Yeah, it’s not very wild in England, we have a few harmless spiders.
Does living on a high floor help to escape bugs, 
or is that naive?
I’m guessing somewhere like Muzha would have less invasive critters?
It does help a bit. Just try to avoid living on the first floor if you can.
It’s gonna come down to just how close your apartment is located to the wilderness. I know some hippie types who live basically right next to/on mountains, and their places are literally crawling with creatures. But they’re used to it and unafraid, so.
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About the same. You need to get a serious exterminator to take care of your apartment if you don’t want that. Roaches, ants, lizards, beetles.
But honestly, it depends on your building. I live in a building where the entire building from the outside is treated with whatever they use to keep bugs out. It’s the only way really.
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i don;t think higher floors help. someone who worked in 101 told me they still get roaches in there. but yea the ground floor is the worst.
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I honestly suggest you live closer to more popular areas at first. You might get lonely in places like muzha. Then later you can move to somewhere else.
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Great to know! Devon is gorgeous. You probably get what I’m looking for 
Just had a look at the parks in Neihu. Seems like there’s lots of hiking trails too. Thank you
I lived in Taipei for a few months last year, but did the hostel thing. No bugs 
Definitely found being right in it a bit draining, but I was over near Ximending…
Yilan would be the antithesis to an underground hostel.
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I live and learn. 
Yikes, good to know.
What my friends who are into hiking do is live really close to their place of work in the city, but every time they have a free weekend they rent an airbnb near whichever hiking spot or spots they plan to hit. That way they can get the most out of their time there, while still being able to relax in a homey environment after a long day of hiking. Not a bad way to do it IMO.
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Its not for everyone. But for those that dont mind being more self relliant, it seems most expats of many years tend to migrate to the countryside. Taiwanese countryside is kind of a loose term so its pretty easy to get along. People being the biggest drawback. But financially the costs are very low, you can buy food farmer direct and cooking yourself. So you save on health care too, happiness index i would say is higher as you have a real house (instead of a small box you are worried about being noisy in, and never sleep cause youre surrounded by noisy cellmates) garden, mountains etc etc. Its never that far from convenience unless you become a mountain hermit (thats years 20 through 40). The draw of taipei is its a big city. If you dont need that city aspect, its a much more fullfilling life elsewhere. That said, if you are requiring living in a city, Taipei is many times better than pretty much all of the west. The east has no real cities. Yilan is getting crowded and polluted now. More like a Tainan without culture and the people are better 
so its almost a true city bus takes 40 mins pending traffic…not bad.
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We have done both. When we first started living in Taiwan we lived closer to the middle of the city and then slowly started to move outwards. It was surprising how much Green space there was just in Taipei “county”, ( now Xinbeishi) .
One thing to keep in mind is that your priorities in Taiwan may not be the priorities you had back home.
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If you really think that, you haven’t seen enough of Taipei! 
Actually, if you want to live in the city proper but still have greenery around you, besides Da’an Forest Park, have a look at the contiguous-except-for-one-major-road greenspace in the south part of the city. It’s not obvious looking at the map, but if you go to google and switch to satellite mode you can clearly see it.
Fuyang Eco Park and Fuzhou Shan Park are near Linguang Station on the brown line, just 5 stops (with one transfer) from the 101. I tried walking all the way from Fuzhou Shan to the other side (Wanlong Station on the green line) once and was told by construction workers a little bit past the funeral parlor that the route wasn’t open, but I seem to recall you can get from Xinhai Station (brown line) to the main mountain park area over there. There was also a sign (a few years ago) showing some kind of expansion plan at what must have been Wenshan Jingmei Sports Park.
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Wuxing Street, Lane 600. How many times must a man tell you these things. I’m typing this at my bedroom window and all I can see is trees and blue skies. All I can hear is cicadas and bird song, and the neighbor’s dog quietly yapping in the background.
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New Taipei City gets on my wick. One of my jobs involves testing.
Me: “Where do you live?”
Candidate: “Greater London.”
WTF is it with New Taipei City? It’s meaningless.
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At about 20 to 25 min. walking distance from the 101, that sounds like a good deal. How’s the rent?
As someone who lives in Tamsui, I’m not sure where you’re getting the impression it’s a green area. We’ve got the waterfront, and that’s nice, but if you want to quickly and conveniently walk under a bunch of trees, the Taipei 101 / Xiangshan area is pretty good for Taiwan.
Unfortunately, much of Taiwan - both cities and countryside - is rather awful for walking. I think that Taipei City itself is often a better environment than less urban areas of Taiwan, simply because Taipei City has actual sidewalks and (occasionally) trees lining those sidewalks. Small town Taiwan often has all the ugliness of urban sprawl, without the conveniences of city living (things like sidewalks, and drivers that at least make a pretense of following traffic laws). There’s good hiking in Taiwan, and good cycling, but pleasant strolls are hard to come by.
On accessing nature: in Taipei, having your own scooter or car is pretty optional (if you’ve got kids, a car makes a lot more sense). And the MRT and buses can be fairly good for getting to nearby parks. If you live anywhere outside of Taipei, you’ll almost definitely need to get your own form of transport as well.
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I do this. 
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The trouble with most green areas near Taipei are the little black mosquitoes. The little black mosquitoes are so bad they make you miss the big regular mosquitoes.
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I used to spend about 90 minutes each way commuting from Danshui to Chinese Culture University on Yangmingshan. Decent environment at one end of the commute, fantastic at the other end. And I wound up appreciating neither, because I was too darn tired from that commute.
Now I’m extraordinarily lucky to have a 10-minute walk to work, and it’s one of the best quality-of-life things to have ever happened to me. (And I’ll occasionally wake up from nightmares where the substance of the nightmare is pretty much “You’ll have to commute again!”, which is … weird?)
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