Hello,
A basic problem. I found an interesting web page http://www.formosanfattire.com/bikeshops/ that helps me find a shop to buy a bike from Kaohsiung (I will travel from Europe to Kaohsiung on 2nd January). The address of John’s Craft Cyclist’s Bike Shop is #77 Szwei 4th Road Kaohsiung City. OK, I open Google maps http://maps.google.com and search the address. The result = nothing.
Question: How can I use Google maps or any other website in internet to locate addresses in Taiwan?
OK, I guess this address is near the railway station of Kaohsiung. Below is a Google map around the area. While I cannot read in Chinese which one is Szwei 4th Road, can somebody please download the map picture, mark the correct address as a red dot on the map, and email the map picture me? (Then I’ll put coordinates into GPS to locate the shop easily.)
What other options should I learn to make my future life easier in Taiwan?
Regards,
-Mr. Janne Pyykkö, Espoo, Finland, Europe, soon in Taiwan
What’s the Chinese character for Szwei ? I can’t read that crap romanization.
Do you have it in Hanyu Pinyin, preferrably with the tone too?
Better yet, do you have the whole address in Chinese? If so, you can plug it into an electronic map like this:
map.com.tw/
and maybe get some help reading the results. 
Siwei is there on the lower right corner just below Lingya District. Look for the character 四. But it’s Siwei 1st road which means you must travel far down the road to the west to get to 4th road. Kaohsiung us a bit weird. Siwei and many other roads are divided into sections: Siwei 1st-Road, Siwei 2nd-Road, etc. Same road, just different sections. Siwei 4-Road is not near the train station but south near the harbor according to my maps.
How to make life easier? Learn Chinese. Seriously, you are going to a different country, you really can’t expect it to be as simple as plugging data into an Internet map. When you get to Kaohsiung visit the tourism centre and get some decent bilingual city maps (the taiwanfun.com group also have great bilingual maps: their mag for Kaohsiung is called FYI South Magazine - if it is still in print). There’s also Access Kaohsiung run by a Canadian.
Here’s a link to an English map: Link
The red star in the middle of the image is where the shop is. From Jhongsan Road(One of Kaohsiung’s dominant roads) you need to head west toward The Love River. It’s really close just off of Jhongshan Road. To give you some perspective, from the corner of Sihwei Road and Jhongshan Road, you’re looking at less than 2 kilometers to get all the way to The Love River. # 77 Sihwei 4th Road is right around where Sihwei crosses Jhonghua Road. It’s very easy to find.
Here are rough coordinates I got from this page:
Lat: 22:36:54N (22.61496)
Lon: 120:17:57E (120.29924)
marboulette