Taipei Travel Essentials: Everything You Need Before You Go.

The first thing most people do on landing at Taoyuan is queue at a phone counter they did not need, buy a transport pass they will never use up, and change far more cash than the city asks for. None of it is a disaster — Taipei is forgiving in a way that few Asian capitals are — but it is a slow, expensive way to start. The taipei travel essentials that genuinely matter come down to about eight decisions, and you can make most of them from your sofa a week before you fly.

This is the practical hub for everything that is not sightseeing: entry paperwork, money, transport cards, connectivity, plugs, packing, water, etiquette and what to do when something goes wrong. Prices were checked in September 2026 and are quoted in New Taiwan dollars (NT$). Treat them as the right order of magnitude rather than a promise — transport fares are stable here, but pass pricing and SIM deals move constantly, and the shop always wins the argument with the article.

Taipei at a glance: what the basics actually cost

Nothing on this list is optional in the sense that you could skip it and have a good trip. It is the floor, before a single dumpling or museum ticket.

Item	Typical cost	Where you get it
Taiwan Arrival Card (TWAC)	Free	Online, up to 7 days before you fly
Airport MRT to Taipei Main Station	NT$160	A12/A13 at the terminals
EasyCard (the card itself)	NT$100, non-refundable	Any MRT station, any convenience store
Typical single MRT journey	NT$20–35	Tap in, tap out
Tourist eSIM, 8 days unlimited data	NT$500–900	Bought online before departure
Physical prepaid SIM, 8–10 days	NT$800–1,000	Airport arrivals hall counters
Plug adapter (if you need one)	NT$100–200	Any convenience store, any electronics shop
Bottle of water	NT$20–25	7-Eleven, FamilyMart, everywhere
Convenience-store breakfast	NT$60–100	The corner, at any hour
Night-market dinner, properly full	NT$200–350	Bring cash
Taxi across central Taipei	NT$150–300	Flag one down, or use the app

Add it up and a first day on the ground — arrival card, airport train, EasyCard with a starting top-up, a SIM and two meals — costs somewhere near NT$1,500 before your hotel. That is roughly the same as an airport taxi alone in most European capitals. For the full picture across a week, our Taipei travel cost breakdown does the arithmetic properly.

Paperwork: the visa, and the arrival card nobody mentions

Taiwan is one of the easiest places in Asia to enter on a Western passport, and that ease has made a lot of travellers complacent — which is exactly why people get caught out by the one new requirement.

Visa-exempt entry

Citizens of the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and most EU states enter visa-free for 90 days. You need a passport valid for the duration of your stay, and immigration may ask to see onward travel. That is genuinely the whole thing for most readers of this site. The eligibility list is longer and more nuanced than that summary suggests, and it changes — the country-by-country detail lives in our Taiwan visa requirements guide, and the definitive version lives with the Bureau of Consular Affairs.

The Taiwan Arrival Card is now mandatory

Since 1 October 2025, the paper landing card handed out on the plane has been replaced by the Taiwan Arrival Card (TWAC), an online form run by the National Immigration Agency. It is free, it takes about four minutes, and it applies to visa-exempt arrivals too. Since June 2026 you can submit it up to seven days before you travel — it used to be three, which caught out anyone who did their admin the week before.

Fill it in at home. The form is available in seven languages, and you can photograph your passport data page to auto-fill most of the fields. You will need your flight number and the address of your first night’s accommodation, so book that before you sit down to do it. Submit it through the official portal at immigration.gov.tw and nowhere else — there is a healthy ecosystem of third-party sites that will charge you thirty euros to type your details into a free government form on your behalf.

Two things worth being clear about. The TWAC is not a visa and does not replace one if your nationality needs a visa. And it is not a health declaration or a customs form — customs is still handled separately on arrival, and if you are carrying more than the declarable limits in cash or bringing in meat products, that is a different conversation at a different desk.

Insurance, and the one thing people forget

Taiwan’s healthcare is excellent and, by the standards of anywhere with private medicine, remarkably cheap for visitors. That has produced a myth that travel insurance is unnecessary here. It is not the treatment cost that will hurt you — it is the repatriation flight, the cancelled onward leg when a typhoon closes the airport for a day, or the scooter accident that nobody was insured for. Buy the policy. Check specifically that it covers hiking above a certain altitude if Yangmingshan or the Four Beasts are on your list, and that it covers scooter riding if you intend to hire one, because a startling number of policies quietly exclude both.

Timing: when to come, and when to think twice

Taipei has a distinct best season and a distinct worst one, and the gap between them is wide enough to change what kind of trip you have.

October to December is the sweet spot: warm, dry, low humidity, and the tail of the typhoon season has usually passed. March and April are pleasant but unsettled. May and June are the plum rains — the meiyu — which means persistent grey drizzle rather than dramatic downpours, and a lot of indoor days. July and August are hot and humid enough to reorganise your itinerary around air conditioning; July is marginally the hottest month on the Central Weather Administration’s long-run normals, not August, whatever your instincts say. January and February are cool, damp and often overcast, but the city is at its most atmospheric and the hot springs at Beitou finally make sense.

The month-by-month detail is in our best time to visit Taipei guide, which goes into rainfall, crowds and festival timing properly.

The typhoon question, answered honestly

Typhoon season runs roughly July to October, peaking in August and September. Most visitors in that window will not see one. If you do, the practical reality is a “typhoon day” — the city government announces closures the evening before, offices and schools shut, the MRT usually keeps running underground while surface transport stops, and everyone stays in. It is inconvenient rather than frightening. Watch the Central Weather Administration forecasts rather than international apps, which lag on local warning levels, and read our typhoon season guide before you book anything non-refundable in September.

Money: how much cash, and where cards fail

Taiwan is a cash society with a very good card infrastructure layered on top, which is a more confusing combination than either extreme. Department stores, chain restaurants, hotels, museums and convenience stores all take contactless cards without fuss. Night-market stalls, most small family restaurants, temple donation boxes, some taxis and almost every traditional market vendor do not.

The workable approach: carry NT$2,000–3,000 in cash at any given time, top it up from ATMs as you go, and put everything larger on a card. Do not change money at home. Do not change large sums at the airport either — take enough to get into town and eat, then use bank ATMs, which give a better rate than any exchange counter.

ATMs and cards

ATMs are everywhere, including inside every 7-Eleven and FamilyMart, and the overwhelming majority accept foreign cards. Where people run into trouble is the withdrawal fee stack: your home bank’s foreign-transaction fee, plus the local operator’s fee, plus a poor conversion rate if you accept the machine’s offer to bill you in your own currency. Always decline dynamic currency conversion and choose to be charged in NT$. Withdraw larger amounts less often. And tell your bank you are travelling, because Taiwanese ATM networks trip fraud flags on a lot of European cards.

Tipping, and the tax refund

Tipping is not expected and can cause mild confusion. Mid-range and upper restaurants add a 10% service charge to the bill; that is the tip, and there is no need for anything on top. Taxis are not tipped. Our tipping guide covers the handful of exceptions.

On the way out, foreign visitors can reclaim the 5% sales tax on qualifying purchases above a minimum spend from a single authorised retailer on the same day. It is genuinely worth doing on a large purchase and genuinely not worth the queue on a small one. The mechanics, thresholds and airport counter locations are in our Taiwan tax refund guide.

Getting from Taoyuan into the city

Taoyuan International is about 40 km west of Taipei, and the default answer is the Airport MRT. Board at A13 for Terminal 2 or A12 for Terminal 1, take the Express (purple) rather than the Commuter (blue) service, and you are at A1 Taipei Main Station in 35–40 minutes for NT$160. It runs from early morning to around 23:00. There is luggage space, a flight-information display in the carriage, and — the detail nobody mentions — an in-town check-in facility at A1 for some airlines, which is a gift on your last day.

The catch is what happens at the other end. Taipei Main Station is enormous, and the Airport MRT concourse is a genuinely long walk from the Red and Blue line platforms — think six or seven minutes with a suitcase, up and down escalators, through a station that is also a bus terminal, a mainline rail station and a shopping arcade. If your hotel is not near a Red or Blue line stop, a taxi from Taipei Main for the last kilometre is money well spent. Alternatives — the airport buses, the shared shuttles, the fixed-price taxis — are compared in our Taoyuan Airport to Taipei guide.

If you land after the MRT stops

A lot of long-haul flights arrive late. After the last train, the 1819 bus to Taipei Main runs through the night at roughly hourly intervals, and the official airport taxi rank operates 24 hours with a metered fare of around NT$1,100–1,400 into central Taipei plus a motorway surcharge. Both are fine. What you should not do is accept an offer from someone approaching you inside the terminal — the queue outside is regulated, quick, and cheaper.

Songshan, the other airport

If you are arriving from Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai or on a domestic flight, you may land at Songshan instead, which sits inside the city on the Brown and Green lines. It is fifteen minutes from Zhongshan. Our Songshan Airport guide covers the transfer, which is mercifully short.

Buy an EasyCard before you do anything else

The EasyCard (悠遊卡) is the single highest-value purchase of your trip. It costs NT$100 for the card, which is not refundable, and you load it with whatever you like. Buy it from the machine or counter at any MRT station, or over the counter at any convenience store, in the first hour.

It pays for the MRT at a 20% discount on the cash fare, every city bus, YouBike hire, the Maokong Gondola, the ferries at Tamsui, most of the day-trip buses to the north coast, and — the part people underuse — purchases at 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Hi-Life, OK Mart, many chain cafés, supermarkets and vending machines. Tap and go. When your balance runs low, top up at any station machine or hand it over the counter at any convenience store with a NT$500 note and say “加值” (jiāzhí).

The full mechanics, including how to get residual balance back at the airport and the difference between EasyCard and iPass, are in our EasyCard guide. For the network itself — line colours, exit numbering, the etiquette rules that locals enforce quietly — start with the Taipei MRT guide and the official Taipei Metro site for live service updates.

Should you buy the Taipei Fun Pass instead?

The Fun Pass Unlimited bundles transport with single entry to more than thirty attractions across Taipei, New Taipei and Keelung, on a one-, two- or three-day clock. List price is NT$1,500–2,200, though it is routinely discounted on the booking platforms, so check the live price before committing.

Here is the honest verdict. It pays back if — and only if — you are doing the big-ticket paid attractions at pace: Taipei 101’s observatory, the National Palace Museum, the Maokong Gondola and the zoo, in something close to a single day, with a lot of riding in between. If your Taipei is night markets, temples, neighbourhoods and cafés — which is most people’s best Taipei — you will not come close to breaking even, and a plain EasyCard is the better buy. Do not let a pass reorganise your itinerary around attractions you did not want to see.

Staying connected: SIM, eSIM and free Wi-Fi

You want data from the moment you land, because the maps, the translation and the ride apps all need it. Three routes.

An eSIM bought before you fly is the cheapest and fastest option if your phone supports one. No queue, no counter, no swapping your home SIM out at an airport table. Activate on landing. The downside is that you do not get a local phone number, and that matters more here than in most places — Taiwanese taxi apps, some ticketing platforms and a lot of restaurant booking systems verify by SMS to a local number.

A physical prepaid SIM from the arrivals-hall counters solves exactly that problem. Expect NT$800–1,000 for eight to ten days of unlimited data with a local number, passport required. The counters at both terminals are staffed in English and open long hours. If you are going anywhere rural — the east coast, the high mountains, the smaller islands — choose Chunghwa Telecom, which won every network category in OpenSignal’s July 2026 Taiwan report and has the coverage the others do not.

Pocket Wi-Fi made sense a decade ago. Today it is another device to charge, another thing to return, and it usually costs more than an eSIM for the same data. Skip it unless you are travelling as a group of four who all need connectivity and are happy to stay within twenty metres of each other, which describes almost no real trip.

Free public Wi-Fi is genuinely good: Taipei Free covers MRT stations, public buildings, libraries and many parks, and the convenience-store chains all run open networks. It is fine for messaging. It is not fine for anything involving a password on an unfamiliar network, so pair it with a VPN or simply do not.

Power, plugs and voltage

Taiwan runs on 110 V at 60 Hz, with Type A and Type B sockets — the flat two-pin and two-pin-plus-round-earth arrangement used in the US, Canada and Japan.

If you are coming from North America, you need nothing. If you are coming from the UK, Europe, Australia or almost anywhere else, you need a plug adapter, and you need to check that your devices are dual-voltage. Phone chargers, laptop bricks, camera chargers and modern electric shavers almost universally say “100–240 V” in the small print, which means the plug adapter is all you need. Hair dryers, travel kettles, curling tongs and older electric toothbrush bases frequently do not, and plugging a 230 V-only device into 110 V will not blow it up but will make it useless — a hair dryer that takes twenty minutes to do nothing.

The practical answer for most people: leave the hair appliances at home, because every hotel in the city has a dryer, and buy a cheap adapter at any convenience store for NT$100–200 if you forget yours. A multi-port USB charger with a single adapter beats carrying four adapters.

What to pack, and what to leave

Taipei’s climate is the packing brief. It is humid for most of the year, wet without much warning, and air-conditioned to an aggressive degree indoors.

The things that actually matter

• A compact umbrella. Not a rain jacket — an umbrella. In this humidity a waterproof shell turns you into a sauna within ten minutes, and every local carries a folding umbrella year-round, for sun as much as rain.
• Shoes you can walk fifteen kilometres in and get wet. You will walk far more than you plan to. Pavements are uneven, temple courtyards are stone, and hiking trails start inside the city limits. Bring a second pair, because a soaked pair will not dry overnight in this air.
• A light layer for indoors. Restaurants, the MRT and department stores are cold. A cardigan or overshirt is genuinely useful in August.
• Quick-dry fabrics over cotton. Cotton stops drying in Taipei’s summer humidity. Merino or synthetic makes the difference between three shirts and eight.
• Sun protection. The UV index is high even on hazy days, and shade is scarce on the coast and the ridge trails.
• Any medication you rely on, in its original packaging, with a copy of the prescription. Pharmacies are excellent but brand names differ.

What not to bother with

Leave the towels, the toiletries, the mosquito repellent, the water-purification tablets and the “just in case” first-aid kit. All of it is available within a hundred metres of wherever you are staying, usually cheaper and usually better. Taiwan makes very good skincare and very good sunscreen. Leave the formal clothes too, unless you have a specific reservation — Taipei is a comfortable, unshowy city, and nobody is dressing for dinner.

One genuine caution: bringing meat products, including packaged and cooked ones, is prohibited and enforced with substantial fines because of African swine fever controls. Empty the sandwich out of your bag before you land.

Water, food and not getting ill

Taipei’s municipal tap water is treated to a drinkable standard and the city says so explicitly. In practice most residents still boil or filter it, largely because of ageing building plumbing rather than the supply itself, and hotels provide kettles or dispensers for that reason. Drinking from the tap in a modern hotel will not hurt you. Buying bottled water at NT$20 a time for a week is also fine. What is better than both: fill a bottle from the free filtered-water dispensers in every MRT station, public building, and most convenience stores. This is a Taipei claim, incidentally — do not extend it to rural Taiwan without asking.

Street food here is about as safe as street food gets anywhere in the world. Hygiene standards at the major night markets are inspected and generally high, turnover is fast, and everything is cooked in front of you. Use the ordinary rules — busy stalls over empty ones, hot food served hot, fruit you peel yourself — and eat with confidence. Our night market food guide tells you what to order, and the Taipei food guide covers the wider scene.

The convenience store deserves its own paragraph in any list of essentials. There are around 14,000 of them nationally, roughly half of them 7-Elevens, and they do far more than sell snacks. Bill payment, EasyCard top-up, ticket collection, parcel pickup and drop-off, printing, hot food from a genuinely decent counter, tea eggs simmering by the register, roasted sweet potatoes in winter, and a seating area with free Wi-Fi. When something goes wrong at 2am, the answer is usually the nearest 7-Eleven.

Etiquette: the small rules people notice

Taipei is polite and low-friction, and the few rules it does have are enforced socially rather than officially. Getting them right costs nothing.

• No eating or drinking on the MRT. Not even water, not even a sweet. This one carries an actual fine and is taken seriously; the boundary is the ticket gate, not the train door.
• Priority seats stay empty. The dark blue seats are for elderly, pregnant, injured and disabled passengers, and Taipei observes this to a degree that surprises visitors — carriages will be standing-room-full with four priority seats vacant. Follow suit.
• Stand right on escalators. Left side for walking, and people will queue behind you if you block it.
• Queue properly. Boarding lines are marked on the platform floor and people use them.
• Take your rubbish with you. Public bins are rare by design. Carry the wrapper until you find one, or hand it back at the stall you bought it from.
• In temples, enter by the right-hand door, leave by the left, do not walk over the raised threshold, dress with covered shoulders, and ask before photographing people at prayer. Our temple guide covers the etiquette in more depth.
• Shoes off in homes, in some guesthouses, in temple prayer halls and at hot spring facilities. Slip-ons make life easier.

The wider cultural picture, including why Taipei feels different from mainland Chinese cities, is in Taiwan vs China: understanding the cultural difference.

Safety, health and the numbers to save

Taipei is one of the safest large cities in the world, and the biggest risk to most visitors is traffic rather than crime. Scooters turn across pedestrian crossings, they use the pavement when the road is blocked, and right-turning vehicles do not always wait. Look both ways twice, including on a green man.

Save these four numbers before you fly:

• 110 — police
• 119 — fire and ambulance
• 0800-011-765 — the 24-hour tourist information hotline, staffed in English, Japanese and Mandarin
• 1990 — the foreign-national help line for non-emergency problems

For anything medical, hospital emergency departments in Taipei will treat you and bill you afterwards at rates that will shock anyone used to the American system. Pharmacies handle minor complaints competently and pharmacists frequently speak some English. Our safety guide goes further, and nightlife safety covers the small hours specifically.

Language: how far English really gets you

Further than in Japan, less far than in Singapore. MRT signage, station announcements, museum labelling and major attraction ticketing are all bilingual and reliable. Hotel staff, younger people in Xinyi and Da’an, and anyone in the tourism trade will generally have functional English. Taxi drivers, night-market stallholders, older shopkeepers and the staff at a small neighbourhood restaurant frequently will not, and pointing at a menu is a legitimate and well-understood strategy.

Learn four phrases and you will get a warmer trip than the effort deserves: 謝謝 (xièxie, thank you), 你好 (nǐhǎo, hello), 多少錢 (duōshǎo qián, how much), and 這個 (zhè ge, this one) delivered with a pointed finger. Traditional characters are used here, not simplified. Have your hotel address written in Chinese on your phone for taxi drivers. More in our Mandarin phrases guide.

What we would skip

Four things that appear on most “Taipei essentials” lists and should not.

Changing money before you leave home. The rate is worse, and you will carry cash you do not need. An ATM in the arrivals hall does the job better.

Pocket Wi-Fi rental. Superseded by eSIMs for solo and couple travel. It is one more thing to charge and one more thing to return on a morning when you are trying to leave.

Buying a transport pass on day one before you know your itinerary. Passes reward a specific style of trip. Buy the EasyCard immediately, and decide about the Fun Pass on day two, when you know what you actually want to see.

Airport arrival taxis pre-booked online at a premium. The official rank is metered, regulated, available around the clock and cheaper than almost every “private transfer” you can book in advance. Book one only if you are arriving with small children or a lot of luggage and want a fixed number.

Your pre-departure checklist

Seven days out: book the first night’s accommodation, then submit the Taiwan Arrival Card. Buy an eSIM if you are going that route. Tell your bank you are travelling. Check your travel insurance covers hiking and, if relevant, scooters.

The day before: download offline maps, save the four emergency numbers, screenshot your hotel address in Chinese characters, and check the Central Weather Administration forecast if you are travelling in typhoon season.

The first hour on the ground: withdraw NT$3,000 from an arrivals-hall ATM, buy an EasyCard at the MRT station and load NT$500 onto it, activate your data, and get on the Express train. Everything else can be solved from a convenience store later.

If you are still shaping the trip itself rather than the logistics, how many days you need in Taipei and the three-day itinerary are the places to go next, and where to stay in Taipei settles the neighbourhood question.

The SIM-versus-eSIM decision is worth more than a paragraph, because the trade-off in Taiwan is not really about price – it is about whether you need a local phone number for taxi apps and booking platforms. Our full comparison of a Taiwan SIM card versus an eSIM covers the three carriers, current airport prices, and the two-ID rule that turns people away at the counter.

If you are travelling from anywhere on 230-volt power, the plug question is worth five minutes before you pack. Our guide to Taiwan power plugs, voltage and adapters sets out the socket types, what the small print on your charger means, and which appliances will simply refuse to be useful here.

The one piece of pre-departure admin most people skip is checking what their insurance actually covers – hiking and scooters are excluded far more often than travellers realise. Treatment itself is cheap here: our guide to getting medical help in Taipei has clinic costs, pharmacy rules and the four numbers worth saving to your phone.

One question deserves its own answer rather than a line in a checklist, because it generates more anxious pre-trip searching than anything else on this page: the water. The short version is that Taipei’s municipal supply is tested to 141 parameters and is fine to drink, that the reason locals still do not drink it from the tap has to do with rooftop storage tanks rather than the city, and that you should carry a reusable bottle and refill it free at MRT stations. The longer version, including whether the ice is safe, is in our guide to whether you can drink the tap water in Taipei.

Related Taipei guides

• Taipei Travel Guide: the complete overview
• Taiwan Visa Requirements: who needs one and who doesn’t
• Taoyuan Airport to Taipei: every route compared
• The EasyCard: how it works and where it pays
• Getting Around Taipei: MRT, buses, taxis and bikes
• How Much a Taipei Trip Costs
• The Best Time to Visit Taipei
• Taipei Travel Tips from repeat visitors
• Taipei on a Budget
• Is Taipei Safe for Tourists?

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a visa to visit Taiwan?

Most Western passport holders — UK, US, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea — do not, and get 90 days visa-free on arrival. You still need a passport valid for your stay and may be asked for onward travel. Check the current eligibility list before you book, since it does change.

What is the Taiwan Arrival Card and do I have to fill it in?

Yes. Since 1 October 2025 the TWAC has been a mandatory online form for foreign visitors, replacing the paper card. It is free, takes a few minutes, and can be submitted up to seven days before arrival through the National Immigration Agency’s own website. Visa-exempt travellers are not exempt from it.

How much cash should I bring to Taipei?

Very little. Withdraw NT$3,000 from an airport ATM and top up as you go — ATMs are in every convenience store and the rate beats any exchange counter. Carry NT$2,000–3,000 on you day to day for night markets, small restaurants and temples, and put everything else on a card.

Can I use my credit card everywhere in Taipei?

In hotels, department stores, chain restaurants, museums and convenience stores, yes, including contactless. At night-market stalls, traditional markets, small family-run restaurants and some taxis, no. This is the single most common budgeting mistake first-time visitors make.

Is it safe to drink the tap water in Taipei?

The city treats its supply to a drinkable standard and says so. Most residents still filter or boil it because of old building pipework rather than the water itself. The easy answer is the free filtered dispensers in every MRT station and public building — carry a bottle and fill it.

What plug adapter do I need for Taiwan?

Type A and Type B, the flat-pin American style, running at 110 V and 60 Hz. North American travellers need nothing. Everyone else needs an adapter and should check devices are rated 100–240 V. Hair dryers and travel kettles from 230 V countries generally are not, so leave them behind.

Should I buy an eSIM or a physical SIM for Taiwan?

An eSIM is cheaper, faster and skips the airport queue. A physical SIM gives you a local phone number, which matters if you want to use taxi apps or platforms that verify by SMS. If you are heading outside the cities, choose Chunghwa Telecom for coverage.

Is the Taipei Fun Pass worth buying?

Only if you are doing several paid attractions at speed — Taipei 101, the National Palace Museum, Maokong Gondola and the zoo in close succession. For a trip built around night markets, temples and neighbourhoods, a plain EasyCard is cheaper and less pressuring. Compare the discounted price against your actual plans.

How do I get from Taoyuan Airport to central Taipei?

The Airport MRT Express from A12 or A13 reaches Taipei Main Station in 35–40 minutes for NT$160, running until roughly 23:00. After that, the 1819 bus runs overnight and the official taxi rank operates 24 hours for around NT$1,100–1,400 plus a motorway surcharge.

Do people tip in Taipei?

No. Restaurants above the casual level add a 10% service charge and that is the whole transaction. Taxis are not tipped, and hotel tipping is optional and modest. Leaving extra cash on a table can genuinely confuse staff.

What is the best month to visit Taipei?

October and November, comfortably. Warm, dry, low humidity and past the worst of the typhoon season. December is a close second. Avoid May and June if grey drizzle would ruin your trip, and expect real heat in July and August.

How much English is spoken in Taipei?

Enough to navigate. All transport signage and announcements are bilingual, major attractions are fully accessible in English, and hotel and tourism staff are generally fluent. Taxi drivers, older shopkeepers and small restaurants often are not — have your destination written in Chinese and be ready to point.

What should I not pack for Taipei?

Rain jackets (bring an umbrella instead), toiletries, towels, mosquito repellent, hair appliances and formal clothes. All of it is cheap and close by, and half of it will not work on 110 V. Also, empty any meat products out of your bag — they are prohibited on entry and the fines are serious.

The Bottom Line

Taipei asks less of you than almost any other major Asian city. Fill in the arrival card a week ahead, buy an EasyCard in your first hour, sort out data before you land, carry a small amount of cash and an umbrella, and the city takes care of the rest. It is safe, it is legible, it is cheap by the standards of anywhere with this much good food, and the mistakes people make here are mistakes of over-preparation rather than under-preparation.

The one thing genuinely worth doing before you fly is the paperwork, because it is the only part of a Taipei trip that cannot be fixed from a convenience store at midnight. Everything else can.

Photo Credits

Taoyuan International Airport Terminal 1 exterior: Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport – Terminal 1 by 毛貓大少爺, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Inside a Taoyuan Airport MRT Express train: Inside Taoyuan Airport MRT Express Train by Cheng-en Cheng from Taichung City, Taiwan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.