Trail of the unexpected: Taiwan

It's bustling capital offers an eclectic selection of steamy delights

"Iron Penis", shouts the only non-Chinese hoarding in Taipei's main street. I'm treating it as an advertisement rather than an instruction, and anyway, I don't have an iron with me. There's hardly a word of English on the signs in Taiwan's biggest city. It's refreshing, I'm thinking – a rest from the West – until we arrive at the hotel to find a McDonald's over the road.

Since it became a bolt-hole for deposed Chinese nationalists fleeing the march of Mao in 1949, the island of Taiwan has been performing economic miracles. But the first time you venture out on to the streets of Taipei, the "provisional capital of the Republic of China", you think it will be something of a miracle if you survive the day. Each change of every traffic light provides the spectacle of a Grand Prix start of hundreds of motor scooters, some bearing three people, with a child standing in front of the driver, and mum riding sidesaddle on the back. Shoals of these scooters dash in and out between madcap taxis.

On this whistle-stop tour of the Far East with my band, the Planets, we were in Taipei for only three days. But contrary to the usual "you can't see a place from a posh hotel or through the windows of an air-conditioned vehicle" rule of thumb, being driven around in the EMI Records bus had given us a good sketch of the place. We'd even done the sweaty trudge to have our palms read by the fortune-tellers who inhabit rows of booths in the city's subways.

If you are expecting something of the spectacular night skyline of Hong Kong, the futuristic splendour of Tokyo and the serenity and elegance of Singapore, you are in the wrong place. Taipei is more down-at-heel. It's as Chinese as it gets without being on the mainland. And it's hot, humid and funky, interspersed with oases of calm such as Hsing Tien Temple, which stands proudly at the crossroads where you come up from the subway; a magnificent Taoist temple.

The fortune-tellers didn't tell us we would visit the Lovers' Temple in the old part of town to film a piece for the Chinese Valentine's Day, but we did anyway. Red-and-yellow lanterns festooned the little old market street – apparently to let the ghosts out for a yearly stretch of the legs at the end of July, after which they go back whence they came.

The Lovers' Temple is a small, touristy attraction, decked out with brightly coloured idols and cheerful religious imagery. The TV company asked the Planets to pray for their ideal lover. You have to pray in a certain way – turn around three times, burn some incense and give the lady some money. Personally, I was praying for a dry shirt and a drink of cold water.

This was a fascinating, sticky place to be in August. The town throbbed with life, but it's normal Taiwanese life – neither chic nor cool, just hot and fast. One evening, our hosts took us to the Tai-Ho-Tien Spicy Hot Bowl, where the TV cameras wanted to catch us choking on the food, as most British people do.

Bits of offal and small parcels of mystery food float in an infernal sauce that rips out the roof of your mouth adding to the protein value. We obliged by making faces like disgusted wimps, all except our violinist, Jonathan, who gleefully gobbled his and everyone else's dinner.

There isn't a scratched, dented or dirty taxi in the whole of Taipei. They must prune out the dented ones at night, because you can search all day long and you'll only find beautiful, shiny new taxis with gleaming yellow paint jobs. They're abundant and inexpensive, with polite drivers – just what you wouldn't expect in this steamy, knockabout city. I asked my Taiwanese friend what he liked most about living in Taipei. "The people are very friendly, and you can always find something delicious to eat, whatever the time," was his refreshingly simple reply.

For visitors who feel impelled to collect at least one cultural set-piece from a city, the place to go is the National Palace Museum. The Imperial Chinese art collection spent years being shunted around mainland China to evade first Japanese troops, then Communism. So a small island with 20 million people finds itself with a collection miraculously disproportionate to its size. Even though the museum is the city's most imposing building, it can display only a fraction of the contents at any one time. Like Taipei itself, there is much more to it than meets the eye.

The only airline with direct flights between the UK and Taipei is Eva Air (020-7380 8300), which flies four times a week from Heathrow via Bangkok, for £639 return through Easy Travel (01473 214305). Connecting services are available on Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong, or China Airlines via Amsterdam or Frankfurt.