Must-sees in Taiwan?
 

I'll have a week in Taiwan in March. What should I include in my itinerary?

Depends what you like to do.

If you're a museum person, the National Palace Museum in Taipei has so much stuff from the Forbidden City in China (Chiang Kai Shek took it with him when he left China for Taiwan) that they can only display 5% of it at at time.

I enjoyed the hot springs in Taitung very much, and the climate there. I would have liked to spend more time on the east coast, it was so beautiful.

Personally I'd like to have gotten into the mountains more, maybe do whitewater rafting and hiking...but I did not get to this past trip, we were in Taipei most of the time.

The museum would be worth going to Taipei for in its own right. 7-8000 items are on display, out of a total of 650,000, of which about two thirds, including rare books and documents, are unsuitable for public display. Paintings on silk and other fragile items tend to be rotated fairly often, but the many of the museum's star items (including several bronzes which are the finest of their kind anywhere), and its most popular items (a block of green and white jade carved into a cabbage) remain on display year-round. About 10 % of the collection has been acquired since its arrival in Taiwan (the acquisitions budget is very small compared to the sort of prices real Chinese antiquities command these days).

This museum would repay several days of visits, and I'm sorry I only had one day there.

Unless you are totally unfamiliar with things Chinese, Taipei's a bit short on other remarkable attractions, however. Otherwise there are several pleasant temples, and the overblown memorial to Chiang Kai-shek, whose presentation wriggles off the hook of blaming him for losing the mainland.

Peter N-H
http://members.axion.net/~pnh/China.html

10 min from the Museum the the most popular night market in Taiwan often considered the best night market in Asia. Unbelievable food, that is if you like Chinese food and Taiwanese Deli

Would that be Shirlin market?

I really wanted to go but fell into bed exhausted so early every night that I never got to :(

We did go to Yangmingshan park for an afternoon, that was a nice change from the city and the views of Taipei were nice from up there. Some interesting college towns on the way up also...we went up the old road and came back down the new.

We also visited Lungshan temple, hit it on a very busy day, that was interesting.