Thanks, your post made things more clear to me 
PS. Even in Europe I prefer private beaches compared to overcrowded, dirty, stinking public ones.
Unfortunately its the reality. However seems that the Naruwan Hotel is not in that ‘nice’ category.
[quote=“engerim”]Thanks, your post made things more clear to me
PS. Even in Europe I prefer private beaches compared to overcrowded, dirty, stinking public ones.
Unfortunately its the reality. However seems that the Naruwan Hotel is not in that ‘nice’ category.[/quote]
Go to Penghu and Kinmen for nice clean public beaches. Kinmen especially has miles and miles of long broad sandy beaches with a gentle tide and slow descending shelf. Really surprising.
Penghu beaches are smaller but very pretty and so far don’t have big hotels on them. They tried on one beach but were stopped. However, the cement shell is still sitting there as the company refuses to pay to tear it down. 
Actually I know an aboriginal run place just before the tropic of cancer marker that has its own private beach. Nice simple little place to stay.
[quote=“Mucha Man”]Penghu beaches are smaller but very pretty and so far don’t have big hotels on them. They tried on one beach but were stopped. However, the cement shell is still sitting there as the company refuses to pay to tear it down.
Actually I know an aboriginal run place just before the tropic of cancer marker that has its own private beach. Nice simple little place to stay.[/quote]
I hope I can visit Penghu one day. For cleanliness I loved Guam and It has decent western food + not all the shit that swims in the Taiwan strait
Just 3 hours flight, unfortunately China Airlines decided the nicest time to fly there during the night (so it feels a bit like long distance).
[quote=“Feiren”]110% agree that most people don’t litter anymore and there are many beach cleanups now. Also, the big problem 20 years ago was that they didn’t have trash collection especially in rural areas so people had to find places to dump. It is so much better now.
150% agree about not trusting the business community.[/quote]
175% agree with your agreement.
[quote=“Mucha Man”]Before the hotel there was a nice little beach community with a campground, fantastic Italian restaurant, and free beach. The hotel company came in, kicked everyone else, even though it is a public beach, threw all the old materials into the sea and began construction. They divided their hotel up into small sections because small tourism projects don’t need to pass environmental assessments. However it is clearly one unit, the sum of its parts. The local community won an injunction to have construction stopped. The courts declared that yes the building was illegal.
The county then simply reissued a building license and when confronted the mayor said something like “how can this project be illegal when I just gave them a license.”
The hotel is also fugly and given its past their is no reason to believe that it will be run responsibly. Again, the destruction from the waste of hundreds of people a day in one tiny area cannot compare to the tossing of garbage by the local community.
If the Chateau did its job the whole beach would be clean. In any case it is a bizarre argument that instead of pushing for a cleaner environment we should build artificial garbage free bubbles.[/quote]
Dude it sucks i agree, shit like this happens here all the time and the country is the way it is because of it.
I met a texan guy once in a bar, somehow we got talking about the iraq war (it was 2004) his solution and i quote him ‘just nuke the f**king place, it was a desert before and it will be after’
Replace desert with dump and you have my personal thoughts on the country…
Sure FORMOSA was once a pretty place, but Taiwan never will be.
A regular Einstein, then. 
I would still like to know, ‘Where does all the tax money go?’ A simple, cheap solution to garbage being tossed would be public garbage bins that are emptied once or twice a day - plus an advertising campaign. I daresay those simple measures would solve most of the garbage probs in TW.
Even so, with no thanks to the local council, it’s really not that bad here, and if you think Taiwan is one big dump, then you haven’t been to Taidong.
I haven’t seen the Chateau in Kenting nor will i - i went to Kenting once about 5 years ago and couldn’t wait to get out of there - to me it was like a feel good Disney movie gone horribly wrong - where somehow the evil developers got hold of the script and did in fact succeed in destroying the place. Same for Chihben. And now here they come gunning for the whole east coast.
This has been mentioned before, a couple of times, but the site of the hotel was perfectly fine the way it was (photos anyone?) - it’s a beautiful beach, it’s the ocean, it’s timeless nature, and it’s free - what more do you want for your family holiday? Do you really need to see it all concreted over before you feel you can relax? Can’t you just stay in Taipei and do that? Or go to Kenting - you’ll love it. I don’t know if The Chateau is really a chateau, or it’s just one of those ridiculous names they give to highrise concrete developments, but what they have built on Shan Yuan beach is no chateau - it’s a massive concrete monstrosity (you don’t need to see the plans, it’s already built - in fact the plans they produced bear no resemblence whatsoever to what they built anyway - they said it would be two small building in order to circumvent the requirement for an environmental impact study that automatically kicks in on developments over a certain size) that will be churning out 1000’s of turds into the ocean each day.
And btw, did i mention that the whole thing is completely illegal?
Can’t see too much trash on this local beach. (photo by Daniel Flynn)
[quote=“dulan drift”]I would still like to know, ‘Where does all the tax money go?’ A simple, cheap solution to garbage being tossed would be public garbage bins that are emptied once or twice a day - plus an advertising campaign. I daresay those simple measures would solve most of the garbage probs in TW.
[/quote]
Well, Taiwan has a low tax base in part because companies and the wealthy pay so little. In most countries the wealthy pay the lion’s share and salaried workers a much smaller percentage. In Taiwan salaried workers pay about 70% of taxes. It’s completely out of balance.
Property tax for example is paid on the assessed worth. But there are almost no properties assessed more than a few million. So all those 50 million dollar units are paying taxes on a few million only. In other words, very little. Rent also is never claimed. Financial mags have estimated there are tens of thousands of people in Taiwan who make over a million a year, but pay no taxes because it is all from rent. Some even get subsidies on medical because on paper they are poor.
There is also the matter that counties get a pittance. Most of the industry in them is headquartered in Taipei so this is where they pay taxes. When I used to live in Taoyuan there was great bitterness that the factories were polluting Taoyuan but Taipei was getting the tax money so it could build parks and clean itself up.
You must have read about the county-cities mergers. That was largely about balancing out some of the inequalities. A city for example has to provide 27 services. A county 11. Cities also get more money from the central gov.
So places like Taitung are 4th class regions. Low tax base, low transfers back from the central government. That’s largely why they are as backward as they are. No money.
As for garbage cans, it has long been policy not to have them in most public areas to discourage dumping of household waste. Sensible or not that is the policy. Nothing to do with money.
Btw, kenting is a great place away from the stupid tourist beaches (though the Chateau actually is a very nice place to stay and not at all a huge eyesore).
Jialeshui area has great surfing and low crowds. The coastline is splendid and fun to ride a scooter or bike along. The reserves are filled with fascinating coral deposits and limestone caves that used to be under the sea. There is also lots of birds and butterfly life, and it’s not hard to spot the reintroduced sika deer.
Come fall Kenting sees one of the world’s great raptor migrations. Tens of thousands a day can pass by with a record of around 60,000 flying past in one day a few years back. And that’s the result of solid environmental work by local bird societies. So even in a place like Kenting there is lots of good news and good work. Wish there was even more.
You know what you’re talking about MM, I’ll give you that.
I saw that a few years back and it freaked me out. It looked like a scene straight out of LOTR, and I was half expecting some disaster to rapidly follow. What a sight!
Another time, I also came upon a sika deer roadkill and the half-destroyed car that hit it. That was unreal.
[quote=“Mucha Man”]Before the hotel there was a nice little beach community with a campground, fantastic Italian restaurant, and free beach. The hotel company came in, kicked everyone else, even though it is a public beach, threw all the old materials into the sea and began construction. They divided their hotel up into small sections because small tourism projects don’t need to pass environmental assessments. However it is clearly one unit, the sum of its parts. The local community won an injunction to have construction stopped. The courts declared that yes the building was illegal.
The county then simply reissued a building license and when confronted the mayor said something like “how can this project be illegal when I just gave them a license.”
The hotel is also fugly and given its past their is no reason to believe that it will be run responsibly. Again, the destruction from the waste of hundreds of people a day in one tiny area cannot compare to the tossing of garbage by the local community.[/quote]
That’s the story told to me a few years back by my friend who lives in Dulan. I was trying to remember it exactly, Thanks.
So do you, but you’re right it’s all good and interesting.
May the force be with you both. 
Yup. I LOVE Kenting. LOVE it. Haven’t been to that godforsaken shithole of a town or its immediate environs for years, though, except for driving through. Even better now that I’ve discovered the road from Hengchun to Jialeshui so I no longer even have to sully myself with the dirtybirds and tourist trash in Kenting. Actually, most of the Hengchun peninsula is lovely – except for fucking Kenting. We can only hope that the dirty mouthbreathers will keep their filthy shit firmly in Kenting so that the visiting filthy mouthbreathers don’t despoil the REAL Kenting area.
Sort of the opposite of engerim’s plan to create bubbles of cleanliness, you want to contain the filth in a few select areas. 
Sort of the opposite of engerim’s plan to create bubbles of cleanliness, you want to contain the filth in a few select areas. [/quote]
But it WORKS! Kending’s a prime example. The tourist turds congregate round the filthy old rundown main strip with a few dirtybird stragglers down toward the lighthouse, but drive just a very few kilometers in either direction and its basically untouched.
Sort of the opposite of engerim’s plan to create bubbles of cleanliness, you want to contain the filth in a few select areas. [/quote]
But it WORKS! Kending’s a prime example. The tourist turds congregate round the filthy old rundown main strip with a few dirtybird stragglers down toward the lighthouse, but drive just a very few kilometers in either direction and its basically untouched.[/quote]
Ok, to be honest, i didn’t give it much of a go. For a start, it was CNY, so the horde was out in force, and driving in, i noticed a 30km traffic jam of people going home - must have been near the end of the holiday. Inside, it was bumber to bumber and there was a Taipei industrial strength night market with people shoulder to shoulder and the streets were lined with large foreboding hotels and there was a lot of unnecessary noisy things and not a single sika deer. I stayed in the cheapest hotel i could find and got up at 5 and took off in order to beat the jam.
But it does sound nice if you get away from the main town a bit. Thanks for the insight - I’ll give it a go sometime. Whatever, i would still be concerned that the ‘godforsaken shithole’ stuff is coming to a favourite get-away near you sometime, in the not-distant future. The beauty of Taiwan, in a way, is that the beaten track is so well beaten that you don’t need to get very far off it to be in a different world.
I think your sentence works in multiple ways, such as:
[strike]Kending[/strike]Taipei’s a prime example. The […] turds congregate round the filthy old rundown main strip with a few dirtybird stragglers down toward the lighthouse (Taipei 101), but drive just a very few kilometers in either direction and its basically [strike]untouched[/strike]the real Taiwan.
No offense (as always). I hope they don’t move the central government to Taichung. Taiwan yet has to see its decentralization.
I kind of agree we don’t want Taidong to become Taipei. That would be called Damnshui then right?
[quote=“Mucha Man”][quote=“dulan drift”]I would still like to know, ‘Where does all the tax money go?’ A simple, cheap solution to garbage being tossed would be public garbage bins that are emptied once or twice a day - plus an advertising campaign. I daresay those simple measures would solve most of the garbage probs in TW.
[/quote]
Well, Taiwan has a low tax base in part because companies and the wealthy pay so little. In most countries the wealthy pay the lion’s share and salaried workers a much smaller percentage. In Taiwan salaried workers pay about 70% of taxes. It’s completely out of balance.
Property tax for example is paid on the assessed worth. But there are almost no properties assessed more than a few million. So all those 50 million dollar units are paying taxes on a few million only. In other words, very little. Rent also is never claimed. Financial mags have estimated there are tens of thousands of people in Taiwan who make over a million a year, but pay no taxes because it is all from rent. Some even get subsidies on medical because on paper they are poor.
There is also the matter that counties get a pittance. Most of the industry in them is headquartered in Taipei so this is where they pay taxes. When I used to live in Taoyuan there was great bitterness that the factories were polluting Taoyuan but Taipei was getting the tax money so it could build parks and clean itself up.
You must have read about the county-cities mergers. That was largely about balancing out some of the inequalities. A city for example has to provide 27 services. A county 11. Cities also get more money from the central gov.
So places like Taidong are 4th class regions. Low tax base, low transfers back from the central government. That’s largely why they are as backward as they are. No money.
As for garbage cans, it has long been policy not to have them in most public areas to discourage dumping of household waste. Sensible or not that is the policy. Nothing to do with money.[/quote]
I was aware of the low tax rate, i’ve been happily paying it, but still, there is consumption tax, and billions of dollars in road tolls collected each year, and the sheer population density means that the government must be racking it up. I could probably look this up myself i suppose, but i suspect MM would know - does the Taiwan economy run at a surplus? if so, how much?
As you pointed out, a large part of the problem would seem to lie with the distribution of tax revenue - which again lends weight to the idea that although this is ostensibly a local council issue, the only chance of a solution lies in public pressure on the central government.
Re the garbage bins, i do kind of understand (without agreeing) why they do it in Taipei or other heavily populated places (though they didn’t seem to be doing the garbage truck shuffle last time i was in Japan), but at countryside parks, beaches, small towns?
Was down at ShanYuan last weekend, it’s a sad sight. The hotel is nearing completion, it’s not looking any prettier. The beach is piled high with bulldozed sand - I suppose it will get landscaped. I don’t know how the mainlanders’ turds will get handled, but I trust it’s not straight out to sea via a pipeline.
The protest camp is still standing on the beach, empty when I was there, but there are plenty of notices & signs up. Perhaps people do still attend.
Still, the hotel goes forward. Perhaps a CNY opening? Sickens me to think that a handful of fat cats are about to pocket NT$ from this venture.