Linkou - the interest-devoid industrial carbuncle

Haha. Great. Well, congratulate me, I am now a homeowner in Taiwan, and guess where? I won’t actually be moving in til next year, as my ‘condo’ or whatever you want to call it is still under construction (no, don’t worry; I have good reason to believe the building will be completed as planned).

Any of y’al live in Linkou? Is Wolf’s assessment accurate? Anything good about the place?

Vay wrote:

Sorry Vay, but I guess I was too influenced by Wolf’s brief as I read the above as:

I have good reason to believe the building will be completed as panned. :laughing:

[quote]Anything good about the place?
[/quote]
Sure. If you kind of screw up your eyes a bit just before they turn on the streetlamps in the evening, you can almost imagine for a few seconds that its nicer than Sanchung.

Hey, I must speak up in defense of my future home.

I’ve actually BEEN to Sanchung. Before you wonder what I was thinking, going there, one night I was higher than an astronaut’s asshole and accidentally took the bridge from Minchuan West thinking it would get me back to Beitou. That place makes Bladerunner-town look like Singapore!

At least in Linkou the roads are straight and there are actual TREES.

Just yanking yer chain Vay. Your brand-new apartment complex will be no worse than the ones in Taipei – clean, convenient, shiny and just as bland and soulless, I’m sure. :wink:
I have no idea what Linkou looks like as I’ve only ever been to the Changkung hospital there, although from the car park I do remember seeing some big smoke-belching chimneys and even some chimneys with burn-offs. Is there a refinery or a chemical plant there or something?

People actually live there?
:blush: :?: :stuck_out_tongue:

CYA
Okami

I worked there for a couple of months at the construction of a Quanta Computer plant. Hated that town. Nothing to do, except maybe for the driving range across the street. The only thing that stands out in my memory is a great noodle shop somewhere on the main street through town.

Nearly every night I paid $400NT taxi fare to Chungli to visit my girlfriend (now my wife!).

Sorry to keep answering my own post, but I thought of one other positive thing I do know about Linkou. There’s this one love hotel there that has a steam-shower and this FUNKY chair with restraints and stuff…

A chair with restraints? I suppose if you took a girl to a love hotel in Linkou, you’d need that to stop her from bolting.

The Linkou update you’ve all been waiting for! Well, I’m moved in now, and have to say it’s not bad at all. The roads are wide and straight, there are several nice parks, across the freeway by Chang Gen hospital there’s a plethora of restaurants, and traffic is comparatively light. In fact, even though I think those waiguoren who ride their bicycles on the main streets of Taipei are nuts (both due to increased respiratory activity in such polluted air and more importantly because they’re sitting ducks), I now ride about unconcernedly here in Linkou.

Now, a more specific note if you’re thinking of purchasing a home in the greater Taipei area: I got a 35 ping 1st floor apartment with a vaulted ceiling (think it’s 4.5 meters), parking space and 20-ping yard (15 front and 5 back) in a brand new building. The complex has a pool, sauna, weightroom, hotel-like lobby, tastefully decorated courtyard, 5 minutes from the freeway. All this cost me just a speck over 5 million…

Well, hope that the housing prices will rise, so you get a chance to get out without a loss, once you tire of the place, sounds like a NT$1m+ loss to me.

That said, there are several nicer roads leading from Linkou to the coast, and you also have a very winding one next to the freeway down to Wugu. the good thing about the place is that it’s higher, cooler and windier than say Sanchong, Xindian, and Neihu.

Problems… Traffic to Taipei in the morning will be a bit tough… Also foggy in the winter.

Hey,
Ive been to Linkou many times and I think its a pretty decent place to live. More of a quiet city atmospere and lots of open space, wide streets, parks…etc Sort of like Taichung but much closer to Taipei. The new houses/communities they have been building there look very nice indeed.

Linkou also boasts some of the nicest betel nut beauties doing their trade around the freeway entrance.

One of my sisters-in-law lives in an exclusive little community in Linkou. Their house has its own double garage underground, six floors of very well laid out living space, and a garden on the roof. My wife loves it and wishes we could buy one of the neighbouring houses (if one ever came onto the market). But it’s too far out of the way for me, and I balk at the asking price and running costs for a place like that. (I’d rather spend a fraction of the money for something of similar size on Penghu or around Hualien.)

Well I always liked the fact that after my private tutoring session each week in Linkou, I have the afternoon off and Danshui is only a 30-40 minute ride away. :sunglasses: