Keelung

We came up from Taipei on a whim, mostly because Lia wanted to see the harbor before we caught a ferry to the Matsu Islands the following week, and Keelung ended up holding our attention far longer than the half-day we’d budgeted. It rains here more than almost anywhere else in Taiwan — locals joke that Keelung has only two seasons, rain and typhoon — and we got the full experience, arriving under a grey drizzle that somehow suited the city’s slightly weathered, unglamorous harbor-town character.

A Port That Doesn’t Perform

Keelung’s harbor is still a real, working one — container cranes and fishing trawlers sharing water space with the occasional cruise ship, freight stacked along quays that haven’t been prettified for visitors. We walked the waterfront near Bisha Fishing Harbor in the early evening and watched crews unloading the day’s catch directly onto ice, gulls working the edges of the operation with practiced patience.

Above the port, Zhongzheng Park climbs a hillside to a towering white statue of Guanyin, and from the base of it the whole harbor opens out — ships, cranes, the mountains behind, and, on the clear stretch we caught between rain showers, a genuinely striking view out toward Keelung Islet.

Miaokou Night Market, Unbothered by Fame

Miaokou Night Market is one of Taiwan’s oldest and, by most rankings, most famous — and yet it carries none of the self-conscious polish that fame sometimes brings. It’s built around Dianji Temple, stalls radiating out along the street in front of it, and the specialties here are specifically maritime: tempura fish cakes, crab rolls, and a version of oyster omelette that a stallholder insisted, without much room for negotiation, was better than Taipei’s.

Lia ordered the crab rolls twice. I tried the fish cake tempura from a stall with a queue long enough that I assumed, correctly, it had to be good. We ate standing under an awning while the rain started again, which felt like the correct way to experience a city that wears its dampness so unapologetically.

When to go: Spring and autumn offer the best odds of dry weather, though Keelung’s rain reputation is well earned in any season — pack accordingly and treat a drizzle as part of the atmosphere rather than a reason to cancel plans.