Cats mating, dogs barking, traffic, fighting couples, my horrible roommates, ect. Taipei is SO noisy. How do you get sleep???
I was told to get ear plugs. but they dont’ work so well. I still get kept awake. Also they cause ear pain.
SO how do you deal with noise? Any bright ideas?
I moved to an extremely quiet area. I’m very sensitive to noise, and nothing else worked for me.
One idea is to double pane your winows. I’ve seen these in action, and it really cuts down on the noise. That’s one of your few easy options. Another is to soundproof the room you spend the most time in, but that’s getting into more money (the door being the most expensive, I’d imagine.)
sometimes if I am bothered by noise, I drown it out by playing some mellow music while I’m trying to get to sleep.
You could cut off your ears.
Heh. When I lived in Taipei, I had a set of what were actually double-hung windows [I think that’s what they’re called – where you have two separately-sliding panes of glass between you and the air pollution] that faced out onto the street. (which was Roosevelt Rd. 3rd Sec.) They were shared between my room and the one next to mine in the apartment, which had a wall the landlord had put in but shared the window space and a little tiny hole. When we first moved in, however, they were slid around backwards – so that they left some pretty significant gaps in the window frame.
Ugh! The noise was so loud. Every morning when the buses would start (around 5 am is it?) I would wake up from the banging and clanging. Took me months before I realized why I always woke up at the crack of dawn… I think the first day I got up, and in my sleep-addled state stumbled into the living room and fell asleep on the kitchen table, trying to get away from the noise…
Thank $deity I was cleaning the windows one day and realized the problem. Made things much better.
More on topic, take heart – I’ve lived in NYC for six years now and don’t even notice noise any more. Garbage truck backing up outside the window at 4 am? Not a problem! …the only problem is when I go out of the city and am alarmed by seeing open space and can’t get to sleep because of the quiet… maybe you’ll be so lucky someday too. eh.
Close all the windows and put the a/c on to make ‘white noise’?
Music.
Download the sound of breaking waves, and play it loudly on your computer all night.
Do tons of exercise and drink unfeasibly large quantities of rum before bed.
Or move to Lotus Hill. I sleep to the sounds of nature - frogs, crickets, etc. and leave my window open to let the cool breeze in. No need for aircon. Traffic noise is something that happens to other people, and if I hear a dog barking the solution is simple: walk into the lounge and tell her to shut up.
The commute is a bit of a pain, but it’s worth it if you value peace, quiet and a clean living environment.
You also might try a noisy fan which will suck up a lot of the noise…or yes, move. Taipei is nice, but it is ON 24/7.
Other than that, the rum thing works (replace rumwith whisky if needed)
I can’t sleep with music on. That has been so many people’s suggestions. It isn’t just Taipei. I used to live in a countryside town and the stupid trucks with the megaphones woke me every day.
I actually would not be so opposed to moving except I REALLY love my job. And my job doesn’t move 
I second the loud fan. Having a fan blowing at the highest setting two feet from my ears is the only way I can get to sleep in the city.
We were at the bottom of the hill on the 8th floor and Friday/ Saturday nights were the Mahjong tile clicking nights. Drove us crazy and not the sort of noise that is easily drowned with white noise like fans.
Also, there were regular fights with screaming and yelling for added interest out in the streets.
Up the mountain now and its really quiet. Only 7 minutes drive from hell to heaven.
Two solutions:
warm beer, it works! An old german recipe: heat up a bottle of beer so that it’s fairly warm (not scalding hot or anything) and try to down it as fast as possible … it’s a fun way to go to sleep, well, to some it is! 
embrace the noise. That’s what I did: I moved to a noisy part of London coming from very quiet suburbian neighbourhood and had the same problems you experience now. I tried wax ear-plugs (forget any foam- or rubber plugs, wax are the most effective!), music on speakers, music on headhones … until I decided to go with the “white noise” idea mentioned above. Lacking aircon or a noisy fan, I simply opened all the windows and slept like a baby to the sounds of busy London down below, summers & winters, it was great!
Don’t worry: all these sleepless or interrupted nights will make you so damn tired that soon you’ll sleep through anything!
Stray Dog,
That is the problem. Sleeping through my alarm clock. Sleeping through the phone ringing as my boss wants to know where I am.
I like the fan suggestion except that Taiwan upsets my allergies already. I think the fan would make it worse… maybe I should find one of those white noise makers… do they sell those here?
They do; it’s called a Fred Smith.
[quote=“SuchAFob”]Stray Dog,
That is the problem. Sleeping through my alarm clock. Sleeping through the phone ringing as my boss wants to know where I am.
I like the fan suggestion except that Taiwan upsets my allergies already. I think the fan would make it worse… maybe I should find one of those white noise makers… do they sell those here?[/quote]
an FM radio way off the station will produce white noise alright.
Smart!!! And cheap, most likely!!!
If you can’t leave your job (I’m assuming you’re in Taipei), then find a neighborhood of narrow alleys where speaker trucks and garbage trucks cannot drive, and that will eliminate some of the noise.
Also look into the the double-hung windows. I live in an area like the one above and am incredibly happy after the disasterous experience I had with my first apt. But the family right next to mine leave their window open sometimes and of course speak at the top of their lungs and I can hear everything…so I need to double-pane my kitchen window.
I’ve also found that the lower you are, the less noisy it will be. So try to avoid anything above the first floor and that will cut out some noise too. During the day I put up with some mild irritations, and I have a bedroom door that cuts out almost all noise. I swear it’s sound-proof. It’s certainly heavy enough to be reinforced. And I do have the fan on all night.
There is no single solution to noise removal. Even if you live out in the country you can come across packs of wild dogs barking all night. But if you do a bit of everything, you can be relatively happy.
Not having to deal with speaker trucks and garbage trucks made a HUGE difference with me. What a pain those things are. That is certainly the fist step to a more “normal” life. 
I am an ear plug advocator. I have been wearing them for 7-8 years now when I sleep, walk outside, wait for the bus, etc. They’re spongy, like 25 cents a pair, and keep them cold before you shape them to stuff in your ears.
[quote=“SuchAFob”]I was told to get ear plugs. but they dont’ work so well. I still get kept awake. Also they cause ear pain.[/quote]The reason that most earplugs, such as the foam yellow ones, don’t work very well is that they are not dense enough.
Earplugs that really work are made either from wax or from mouldable silicone putty. I haven’t found wax earplugs in Taiwan but I wear the silicone ones every night (I live next to a main road). You can buy them in swimgear shops.
There are a couple of different brands available. One brand comes in square shapes and the other round. You mould them to fit your ears of course but I find the stock size too big. There are dire warnings on the packet about always using the full sized earplug but I cut the blocks of putty in half anyway. I have been doing this for a year and up till now I have not had any earplugs disappear into my inner ear and work its way into my brain, forcing my eyeballs to pop out or some such. Your mileage may vary.
Don’t know if they’d be any more comfortable than the other ones you’ve tried, though. I find them alright.
So how you deal with prolonged noise of 150 Decibels (about 19 times louder than 85 db, which causes hearing damage, and 3 times louder than 140db, which damages your hearing instantly) ? The police couldn’t give a monkey’s as usual, niether does the environment department.