Tainan in two days: the oldest city and the best eating in Taiwan

Two days in Tainan is enough. Two days done properly means eating five or six small meals a day rather than two large ones, walking in the early morning and the evening, and treating the middle of the day as time to be indoors, because Tainan is hot.

The shape of the city, and the shape of the day

Tainan sits on the south-western coastal plain. The old centre is compact and walkable, Anping and the fort are a few miles west towards the sea, and there is no metro: the city is walked, cycled or taxied, and taxis are cheap and metered.

The high speed rail station is outside the city with a shuttle connection into the centre, which takes fifteen or twenty minutes and is worth knowing when you plan a morning. Conventional trains come into the old station in the centre.

The heat decides the shape of the day. Summer runs hotter here than in Taipei and the humidity is severe. A walking day in Tainan at two in the afternoon in August is a mistake and we build around it: out at seven, indoors from eleven to four, out again in the evening. October to April is the comfortable window and the argument is in Taiwan month by month.

Day one: the old centre

Seven o’clock, breakfast, and it is a real institution. Beef soup, niurou tang: thin slices of raw local beef in a bowl over which hot broth is poured at the counter, so the meat cooks in the bowl in front of you, served with ginger and a bowl of rice. It is a Tainan speciality, it is eaten at breakfast, and the good places sell out by ten. This is the meal to build the morning around.

Or, if that is too much at seven, a Taiwanese breakfast shop: soy milk hot or cold, sweet or savoury, with youtiao, shaobing and turnip cake. Two dollars.

Eight thirty, the Confucius temple. Founded in 1665 and the oldest in Taiwan, in a compound of old trees and low halls that is genuinely quiet before the coaches. An hour.

Ten, the temple district on foot. Tainan has hundreds of temples and they are working buildings rather than monuments. The Grand Matsu Temple, the Official God of War Temple, and the small neighbourhood shrines you walk past between them. A guide is worth having for this half day: without one you are looking at architecture, and with one you are looking at a living religious system with lineage, hierarchy and gossip.

Eleven thirty, an early lunch before the heat. Danzai noodles, the dish Tainan is most known for: a small bowl of noodles in a light shrimp and pork broth with minced pork and a prawn, invented here by fishermen in the slack season. It is a snack rather than a meal, which is the Tainan pattern.

Then milkfish. Tainan is the milkfish capital of Taiwan and it appears as congee, as a soup, as a fried belly. The belly is rich and it is the one to order.

One to four, indoors. The Chimei Museum, which is an eccentric and excellent private collection of Western art, arms and violins in a building that looks like a European palace and is one of the strangest good afternoons in Taiwan. Or the National Museum of Taiwan History. Or a tea house and a book.

Five, Shennong Street. A narrow lane of restored Qing-era shophouses, now small bars, workshops and design shops, and the most photographed street in the city. Go at dusk when the lanterns come on and before it fills.

Seven, dinner as a crawl. Not one restaurant. Order across four or five places: coffin bread, which is a thick slice of fried bread hollowed and filled with a creamy seafood stew and is better than it sounds; oyster omelette; shrimp rolls; a bowl of eel noodles; and stewed pork rice. Total, under twenty dollars for two.

Nine, Garden Night Market or Flower Night Market, depending on the night, because Tainan’s markets run on fixed days of the week rather than nightly, which catches visitors out. We check the days for your dates.

Day two: Anping, the sea, and the sweet things

Seven, breakfast again, differently. Fish congee, or savoury rice pudding, or another beef soup.

Eight thirty, Anping. The old port, a few miles west, and the place the Dutch East India Company built Fort Zeelandia in the 1620s. What survives is a brick platform, some wall, and a later tower, and the history is more interesting than the ruin: this is where the Dutch colonial period began and where Koxinga ended it in 1662.

Nearby, the Anping Tree House, a former warehouse that banyan roots have entirely consumed, walls and roof, which is a genuinely strange twenty minutes and the thing children remember.

Eleven, Anping eating. Shrimp rolls, oyster omelette at the source, tofu pudding, and the candied and preserved fruit shops. Anping is where several of Tainan’s signature snacks were invented and the versions here are not tourist versions.

Afternoon, the salt flats or the wetlands, or indoors. The Jingzaijiao tile-paved salt fields and the Qigu salt mountain are north of the city, about an hour, and in winter the Budai and Qigu wetlands hold black-faced spoonbills, a globally threatened species that winters here in significant numbers. That is a genuinely good half day between October and March and a hot one otherwise.

Evening, the last of the eating. If you have room: a proper sit-down meal at one of Tainan’s serious restaurants doing modernised southern Taiwanese cooking, at $40 to $80 a head, which is the one meal in the city we would book in advance. Our partner team does the booking, because these rooms are small and take reservations in Mandarin. Taiwan is not one of our own offices, which we say on every page, and this partner is Taiwanese and long-standing.

The dishes, listed

Because Tainan is a list city and it is easier to carry one.

• Beef soup, niurou tang, at breakfast
• Danzai noodles
• Milkfish belly, or milkfish congee
• Coffin bread
• Shrimp rolls, at Anping
• Oyster omelette
• Eel noodles
• Stewed pork rice, lu rou fan, which is a dollar and a half and is the great cheap plate of the island
• Tofu pudding, douhua, with peanuts
• Winter melon tea
• Candied fruit from Anping

Tainan food is sweeter than northern Taiwanese food, noticeably so, and this is a point of national argument rather than an accident. Sugar was the crop of this plain for three centuries.

Where to stay, and for how long

Two nights. One night means you eat four meals instead of ten and you miss either Anping or the temple district.

Accommodation is better value than Taipei for the same standard, at $70 to $150 for a good three to four star room. Stay in the old centre, within walking distance of the temple district, rather than out by the high speed rail station.

Would we skip Tainan?

Only if you do not care about food, and then we would probably have built you a different trip entirely.

The honest caveats. Tainan has no single sight that stops you in your tracks, so travellers who plan around monuments sometimes leave puzzled. It is hot for a large part of the year. And it takes a little effort: the good places are small, several are cash only, and the queue at the famous ones at noon on a Sunday is long. A guide for one morning changes what you can order, and that is the day we would spend money on.

If Taipei is where you learn to eat in Taiwan, and the markets there are set out in Taipei night markets, Tainan is where you find out how deep it goes.

Plan this trip

Tell us how much of your Taiwan trip should be about the eating and a specialist will build Tainan properly, with a guide for the morning that needs one and the small tables booked. Free first outline, no obligation.

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