After 2+ months in Chiayi, I’ve compiled a list of recommended restaurants and other living resources in an RTF file I can email to others who are interested.
I’ll be starting on a similar guide for Taipei based on a year there.
Please email me via Forumosa if you’d like to view this file. I could just email it to you.
Additions welcome!
I also have a list of English-language novels I’d be happy to swap…this will only work for other people in Chiayi City as I can’t get around easily with the dearth of public transport.
There’s another page all about Chiayi here:
geocities.com/allhou/chiayiscene.htm
but I don’t think it’s up to date…
‘South’ magazine, published by the same people as ‘Compass’ in Taichung, covers Chiayi. I picked up a copy when I went down to the Tainan Science Park, don’t know where (if?) in Chiayi you can get it. They’ve a URL:
taiwanfun.com
Quinntheeskimo: Yep, read the Chiayi guide from allhou’s site before I moved here. Certain parts are definitely out of date, sadly.
Allhou asked for my guide though, so maybe he’ll post an update someplace. There’s just too little information about Chiayi.
Bartleby: I have the latest issue of FYI South, the one about the Taroko Gorge. Do you notice there’s more coverage on Kaohsiung, Tainan and Pingtung than on Chiayi? Granted CY’s a lot smaller but still… I’ve a vested interest when I’m living in CY.
Yep… I’m now taking pictures of the places mentioned in my guide so that people can recognise them even without knowing the Chinese characters. Plus, I’m still discovering new places.
To get an updated copy, please PM me.
Anything similar for Kaohsiung city?
Here ya go:
aroundkaohsiung.freeservers.com/
Check out their free magazine, too. You can find it in local watering holes and restaurants, as well as Eslite.
That’s the good thing about Kaohsiung, it’s big enough to have Kaohsiung Walker, and of course FYI South covers more of Kaohsiung than anywhere else.
Try finding something for Chiayi!
I lost the file in a hard disk crash, and haven’t been able to get it back from people I’ve sent it to.
A number of the restaurants I’ve recommended have closed down so it may make sense to just do a whole new one now.
PM me if you’re interested in getting the new version, if and when I get it done.
Shimmers
Nice to see someone else who lives in Chiayi. Is there a chance that we have met?
If you’re living a place like Chiayi the question should be whether there’s a chance you haven’t met.
Surfbunny,
Um, I wouldn’t know…where do you hang out?
The only place I go to regularly is the Guohua swimming pool/spa.
If you haven’t been, I highly recommend it:
public.fotki.com/Shimmertje/wate … g_complex/
Mod Lang,
Chiayi’s tiny, I agree; but I don’t know many people here, period.
Shimmers
I spend a bit of time at American Pie,mainly because I take Chinese class there with Terry. Some sundays I head down to the frisbee game too. Believe it or not I was just about to join up at the Guo Hua swimming pool this week. So maybe I’ll see you around there.
As to number of foreigners, it is believed there is about 140-150 foreigners here in Chiayi. So I don’t know all the foreigners here, but perhaps I know someone who knows that person.
Surfbunny,
Where’s the frisbee game?
I guess 150 foreigners in Chiayi is quite a big chunk of the population…
I hope you liked the swimming pool. We go three times a week.
Wow! That’s amazing! When I lived in Jiayi ('89 to '92) there were probably less then 30, including the missionaries! Whenever I saw a foreigner back then, I stared harder than the locals. I think one of the reasons for it being such a quiet little backwater was Lonely Planet’s dismissal of it as “an average Taiwanese city, with nothing much to see…” 
So where’s the poshest digs at in Jiayi nowadays? Back then, Dongyang Bieshu (Toyo Country Club) was it, but the last time I visited, I was struck by how shabby it had become. Have you ever visited the Phoenix Waterfalls (Fenghuang Pubu) up in the mountains past the Bantianyan Temple? Does Wenhua Road still have the kick-ass Douhua place about halfway down? Ah, Jiayi. Lots of memories there… 
Oh, there seem to be a fair number of foreigners around. There’s at least one a week at the swimming pool, and also at Lantan on weekends, where we hang out.
Gee… where’s this Toyo place?
And there’s more than one douhua place along Wenhua Road these days… is there any way to identify the kick-ass place?
The only thing I recognise is the Fenghuang Pubu, and we never made it - there were an awful lot of steps going down. We gave up after a while, not knowing how long it would take to get there, and I counted like 800 steps going back up. We ended up hanging out at the pavilion before the waterfall instead, and feeding the three-legged dogs.
Now that we’ve found Lantan we spend our weekends there, it’s closer.
The frisbee game is now on at the pokadot stadium it used to be at the University but moved due to some problems with using the field. It’s on at about 3-4pm on Sunday afternoons.
There are quite a few foreigners these days. You should have seen how many came out for midnight mass on christmas eve. We are always seeing new faces all around the place. Chiayi city apparenlty has a population of about half a million, so 150 foreigners isn’t that many. But we do stick out. My biggest problem is that I don’t work with any foreigners so they only time I do get to meet them is at frisbee or at Americian Pie. And another interesting fact is there are only 4 Australians in Chiayi, but many many South Africans and Canadians with a few Americians thrown in.
It’s between Renyitan and Lantan. Outside of the city.
It’s on the south side of the road, on the corner of Wenhua and a lane, just east of the building where my 3rd Floor Taekwondo school - Olympic Taekwondo used to be.
It IS a long walk, but the water is perfect - beautiful for swimming. There are two “levels” of waterfalls, and one of them is great for jumping off of. Did you ever see the movie The Beach with Leonardo Dicaprio? - it’s sorta like that. Be careful of snakes - I saw those pretty green bamboo snakes on two occasions. Man, I wish that waterfall were closer to Taipei. :lovestruck: