Most times when people give advice, its just they doing the confirmation bias. They dont care we leave or stay. They themselves wanna leave and they want us to agree to their opinion. So ofcourse, we can do whatever we wanna do. I am sure most expats here have been told at some point to leave but we are still here. Local people hardly care about others even when they give an advice, most of the advice isnt from the viewpoint of empathy.
I was talking about the work place rather than the country. However, if all foreigners suddenly took off and left yes any country would care. They need foreigners here especially with the falling birth rate.
I just had an unsolicited offer in UK. The recruiter was like we cannot find nearly enough engineers after Brexit. Basically begging for qualified people. Shit salaries don’t help either lol.
You’re not wrong to hint that not every foreign resident in Taiwan can or should live in Tienmu or Daan.
The most international city in Taiwan is, in fact, Taoyuan. Somehow I suspect that all of us moving there would not solve the issues identified in this thread.
Most foreigners in taoyuan are going to be migrant workers. I have no idea how to interact with them because most of them do not speak English, but also they are either locked away or they’re keeping to themselves.
I do get the “why did you move back to Taiwan, why not just stay in the US?” questions a lot.
As for the ‘moving to areas where residents are more diverse or more like you’ part, I mean, people wouldn’t think twice if a Taiwanese family chooses to live around Diamond Bar or Walnut in the greater LA area. It happens. After all, who wants to drive over an hour to get to a Ranch 99.
It doesn’t really resolves the issues, but just makes daily life more tolerable, I suppose.
I think this applies to almost every foreigner living here. We all face prejudices and stereotypes. As a “Caucasian-looking girl”, I also speak the language fluently, but I don’t have many Taiwanese friends here, maybe only one whom I meet once in a while. Even if you make expat friends, they come and go. I also believe you might be projecting a bit. In my observation, Taiwanese people don’t socialize as casually as we do in my culture. When I was back in my country, I could meet my friends almost every day, whether it was planned or unplanned. But here, you have to arrange it weeks in advance. This is just my personal experience, though. I will continue trying.
It’s a big problem for me as well. I’m not sure I have any real friends here. Actually I have basically little taiwanese friends, because they tend to keep in their groups.
Like people have said before, unless u have studied in Taiwan school or colleges and made friends there, the chances of making friends is very rare. Taiwan is a closed society and intellectual relationships aren’t given importance here
For local people, having friends means someone to hang out with,go see movies with, go restaurants and vent and that’s about it. Even with their own friends they rarely connect deeply. Most people repress their real feelings here.
Funny enough, 3 months in Turkey and we had no issues with taxis. However, we avoided tourist areas, and generally took public transport as much as possible. We did take around 10 cab rides total, with no issues, just to put it in perspective.
Every single taxi tried the “meter not working” scam on us. And almost all of them tried to pull some kind of BS like fake toll fees on us. The entire experience put me off of going back again because there’s no Uber.