Taipei City in Taiwan is a place of intense extremes. Some of those extremes can be pleasant, such as the infinite kindness of the Taiwanese people. Other extremes may push you to complain about the place, such as the weather, traffic, and pollution.
The reasons mentioned on this website should be enough to get you interested about visiting Taipei city in Taiwan. Still, there are some deal breakers that will be helpful to know in advance.
- You hate heat and/or humidity: Taipei summers are hot and absurdly humid; you will feel the need to take at least 18 showers per day to keep fresh.
- You hate rain: Taipei’s rainy season varies, but for the most part at any given time it could be raining. During typhoon seasons the rain borders on biblical.
- You hate rambunctious traffic: Drivers in Taipei are insatiable individualistic beasts that will stop at nothing to get ahead. That means almost running you over if you get in their way.
- You think Chinese food is “not really very good”: Ok, I said before that you can get all kinds of food in Taiwan. That’s true. But if you basically think Chinese food is mediocre or downright bad, you’ll probably be better off elsewhere as the vast majority of cuisine comes from the Chinese tradition
- You’re uncomfortable with foreign languages: The language of Taipei is Mandarin Chinese. If you can’t speak it, don’t like it or just generally strongly dislike the feeling of not knowing what’s going on, it may not be for you. Mandarin is a tough language to learn, but many Taipei folks speak English quite well.
- Slow–moving crowds make you want to go on a murderous rampage: Taipei is not as crowded as Tokyo or basically any city in China or India. But it has a weird characteristic where, unlike the breakneck pace of places like Tokyo or Seoul, the crowds in Taipei walk like they were in the 14th century Chinese countryside. This can quickly become unbearable if you are a crowd-hater and/or slowness-hater.
- Pollution makes you sick, both physically and mentally. Yes, Taipei city in Taiwan has its fair share of pollution. Not just air – noise pollution is also an issue.