The sun came up over a single island off the bow, orange going to blue, and announced the day before either of us had managed coffee.

It is a short ride from the pier at Keelung into Taipei, and we started at the Confucius Temple. There are no statues in it and no images of anyone — Confucian temples do not go in for that — just spirit tablets, red pillars and a courtyard, and a great deal of quiet in a city that has very little of it.

Bao-an Temple is across the road and is the exact opposite: incense thick enough to taste, carved beams, gods in every direction and scooters going past the gate. Our guide called it the oldest and largest temple in Taipei.

Then the Lin An Tai Old Homestead, a courtyard house put up in the 1780s and moved right across the city in the 1970s when a road went through where it stood. It is the oldest house in Taipei and it has now stood in two places.

Lunch was dim sum, and this is where Chris came unstuck. Somewhere around the fourth basket the textures got the better of him, and he retired from the field and ordered a beer instead.

The Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall is enormous and sits in its own park, and we timed it right for the changing of the guard — slow, exact, and performed by men who have plainly done it ten thousand times. After that a handicraft centre, which is where every tour in the world goes at about that hour of the afternoon.

The thing you actually remember about Taipei is the scooters. They gather at every light in waves, hundreds deep, and set the rhythm of the place. We finished under Taipei 101, which was the tallest building in the world from 2004 to 2010 and still looks it from directly underneath.

Old and new sitting right on top of each other, and nobody here making any fuss about it. #TemplesofTaipei #TaipeiMotorLife #UrbanExploration