In Taipei, you can combine exercise with tourism and shopping.
- Walk or jog in the airport MRT alley located between Beimen station and the Airport MRT station. There is a super wide area with not very low foot traffic. This is probably one of the only places indoors that you can run…but it is uncommon to see people running here
- Walk in Taipei’s 1-mile mall (AKA Taipei City Mall). Each lap here is 1-mile in this underground mall. It gets very crowded at Taipei City mall on the weekends, so if you want to walk around without too much people around you it’s best to go around 11am when all the shops are open or by 8:30pm when most of the shops are closing.
- Go to any of the Taipei Sports Centers which can be found in every district of Taipei. They have a gym which costs NT$50/hour, and since they calculate you setting up and getting to the gym, they give you 70-minutes. After buying your ticket, just go through the gates and scan the receipt.
- Each Taipei Sports center has a lot to offer from rock climbing, badminton (extremely popular), basketball, archery, golf, swimming, aerobics, yoga, fitness classes, billiards, table tennis and more. You’ll only find locals here and all the signs are in Chinese, but if you make it in you’ll get a good workout!
- On a nice day, you can run at Da’an forest Park. Each lap around the park is 1km. Da’an forest park is huge with plenty of space. There are cafe’s, a MRT station, free workout equipment and lot of people exercising at the park. My favorite feature of parks in Taipei is that they offer free bug repellent. If you find a small stand with a leaf on it, you step on the pedal and bug repellent will come out.
- If you want more indoor fun, you can get exercise at a trampoline park in the Zhongshan area.
- In May of each year, you can do the Taipei 101 Run-up. This is where you run up the stairs of Taipei 101.