I have not lived in taiwan since end of 99. Visited briefly in 2009 and 2012. A lot of things are different. Care to share ? Those of you who have been there from 99 to now?
For me just looking from abroad here there are new roads being built. New bridges (tamshui to bali) on 61, which now goes all the way to Tainan apparently. I would love to drive this road. And there are so many flights now from Taiwan to Japan. I dont mean the main airports I mean from secondary Taiwan airports to secondary Japanese airports. Not to mention to more places in Thailand (secondary airports) and Vietnam, etc etc. A lot of fun places to visit with direct connections. WE didnt have all that when i was there. The only exotic flight was when Makung airlines had the chartered flights to Laoag on the equally exotic BAe146-300. Otherwise it was mainly main airports to main airports in other countries. NOw there are so many flights it seems . A lot of fun. Also there are places like shiao liu chiu i never visited before. Lots to do.
Maybe i can retire in the phillippines and visit taiwan often in the future.
Canāt believe youāve never never.been to Xiao Liu Qiu. XIAO qiu Liu has changed quite a bit and in some ways is the new Kenting. Diving, free diving, snorkelling wth turtles.
Taiwanās infrastructure has been built out immensely with excellent roads, tunnels, rail, high speed rail and metros in most of the country. More recent changes are better roads going to the East coast from North and South.
Whole new cities have sprung up North of Hsinchu and in the Taoyuan area. The 61 is handy in parts and has been linked together but also ugly in parts. Many train stations have been raised or buried recently. New Kaohsiung train station has been built out.
Some areas are stagnating badly such as Kenting. Tourism is down a lot due to outflux to Japan in particular and China blocking their group tourists coming here.
I would love if that Laoag flight was still going. Dang.
In terms of culture I didnāt see a lot of changes kids are becoming less common and loads of people are obsessed with dogs and cats , a long term trend. Bue collar worker population continues to increase to record levels but we donāt see a large impact on society as they are somewhat walled off from it. There are more students from South East Asia all the time some of them will stay and work here also long term. Many are actually working āstudentsā here.
Itās cheap on weekdays unfortunately overpriced on weekends. Numbers are down 80% on peak periods from a few years ago read. The town and the activities there need to be reinvented. Hengchun has much improved although no St Tropez either.
Many tourist operators have faced issues around the island due to declining numbers of visitors. Nightmarkets were packed over the new year but it will dwindle off a bit now.
There a lot of stupid gimmicky promotions that people like here, this year it was power rangers.
I will be honest and say there have been few changes in Taiwan recently that I can perceive. For instance most people are still driving outdated petrol cars and scooters. There are no cheap Chinese electric cars here which I feel may be slowing the transition down a lot compared to other places.
Ok there is one really annoying change is a lot of places are instituting minimum orders per person in coffeeshops and restaurants, which is very family unfriendly and grasping in my opinion. They will prominently display ā,the rulesā in menus. Some will say you need to order a drink each even if you order food. Taiwan is not as laid back at all as it used to be. I travel a fair bit and havenāt noticed minimum orders per person anywhere else but I wouldnāt be surprised if they copied it from Japan or something.
gas is cheap here and those vehicles are so dependable and easy to fix, can run for a very long time.
I am a petrol head, so even if it were say Japanese or Western EV I would not consider those. But thank God we are not running on the Chinese EV bandwagon here, once most of them will go belly up (and it will happen and it is happening now, beside the bigger ones which may survive, this is going to be another Chinese bike, Chinese semiconductor, Chinese real estate bubble) who is going to service that? Basically they r all software, once the servers r down, u r left with a very expensive hunk of (not much) metal and plastic.
yeah, mostly a metro areas thing. This is due to too many abusing spaces (especially elders, but many youngs too) for hours on end by getting just a cup of coffee or tea. thatās all money lost for the venue, donāt like much loiters too, so whatever.
Yes and no. They may also do this in touristy cafes in the countryside and in small towns. Itās all over Taiwan. Itās not so much a problem of hanging around and studying, they are trying to maximize the spend per customer probably because the customer count is not high. These places generally are not very busy. Or for another word, they are greedy. Some will allow the minimum spend on food or drink items, but others are very greedy they will insist on one drink each not counting on any food items. Even large chains are staying to do this but interestingly Starbucks has not yet.
Again this is not something I personally have encountered anywhere else outside of Taiwan.
Donāt try to make up your margins at the expense of families. I find it grasping when Iām already spending 600, 700 nntd on them. No wonder nobody is having kids here.
Stating the obvious, thatās government policy. Gas is pretty cheap everywhere if you need donāt tax it.
But in China the electric revolution has moved into high gear and electric vehicles are very good quality now and cheaper to operate than gas vehicles. And they have many different kinds of electric vehicles too. Far ahead of Taiwan and better for the environment. Also Europe is moving ahead. Taiwan needs to clean itself up. Noisy as fuck motor scooters are also shit.
As for chinese EVs.. they explode. Nuff said. The rest of the world will catch up and make a better product. So if they ever catch on here at least we will get something more reliable.
The biggest problem is driving cars isnt really seen as something practical here. Scooters fill that need. So when the only purpose of a car is to show off how much of a pathetic man-child you are then we dont really need EVs unless they are even more flashy, even huger than a petrol car.
The Chinese are already the leaders in EVs and battery techā¦by a long long way. Nobody is going to catch-up. They donāt explode , these are reliable mass market cars mostly and sold around the world.
Much more south east Asians. Vietnamese are the most visable as they run businesses and most of the extra staff in restaurants, massage shops seem to be vietnamese.
Some places look a lot nicer now, even new taipei city. Banqiao is great but even places like sanchong are much better. Jilong has come a long way. Taoyuan city is still a dump.
I feel like the young people are much less cheery than before. They used to seem so innocent, cheery and fun. Now they all seem pretty antisocial, glum and glued to their phone 24-7.
Some things never change though. Traffic is still a joke and smoking as popular as ever while education around second hand smoke nonexistent. This winds me up.
Doesnāt mean we cannot wait until others have caught up. Battery tech does not equal a well made car. Which the chinese are behind on. And Iām sorry but yes they do explode.
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