The Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology opened in 2003 and has offered free admission since 2010. Its collection traces the lives of a community now believed to be ancestral to the Ketagalan Pingpu Aboriginal people—ironworkers, traders, and farmers who occupied this river bend for over a millennium. The glass beads in the display cases came from Southeast Asia, evidence of a trading network that reached well beyond Taiwan long before European ships arrived. The building itself is worth the ferry trip: it won the 2002 Taiwan Architecture Prize and the 2003 Far Eastern Architect Award, its angular concrete forms set against the riverbank in a way that manages to feel both monumental and site-specific. The museum sits a short bicycle ride from the Bali Left Bank Park, and most visitors combine both in a single afternoon.

Liao Tian-ding was born in 1883 and died in 1909 in a cave in what is now Bali District. In the years between, he became the most wanted man under Japanese colonial rule—a thief who targeted colonial institutions and wealthy collaborators, and who evaded authorities with a skill that passed into legend. His story inspired a Cloud Gate Dance Theater production and a suite by the Prague Symphony Orchestra. The temple dedicated to him in Bali, completed in 1975, draws visitors who come to petition a folk hero whose appeal rests on what he represented rather than what he actually did. Whether the historical record supports the 'Robin Hood' framing is a question local historians debate; what is undeniable is that Liao became a symbol of resistance for a community under occupation, and that symbols have their own kind of staying power. The Liaotianding Temple sits among the district's quieter streets, its incense rising into the same subtropical air where its subject once hid.

The six-minute ferry from Tamsui to Bali's Left Bank makes one of the simplest great visual transitions in the Taipei area. Looking back east from the Bali pier, the Tamsui riverside promenade is visible—the old shops, the crowd, the red-and-white Fort Santo Domingo rising on its bluff above the town. Further north, the white cables of Lover's Bridge (a 196-meter cable-stayed footbridge) curve above the river mouth. Turn west and the view is entirely different: the Wazihwei mangrove wetland, the flat cycling path stretching south along the riverbank, and behind everything the 616-meter cone of Guanyin Mountain—an inactive volcano whose silhouette, Taiwanese tradition holds, resembles the goddess of mercy lying on her side. The Bali Left Bank Park path runs along the water for several kilometers, paved and suitable for the rental bikes available near the ferry pier. On weekdays, the path is quiet. On weekends, it fills with families, and the cafes and food stands near the pier open their shutters.

Bali is most naturally approached as a half-day extension of a Tamsui visit. The ferry runs every ten to fifteen minutes from Tamsui's main pier, takes about six minutes, and costs very little. Cyclists can bring their bikes aboard. From the Bali pier, almost every attraction in the district is within a comfortable cycling distance—the archaeology museum, the Left Bank Park path, the Wazihwei nature conservation area with its boardwalk through the mangroves, and the smaller Bali Ferry Pier food stands where vendors sell oyster vermicelli and other Taiwanese snacks. Many of the stands close on weekdays when the visitor flow drops, so weekends are the livelier option. For those arriving directly from mainland China, a fast ferry service from Pingtan (approximately three hours) connects to Bali District directly—an unusual and direct link between the island and the mainland across the Taiwan Strait.