I know the planet has poles, but it surprises me somehow that basically every map I've ever seen respects the poles as top bottom.

The earth is a sphere and we could just as well pick any pode/anti-pode we want when drawing.

For navigation, having the poles at top and bottom is really the only way to do it. Lining up positions of constant noon sun angle along a horizontal line (i.e. latitude line) makes the paper map correspond nicely to the navigational information available.