What area and price did you settle on?
Tamsui, right on the strait - 18k incl management fees. for a short 2 room place. like those loft style bedrooms where you can’t be NBA player tall. 1 is proper bedroom and the other is a study / bedroom. but came furnished. and landlord was nice to put in microwave when I asked for one.
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For home internet, what are folks around here using. Since I came, I have been using my quarantine line with unlimited data. And yeah, having real unlimited data is nice. Should I just stick with my phone and be hotspotting throughout. Problem is my plan ends in a day, since the quarantine prepaid line was only 30 days for 1k NT. And I’m also worried, that if cell towers get congested what happens to speed etc. not that I have experienced a data slowdown so far in the month I have been here. and I mostly work night-time hours. My data needs are usually downloading vm images, streaming videos | music, virtual meetings. downloading game pass games n playing rogue company occasionally with my buddies in the us.
I used to pay for broadband but cancelled it around two years ago and now only use tethering. It’s good enough for Netflix, YouTube etc but probably not great if you’re a gamer or needs low ping and high speed.
Make sure your provider have strong coverage where you want to use it.
Compare prices and coverage in your area.
For house lines with wi fi and ethernet, you can have Chunghwa Telecom or your local cable company. Compare and test speeds.
Same for cellphone plans. Compare. Shop around. We usually stick to the large companies like Chunghwa or Far Eastern since the coverage is larger. You can get a plan with a new phone, if you want to change models or want 5G. You got your choice from 699 to 2000 plus NTD.
BTW, as a foreigner, you have to go to main offices, not authorized retailer. That means no SENAO, for example. Take passport and any id like ARC if you already have it.
saw this pretty late. when my quarantine line was already cut off. for mobile ended up with FarEastOne the one I had with quarantine line. paying 498 monthly. but had to pay deposit.
For home wifi, landlord is helping me with some pointers but he’s also confused, about same things. to his own admission Taiwanese have a tendency to oversell.
during quarantine I connected my xbox to my phone. playback wasn’t bad. given I was playing rogue company. yeah at times, latency sucked, but then also I was previously used to playing the game on a 4k tv. and was now playing on my 1080p monitor that I travel with and use for work. that’s my current debate at the moment, tethering seems enough, but then do I need to be turning it on everytime or pay 300 monthly for the convenience of having home wifi lol
If you’re gaming, definitely go with a hardline. That’s a no brainer for any gamer, anywhere!
I’ve gone the route of tethering my phone and it sometimes gets annoying. Nothing beats hardline!
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Aye, since I been in Taiwan for over a month now.
I can my impressions so far are
- people are friendly, some will even try chat in mandarin. sucks I don’t know any at the moment
- alcohol is expensive for the area. cocktails almost like mid-tier american city prices like $9-$12 bucks that’s crazy
- bars are nice, kinda like austin where the bars, drinks but austin bars lack a vibe, here bars lack people. though for once the bar, I went to on a sunday night at the shilin night market was almost full. (maybe people don’t drink coz the prices are crazy)
- the gals I would say a lil crazy. good they know what they want but also seem confused. seems here the gals don’t believe in condoms, well at least antibiotics are otc but those are dangerous games. also on the dating apps it’s mostly been abt / travelled local gals. hopefully will run into more local ones in person.
- atrocious haircuts on most straight looking guys. seems they went to a barber who had to leave mid-haircut.
- most guys locals n foreigners alike look timid well except the older taiwanese folks. they walk with their shoulders straight. this I find surprising. maybe someone can explain.
- taiwan needs more foreigners of all kinds, this is a good place which with a good profile will be younger sibling singapore and maybe shift general attitudes etc, and raise english literacy. if It was a stock, for now I would be going long like 10 years long.
- about english, seems some | most people learnt english but never got to use it. so it got lost. which is sad. back to the foreigners part.
- food is nice and cheap.
- public transit is nice, clean and peaceful.
- damn stray dogs.
- taxi drivers nice. it ain’t like anywhere in the world where taxi drivers are known to be touts and rude. here they have a certain kind of professionalism that I like, even though we don’t understand each other lol.
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also hopefully, I can later find a community to discuss old chinese novels like jing ping mei - the plum in the golden vase.
I cracked up on that one.
Stop saying gals. It’s not 1962 
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Wait, I thought you had connections to Thailand? 
Guy
I just want to address the working from home part. Unless you work for the Taiwan branch of an international company, working from home is basically not a thing in Taiwan. Even for most international companies, they only allow/enforce working from home when there is a new source local outbreak announced by the CECC.
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I am assuming this is in Taipei? Some of these apply to all of Taiwan but a lot seem pretty specifically for Taipei.
However, the awful haircuts are unfortunately all of Taiwan. I swear every time I go and ask for a western-style cut it’s an uphill battle where the barbers keep asking “You sure? You really sure?? Why???”
I’ve also had little success with haircuts, they seem to leave it long in the wrong places and can’t work out how the crown/parting settles into place
They always seem quite smart and well-behaved, rarely bark and are traffic-wise
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I buy a 5th of jim beam whiskey for 280nt and coldstream gin 5th 169nt
Cheap as shit compared to Washington state(where im from) liquor taxes(maybe texas is cheap)
I would expect cocktails to be expensive, its not that common here.
I think alcohol is very cheap here , better to say some establishments serve expensive drinks as opposed to alcohol is expensive in tw
do people still meet the traditional way …at cafes, bars, any place where the sexes congregate? or is it all online now in taiwan?
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Coming from Europe, I tend to disagree: I‘m used to getting 0.5L cans of beer for the equivalent of less than NT$30 (the really cheap stuff maybe being half of that) and an inexpensive but still nice bottle of wine for maybe NT$120. Also bought a 0.7L bottle Baileys for less than NT$350.
In Taiwan, prices seem to be at least double that. So not „crazy expensive“, but still „expensive“ compared to Europe.