Escape the city centre with a ride on the Taipei MRT and a climb to the best panoramic view of the Taipei skyline. Most people stick to the night markets, but the real Taipei travel experience happens on the outskirts. I took the Taipei MRT to the edge of the city, trading the urban noise for a quiet ascent through the lush, green landscape. It is a straightforward bit of Taipei hiking, just a series of stairs leading up the hillside. The effort is worth it when you reach the top. You get a clear, panoramic look at the Taipei skyline stretching out below. It provides a rare moment of perspective on a city that usually feels like it is moving at double speed.
On the platform, people stand in line. The train arrives on time. The carriage is clean enough that you don’t think twice about putting a bag down. Nobody eats, nobody litters, nobody treats the space as theirs alone. A single journey is between fifty pence and a pound fifty. A full day pass is about three pounds fifty.
A metro is how a city moves its people between home and work, between family and friends. The floor of the train and the price of the ticket tell you what a place still expects of itself. Taipei still expects something. London is spending a fortune to show that it doesn’t. One is Homogeneous and High-Trust, and one once was. Some people become more hippie-like when they travel - for me, Travel reminds me of what we have lost to the Disciples of the Frankfurt School.
From Xiangshan station, it’s a short walk through the park into the hills. The mountains sit right against the city. You tap in, you tap out, you walk. School groups, office workers, people who do this regularly because the air is still worth breathing. From the top, the skyline is there, 101 in the frame, a dense, functioning capital that has not given up on order.
This is what a high-trust city still looks like when the code is intact. Not perfect. Just a place that still takes pride in the ordinary things that hold it together.
How to do it:
MRT Red Line (Tamsui–Xinyi) to Xiangshan station, Exit 2. Follow the signs through the park toward the Xiangshan hiking trails. The main viewpoints are 15–30 minutes of stairs, depending on how far you go. Free. Bring water.
Time Stamps: 00:00 - Inrto 00:58 - Taipei Metro Compared to London Underground 07:35 - Heading to the Mountain 11:10 - The Thousand Step+ Hike 12:56 - Roamless - Today's Sponsor & My eSIM Provider! 14:09 - In Search of the View 17:26 - Thoughts & Thanks!
Today's Video Sponsor: (Please Show Your Love & Support Them) 📱 The eSIM I use when I’m travelling — Roamless Get 20% off with code "WONDERING" → https://roamless.sjv.io/DyAGzj
🎥 I’m The Wondering Englishman – exploring the world with curiosity and critical thinking. This isn’t an influencer. It’s the streets — as they actually are.
Well welcome to another one of my videos.
I'm Alex and I'm The Wandering Englishman
and today you find me in Taipei walking into the metro.
They call it the MRT and from here we're
riding out to the edge of the city up into the hills
that sit right against the skyline so we
can look back at the whole place from above.
Well at least that's the plan. You have to excuse me,
my voice seems to have gone.
I had a hectic weekend away on a bachelor party and I seem to have
come down with a chest infection
and just the hazard of life my voice is destroyed i thought
i'd give this video a bit of a narration you may have seen
my recent video on Paris i'm quite fond
of this narration style we'll see if my voice lasts
the duration of this video i'm on plenty
of vitamin c at the moment before we move i want you to stop
and look at this station properly not
as a tourist ticking boxes but as someone
who still gets on the tube at home the tube or maybe
the subway in New York a single journey here is between 20
and 65 New Taiwanese dollars roughly 50
pence to one pound fifty a day pass
that lets you ride everything is about three pounds fifty
now in London a single peak ride inside zone one
is three pounds ten one zone one journey that's
more than a full day of unlimited travel across Taipei
a cash single on the tube is seven pounds
Now you can ride this entire network all day for half of that.
They tell you London is expensive
because it's old. That's the story.
Age doesn't force you to charge the highest fares in the world
for a service that often smells of yesterday's food
and last night's urine. Age is an excuse.
Policy is the choice. Now watch the platforms here in Taipei.
There are lines painted on the floor.
People stand on them.
When the doors open they step aside and let the passengers off first.
Then they board. No surge. No shoulder.
Nobody treating the doorway as a contest.
It used to be like that in London. People used to be civilised.
And yet here the train is on time.
The floor of the carriage is clean enough
that you wouldn't think twice about putting your bag down.
There is no eating on the MRT.
No drinking. There are fines but more than
that there's a population that doesn't need the fine explained twice.
Nobody's littering. Nobody's playing music out of a phone speaker.
nobody is using the carriage as a bedroom or a stage
and it's more than a train. This is how a
city moves between home and work, between family and friends,
between the end of a shift and the
start of an evening. A metro is a nervous system of a place.
If the nerves are filthy and chaotic
and expensive the body is already sick.
You can hang banners about kindness at the entrance.
The floor still tells you the truth.
Now, I've used the London Underground for my entire adult life.
I know what it used to feel like, and I know what it is now.
It is run by a mayor who had years to look at the state of it,
and he has chosen not to see it.
He didn't invent the decline. He has administered it.
The Tube is one of the most expensive underground systems on Earth,
and on the lines that carry the most people,
one of the dirtiest in any rich city.
Crime on the network, even when passenger numbers fall.
violence and public order offenses are up the central
and northern lines take the worst of it
the rats on the tracks stopped being a punch line
a long time ago people don't queue to board they
press they eat they leave the wrappers a minority treat
the carriage as if it belongs to no one the
majority have learned to look away
because making a scene is now the greater risk that's not vibrant
that's low trust and low trust is not an accident
of Victorian tunnels it's what
happens when a city is told for a generation that shared standards are
oppressive that a common culture is suspect and that the only allowed
explanation for disorder is lack of funding.
Look around this carriage this
is what high trust still looks like
when it's intact people who assume the
stranger next to them was raised
with the same kind of expectations. Homogenous
This is a word many people on the left don't want used.
It is also the reason Taipei's
metro works. Taipei is a modern crowded high-tech capital
on an island that has every reason
to be anxious about the future.
It still runs a metro a child can run without a parent calculating
the risk. That isn't magic,
it's people who take pride in the place that is theirs.
Now I'm heading to Zhangshan, the Elephant Mountain.
The red line ends here, 10 minutes
on foot from the exit and you're at the stairs 20
or 30 minutes after that the city is under you
and Taipei 101 is sitting in the frame like it
was put there for the shot that's what a working
network does the mountains are connected
to the city you don't need a car you don't need a tour
you tap in you tap out you walk you come out
of a clean station into a park that is still a park
and the path up the mountains used to be used by school groups
and office workers and old men
We do this every morning because the air is still worth breathing.
Hold both pictures at once, the platform we just left,
the view we're climbing towards.
They're the same civic facts.
The people who won't throw rubbish on a train will
also keep a trail that looks over their capital.
Pride doesn't stop at the ticket barrier.
London once had that.
Not the marketing version, the ordinary version.
The sense that the underground was ours
and you didn't foul it because it carried your neighbours.
That broke it didn't break because the tunnels are old it broke
because the idea of ours was
Dismantled and what replaced it cannot generate the same restraint
You cannot fling the doors open and keep the manners
of a high-trust street. You can pretend for a while
Then the floor of the carriage becomes the argument
and no press officer can mop it
Now the first thing you'll notice about stations in Taipei.
They're phenomenal. I mean look at this bit of glass
frogs some good frogs
but everything is spotlessly clean shining run efficiently
you know when your trains coming good value as well not overpriced and
everything's in order people stand
in lines people wait until you get off the
train people take into consideration
that there are seats on the train meant
for the elderly meant for pregnant ladies
and they don't sit in it it's just a way of doing
things. And what I love, look, every station has these.
It's a private company, but every
station has these rented umbrellas.
Should it be raining when you get to your station,
just come down here, it's an umbrella.
And then I guess you're charged one hour, two
hours, four hours. It's really not that expensive.
It's affordable to rent an umbrella. You don't
have these rip-off merchants.
And you get these cowboys in London where suddenly it
starts raining and then the price of an umbrella outside
a tube station is 20 quid. There,
19 for an hour this is just a predominantly
well-run let's go and see a fantastic view
so today i'm on my way to the elephant hiking trail
so i can get a better view of glamorous
taipei now when i walk around buildings like
this just in the east of the city i'm reminded of
places like singapore the nice thing about it
being january you can hear the wind it's a little
bit brisk today but to be honest
when all i have are black items of clothing and i'm also wearing
a black coat kind of relieved it's not super hot
and it hopefully gives me the opportunity
to walk to the top and give you guys an amazing view of taipei
so join me on the elephant hiking
trail on the edge
of taipei thank you when
i first arrive in cities
i sometimes have a plan
and sometimes I have zero plan
but one of the things I love to do is to try to get to the
highest point sometimes that's going
to the highest building sometimes that's climbing a
hill sometimes it's climbing a mountain
but either way I'm trying my best to explore try my best to
really just understand the city if time permits I will try
to literally take in as many streets as
possible to really really understand the city now I know
not everyone is like this but I'm a big fan
of walking i tend to walk everywhere i live in london
and most of the time i'm walking everywhere
and if i'm not walking i'm on a bike
because i tell you now the best way to see a city
isn't via the metro
although as lovely as the taipei metro is it is getting out there it's
getting out and about but obviously
if time's limited you've got to get yourself from a to b
to c and then you've got to use
the public transport you've got to use trains but when
the opportunity permits itself utilize the streets just explore
and thankfully this isn't a favela
in brazil so thankfully a very very safe city uh
this was me trying to find a ancient temple
i wasn't sure what to expect
but this is the ancient temple that i found i had a quick peek
in no one was really around i was kind
of half expecting to see worshippers but i didn't see
anyone like that i saw some locals
but yeah a lot of my traveling is effectively just wandering
around and thinking to myself i wonder what
is around that corner i wonder what is in that
neighborhood and that's generally how i explore cities all over
the world i will be trying to
release as many videos on taiwan as possible
when time permits so do click that subscribe button
and you will see some amazing things on this journey yeah
and if you haven't clicked that
like button already. Click that like button
because it allows this video to
be shown to more people. I took a small detour.
I wanted to take in a Taoist
temple. This little temple,
well reasonably big, was built by an elderly
lady back in the 1950s. Top of the hill.
Great views. Seen some changes over the
years. Obviously since the 1950s but it's still here.
It's still a Taoist temple
and it's just in a way it's kind of what it represents.
You know just going with
the flow not pushing too hard just seeing where the energy takes you
and yeah the energy took me
here small detour now i'm gonna head back down
and head back up again but don't wear black on this
hike right well this is the start of the climb i'm
at the bottom of the steps on the elephant
mountain and on the east side of taipei just
a short walk from the Zhangshan MRT and from here
it looks pretty straightforward enough a set
of stone stairs disappearing up into the trees
but what I established over the course
of the day it gets steeper the further you go but these steps
weren't always here in this form the hills around
this side of the city were used for much longer
than the modern trail that we see here today during
the Japanese colonial period the area
had an industrial tracks bringing charcoal
and tea down into Taipei earlier still it was part of a
range used by the indigenous groups
the formal recreational trail with proper stone steps and
viewing platforms that you see here today,
were put down by the Taipei government in the mid 1990s,
as the Xinyi district developed.
Once Taipei 101 went up,
this became the obvious place to come and look at it.
For locals, it was more than a tourist viewpoint.
It has become a free outdoor gym on their doorstep.
Now you'll notice straight away,
people of all ages are on these steps.
Older locals are coming up at a steady pace.
Some of them jogging sections.
Younger people are taking the stairs two at a time.
It's a proper workout for the calves and the quads
and because the steps are uneven in places you're constantly adjusting
your footing so balance gets trained as well.
The trail isn't a single continuous climb either.
As you get deeper into it the path rises and it falls.
Short descents, flatter stretches and between the steeper flights.
So you're not just grinding uphill the whole time.
The variety is part of why people use it regularly.
It's hard enough to be useful close enough to be convenient
and the best thing is it's free
Now as I ascend these steps I follow the route on my phone
Google Maps has the trail and the main viewpoints marked
which is useful once you're into the trees and the paths split
I've had data the entire time I've been in Taiwan
which has made moving around a lot simpler
Now I've been using Roamaround for this trip
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Now the further up these steps,
the views start opening through the trees, but the work
doesn't stop. The locals treat
this as a normal part of the day, something they do
their legs and their lungs,
not just for the photograph at the top. It's a simple piece of
infrastructure that a lot of people
are clearly getting proper use out of. Further up these steps
the view starts opening through the trees, but the work doesn't stop.
The locals treat this as a
normal part of the day,
something they do for their legs and their lungs, not just for the
photographs at the top.
It's a simple piece of infrastructure built in the 90s that a lot of
people clearly are getting proper use out of.
I've taken my hat off and I put
my shades on. The Sun is starting to come out
and my head was getting rather hot. I
think it's the Taoist monastery that inspired me to go hatless.
Don't be shy of the
bald head. You can almost see why people
in Taiwan especially Taipei live to a
ripe old age of 84 they say in the statistics. That's a couple of years
higher than the UK average mostly because they're always walking up and
down the steps like this similar
to Hong Kong in a way there's not all these
little walking trails really really nice people got
their walking sticks I think
I'm halfway so I'm gonna carry on it's
not the biggest hike in the world but
when you've just come off December the booze
and you've come off from the
Christmas dinners and everything it's
a bit more problematic than it really
should be but maybe this is the start
of a bit of a health kick famous last words
eh? And there it is Taipei
from the mountain that
sits against it a dense
serious functioning capital not a theme park
not a cautionary tale a city that
still believes it is allowed to prefer order.
I want this to give you some
perspective we are now
in a quiet part where we have fantastic views and here
you'll see the city unfolding behind us.
It also gives you perspective on why
people do wear masks here. You can see the haze.
That's not fog. That is pollution.
And Taiwan is actually far cleaner than mainland China.
But despite that, a lot of
a lot of pollution. And it only gets worse as the heat builds up. So in
in January it really isn't that bad but days
when there isn't that much wind and you can hear the
wind there is a bit of wind getting blown away out to sea here
when the wind calms imagine that
lots and lots of pollution all the traffic all
the mopeds all the trucks the cars that's why people
wear masks it's not because of the COVID sometimes
because they're sick but yeah really really
beautiful trail
and I just said it's stinky maybe that's where they were why they wear masks
i didn't come here to pretend Taiwan has
no problems every country has problems what it
does not have on this network
and on this hillside is a particular refusal we've got used to at home
the official decision not to notice what is in front of you
and the moral vanity that
calls that refusal compassion cities don't decline
because the trains get old cities
These decline when the people
who run them decide that standards are a form of cruelty
and that when the people
who built the standards should stay quiet about the wreckage.
And Metro is a small thing until it isn't,
it is the daily proof of whether society still
shares a code.
Taipei still does,
London is spending a fortune to demonstrate that it doesn't.
look at the view then remember the platform now
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