Taipei: Beitou sulphur, Yongkang lunch, Elephant Mountain at dusk, Raohe at night
9 playbooks shared · added to 19 trips
- 8:30 am1Red line to Beitou, change onto the two-carriage branchTaipei
Xinbeitou is not on the main red line — get off at Beitou and cross the platform to the little two-car shuttle that runs one stop up the valley; one of its carriages is fitted out as a hot-spring themed train. Buy an EasyCard at any Taipei MRT customer service window for NT$100 and top it up at any 7-Eleven: it pays for the metro, buses, the gondola, lockers and most convenience stores, and it gives you a fare discount over single tickets.
7 min walk · 550 m - 9:10 am2The Millennium public pool is CLOSED — soak indoors or skip the soakTaipei
THIS STOP DOES NOT WORK AS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN. Verified 2026-09-06: the Beitou Park Outdoor Hot Spring Bathing Pool — the NT$60 "Millennium" public bath this day was built around — has been closed for renovation since 24 January 2025. It was first due back in February 2026; the Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office moved completion to 26 September 2026 and says the reopening date will be announced separately, so it is shut on any trip planned from today and you should re-check travel.taipei before assuming otherwise. Two ways to keep the morning: (a) book a paid indoor bath — a private hot spring room at one of the Beitou bathhouses or hotels, or one of the old public indoor tubs — which now needs arranging ahead rather than walking up with NT$60 and a swim cap; or (b) drop the soak and spend the slot on the Beitou Hot Spring Museum, the restored 1913 Japanese bathhouse five minutes from Xinbeitou station, free, closed Mondays, open roughly 09:00-17:00 (some listings say 10:00-18:00, so check on the day). The USD figure on this stop is a model estimate for a paid indoor bath, NOT a verified price — the only verified price here, NT$60, belongs to a pool you cannot use. If you do find a public pool open, the old rules applied: swimsuit and swim cap compulsory and not cheaply sold at the door, timed sessions with the pools cleared between them, terraces stepping downhill from about 42-45C, coin lockers.
16 min walk · 1.2 km - 10:50 am3Ten minutes at the Thermal ValleyTaipei
Free, closed Mondays, and honestly ten minutes long — a jade-green sulphur lake steaming at about 90C, which is why nobody bathes in it and why the bathhouses downhill have water at all. Worth the detour only because it is four minutes' walk from the baths you have just left. Verified 2026-09-06: free, closed Mondays for cleaning (unless the Monday is a public holiday), open 09:00–17:00, extended to 18:00 from 15 May to 14 September. The 10:50 slot sits inside that window all year. With the public bath shut this is the main free thing left in Beitou, so it is no longer optional filler.
19 min by train or taxi · 12 km - 12:20 pm4Xiaolongbao on Yongkang Street, the sensible wayTaipei
Dongmen station exit 5 puts you at the top of the street. The Din Tai Fung every guidebook sends you to — the original on Xinyi Road — closed in 2024, so stop looking for it: the Taipei 101 mall branch is the reliable one and it issues queue numbers through its app, so take a number from the MRT and arrive when it is nearly up. If the wait is still absurd, Kao Chi on Yongkang itself does an equally good soup dumpling plus a shengjianbao and a Shanghainese rice cake that nobody queues for, and Yongkang Beef Noodle two minutes away is the other correct answer to lunch here.
3 min walk · 0 m - 1:50 pm5Mango shaved ice, if it is the seasonTaipei
Only worth the queue between roughly May and September, when the mango on top is fresh Irwin fruit from the south. Out of season the same NT$220 buys frozen puree on shaved milk ice and the whole thing collapses into sweetness — order the taro or peanut version instead, which is what the ice shops are actually good at year-round.
11 min walk · 850 m - 3 pm6The guard change on the plaza at Chiang Kai-shek MemorialTaipei
One MRT stop from Dongmen and free. The honour guard ceremony is hourly on the hour and now takes place out on the plaza rather than upstairs under the statue, which means you can actually see it and there is shade at the edges. Stand on the north side so the arch is behind them. The exhibition in the basement about how the building's own meaning has been fought over since 2017 is more interesting than the hall above it.
8 min by train or taxi · 1.8 km - 4:20 pm7Elephant Mountain, 45 minutes before the sun goesTaipei
Xiangshan station exit 2, then about fifteen minutes of steep concrete stairs. Forty-five minutes before sunset is the number that matters: the Six Giant Rocks — the boulders everyone stands on to frame Taipei 101 — hold maybe twenty people, and they are all taken by golden hour. Get there early, claim a rock, wait. Carry water and a head torch: the handrail lighting on the way down is patchy and the stairs are slick after rain. If the rocks are full, keep climbing five more minutes to the photographer's platform above them.
12 min by train or taxi · 12 km - 6:40 pm8Raohe Street, entering at the temple endTaipei
Songshan station exit 5 puts you at the Ciyou Temple gate, which is the end you want: the black pepper bun stall is the first thing on the right and the queue moves fast because they come out of a clay tandoor in batches. Wait five minutes before biting one — the pork and spring onion inside is molten. Then walk the middle third for the medicinal spare rib soup and the taro balls, ignore the games and the phone cases, and turn round at the far gate rather than doubling the length. One straight street, no branches, so nobody gets lost. Verified 2026-09-06: the market runs about 17:00–23:00, with some stalls to midnight — but only around half of them are up at 17:00, so the 18:40 arrival is the right one, not a compromise. Individual stalls take their own days off.