purchasing pineapple cake and other sweets at a few shops, wandering some new neighborhoods, walking through 2/28 Peace Park, and visiting Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a massive national monument in the “civic center” part of the city.

We spent a large portion of our last day trying to figure out how to pack everything we bought into our luggage and we even had to buy a cheap bag to make everything fit. And of course there was one more visit to Polar Cafe, one more trip to Monga, and just a tiny bit more bubble tea and claw machines. Seriously though, Monga is crazy good and brings out some kind of devil in me.

Taipei was such a great time, as expected, and I was really happy that Lummi could experience it with me. Because Taiwan is relatively cheap, has great weather, flies under the radar (in terms of tourism), and is a direct flight from San Francisco, I think it’s safe to say that we’ll be back before too long. Ideally, we’ll both be at 100% health for the next trip so we can get out of the city and have some adventures in the rest of the country. Taiwan is certainly much more than just Taipei and I’d love to go explore it.

My initial plans for Taiwan were to immediately hop on a southbound train out of the city and go to Taroko National Park for a couple days, but this plan started to unravel before I even got on my flight. I had previously emailed the lodge I wanted to stay at and received a positive, yet slightly cryptic, response from the owners. It was obvious they didn’t speak much English and now that I was trying to confirm my reservation, their response was very brief and not reassuring.

All my attempts to text or call the lodge while taking the Taipei MRT into the city resulted in similar failures. Half an hour later, I found myself in the large open hall of Taipei Main Station, sitting on the floor facing the ever-changing train departures board, wondering what to do. I was feeling a bit weary from the weekend and the travel and that basically made the decision for me: instead of a 3-hour train ride into the unknown, I opted for a local hotel and two extra days in Taipei.

After checking in to my window-less cave of a hotel room – common in Taipei – I wandered my immediate neighborhood (Zhongzheng) for the rest of the day, getting the lay of the land and my first taste of Taiwanese daily life. It was immediately a noticeable change from Hong Kong. Even though I was downtown during rush hour (i.e. late afternoon), everything felt so relaxed. No traffic jams, no honking horns, and not even that many people on the sidewalks. I would realize over the following week that this simply was the pace of life in Taipei. The city is objectively relaxed on its own, but the comparison with the city I had just left was actually very jarring. Hong Kong is like New York or Tokyo: people dress and walk around like they mean business all the time. Taipei is so relaxed for a capital city, I can’t even come up with a way to finish this analogy. Once I understood the culture a bit better, I really enjoyed having a calmer pace of life for my week of holiday.

That evening I stopped by Jap Jap Bikini, a new restaurant in my neighborhood with comfort food and Taiwanese craft beer. No, for real, that’s the name. Potential offensiveness aside, the food was tasty, the craft beer was surprisingly good, and the waitress who spoke English was incredibly helpful with advice on what I should do during my stay, even marking up my paper map with tips and ideas. Since my diet is a bit more flexible these days, especially when I’m on the road, I decided to get weird and dive into some Korean fried chicken, probably only the second or third time I’ve had fried chicken in the last decade. It was pretty magical.

After 12 hours of sleep in my wonderful pitch black cave, I grabbed my camera the next morning and spent most of the day wandering more nearby neighborhoods, roughly following the Lonely Planet walking tour. I ambled past temples, gates, and other old historical sites, rows of motorbikes, immaculate graffiti art, and lots of 4 and 5-story buildings. I ended up in 228 Peace Memorial Park for a bit, a peaceful respite from the city, which is already quite calm compared to other Asian metropolises. The motorbike culture was curious, as you usually don’t see that much in first-world Asia, but luckily the third-world hijinx of using sidewalks as parking lots and ignoring all traffic rules hadn’t caught on here. I especially enjoyed how in lots of neighborhoods in Taipei, the buildings form permanent awnings over the sidewalks, so that you almost always have a roof over your head when you’re walking around the city. It’s an intelligent urban design choice for a place with monsoons and lots of rain in general.

That evening was another calm one: dinner at a local vegetarian restaurant, a beer at JJB, some late-evening shopping at a bookstore, then a run to the convenience store to spend all my change on weird Asian snacks, as one does.

One random mention: I saw lots of claw machine arcades in Taipei! The arcades all had a single consistent color scheme and were wall-to-wall packed with claw machines. Random and kind of whimsical.

The next day, I checked out of the hotel and into the Airbnb I had previously booked, grabbed a quick Korean lunch in the neighborhood, then hopped on MRT to meet up with Max, a cousin of one of my very good friends in SF. Max has lived in Taiwan for the better part of a decade and was conveniently entertaining some friends of his who were visiting from China. He invited me to join their tea tasting trip to Maokong, which was something on my to-do list as well. After meeting them at the end of the brown line, we walked to the cable car station and took the gondola up the mountain. The relatively long ride offered beautiful views of the green valleys and mountains below and a unique birds-eye view through the floor of the gondola carriage, which had a “glass bottom”.

Once we reached the top, we walked around a bit until a light drizzle forced us into the closest restaurant, where we sat down at a table on the covered patio and had lots of green tea and some light snacks. Max’s friend Cece is Taiwanese, so she happily served as our tea guide and presided over our informal tea ceremony.

We stayed for a few hours, everyone chatting away about their work and travels and hobbies; almost everyone was from a different country, so there was plenty of good conversation. We left long after the sunset and had more beautiful views during the gondola ride down, but not before I was able to use the railing of the patio as a makeshift tripod and get a fairly clear photo of Taipei 101 in the distance.

After everyone had time to go home and clean up, we all met up for a really tasty family-style dinner with some traditional Chinese/Taiwanese dishes and one thoroughly non-traditional one: breaded prawns topped with icing and sprinkles. Somehow, it works!

After dinner, we went to Triangle for “university night”, a rowdy affair every Wednesday with lots of youngsters, ADD-inducing EDM and hip-hop, and plenty of drinking. It was fun, but being the old man of the group, I had to tap out at 1:30 and take an Uber home so that I wouldn’t be completely worthless the next day.

Thursday was spent wandering the neighborhoods of Zhongshan and Datong, initially to go to Confucius Temple and Bao’an Temple, two of the more famous temples in Taipei. Because of the light rain, not many people were at either, so as I listened to music and wandered with my camera, I essentially had the place to myself. All of the imagery was really pretty, even in the rain, and I found myself wandering slower than usual and soaking up the atmosphere, the solitude, and the free time. I think it was the first time on the trip I felt like I could actually slow down and relax.

After the temples, I walked to Dihua Street, a walking street close to the river known for its shops and street vendors. After walking around for a bit and browsing a few shops, I took the advice of a paper flier I was given and walked down a side street to Scent Cafe for a sandwich and coffee. Again, I was sucked into an addictive state of peacefulness as I sipped my coffee and listened to the rain outside. I decided to scrap the rest of my tourist plans for the day and instead moved to a comfortable easy chair, ordered another coffee, and spent the rest of the afternoon reading my book in the quiet calm of an empty cafe on the other side of the world. Sometimes it’s the unplanned, quiet moments like this that are some of the most memorable.

Friday morning, I took the MRT to the end of the green line for a bit of hiking and photos at the lake in Xindian. It was a gorgeous day and I passed a few others who were also enjoying the sun and the views from the suspension bridge, the main draw of the area.

After getting my fill of the beautiful lake views, I hopped back on MRT towards Beitou, but first made a quick stop at Lan Jia to try the best gua bao in the city. It’s a popular Taiwanese snack of minced pork, pickled mustard greens, and ground peanuts. And it’s really good.

The rest of the day was spent in Beitou, an area north of the main part of the city, mostly known for its beautiful scenery and plethora of hot springs. Even though the train ride from Taipei Main Station was relatively short, the peaceful nature felt really far from the city, so I walked around for a while with no particular plan.

When I stopped to read a sign of the area with a map on it, a sweet older Taiwanese woman came up to me and told me all about the area and the history and the various activities. She explained that she’s a tour guide in the area and that this was actually her day off, but was happy to offer me lots of recommendations. I took her advice and walked to the thermal valley, a steaming, sulfuric lake that feeds the hot springs in the town below, before hungrily devouring an amazing seafood curry at a cute Japanese restaurant nearby.

After lunch, I walked back to town and picked one of the bath houses that the off-duty tour guide had recommended, not realizing that it was fully nude. By then it was too late to turn back, so I forged ahead. Ten minutes later, I was sweating like crazy in a small pool of 40-degree mineral water with a dozen naked Taiwanese men. The woman at reception made sure to explain that the water is so potent that I shouldn’t spend more than five minutes in the water at a time. The advice was mostly unnecessary, since I had to get out every five minutes anyway just from the heat!

That evening, I met up with Max and a few of his friends for beers and video games at his friend’s apartment. It wasn’t the most authentic Taiwanese experience, I know, but it was really pleasant to have a casual night with good people.

My last full day in Taipei was more of my favorite sightseeing formula: taking the MRT around town, eating, and taking photos. I made the obligatory tourist visit to Taipei 101, ate lunch at Vege Creek (a noodle soup restaurant where you select your ingredients like you’re grocery shopping), stopped by the Kavalan shop for some tastings and to buy whiskey for my parents, bought more pineapple cake (a classic Taiwanese treat), drank milk tea, got a massage, had a fancy coffee in my neighborhood, wandered around the Raohe Street night market, and ate a rice fish burger for dinner. (The bun is sticky rice, the patty is fish.)

Sometime in the middle of the day, I found myself at the Red House – a historical landmark building – since it’s next to the MRT station in Ximen, the neighborhood I was staying in. There was a lot of activity that afternoon: vendors with gifts and crafts, a stage with various performers, and people from different charities looking for donations and volunteers. Now is a good time to mention that Taiwan is probably the most LGBT-friendly place in Asia, so it’s actually not unusual to see all this family-friendly activity next to the very gay-oriented bars and shops that are next to the Red House.

Funny enough, I ended up at one of those bars that very evening with Max and his friends for some drinks after some light bar hopping earlier in the night. On my drunken walk home, I wandered into one of the (evidently 24-hour) claw machine arcades and put my Ballmer Peak talents to good use.

After staying out late Saturday night, I didn’t have much energy for anything big on Sunday, plus I had to catch my flight in the afternoon. After I checked out of my Airbnb, I stored my big backpack in a locker and wandered around the labyrinth that is Taipei Main Station, perusing the vendors’ tables, smelling the stinky tofu, buying some curious Asian snacks, and finally settling into a bowl of spicy, black pepper beef noodles, another Taiwanese must-eat item. The absurd amount of black pepper had me crying about halfway through the meal. It was great.

And with that, my trip came to an end. A Westerner would probably describe both places I visited as “China… but not really China… but actually yes, China”, but even then, they were so very different from each other. I loved the vibrancy and frenzied pace and Western influences of Hong Kong, but also really enjoyed the tranquility and easy pace of life of Taipei.

I still feel a bit disappointed that I didn’t see any other parts of the country, but now that I’ve been to Taiwan, I would feel pretty good about visiting again someday, getting out of the city, and traveling around the island. After all, it’s only a flight away from San Francisco!