Hi guys !
I have the opportunity to live both in Taipei or Taoyuan
I know Taipei but Taoyuan …
What about this city ?
Is it convenient to live ? enjoyable ?
what about nightlife, activities , sports ?
anyone here living there and king enough to give feedback ?
Thanks !
One doesn’t so much live in Taoyuan as exist in Taoyuan.
Taoyuan’s saving grace is the cost of living is lower than Taipei’s (so it’s easier to save money) and also that there’s nothing to do there, so you would also save more money (though not if you had to travel to Taipei or elsewhere all the time to amuse yourself).
Live there for two years and still own an apartment in the area. Agree with guy. Not at all enjoyable a place to live. Sports, no. There is one mountain area in the city, a few bike paths, and some gyms.
Traffic is bad, public transport is awful. In general the city is known as a cultural deadbeat.
Taiwanese people are usually really upbeat and positive about where they live. However, those who live in Taoyuan will simply describe the place as “bad” if you ask them. It really is that bad. I can’t think of one redeeming quality - other than GIT’s point that it is a good place to save money. Cheap living costs and very little to do.
It’s funny I was going to try and post something positive about the place just to give a contrary opinion. But, I’ve got nothing. Especially when I realised you are talking about Taoyuan city specifically 
If someone put a gun to my head to say something positive then I would accept that places around the edge of Taoyuan Shitty can be OK. But, only just OK.
If you live in Taoyuan City near the freeway or in Nankan on the opposite side of the freeway, you have a 40-minute commute to downtown Taipei. That’s about the only positive thing I can think of.
Nightlife: Checking out the betel nut shops
Activities: Chewing betel nuts
Sports: Spitting betel nut juice
Don’t think I missed anything …
[quote=“monkey”]If you live in Taoyuan City near the freeway or in Nankan on the opposite side of the freeway, you have a 40-minute commute to downtown Taipei. That’s about the only positive thing I can think of.
Nightlife: Checking out the betel nut shops
Activities: Chewing betel nuts
Sports: Spitting betel nut juice
Don’t think I missed anything …[/quote]
You can stand on one spot and hit 4 different KFC restaurants with betel nut. You can go to the Ikea and see how many betel nut splats you can take a picture of in a set amount of time. There are also swarms of large black flies marauding through the city in the middle of summer, so that’s a free meal right there. Plus you can get your hair bleached at 3am with no problems.
[quote=“monkey”]If you live in Taoyuan City near the freeway or in Nankan on the opposite side of the freeway, you have a 40-minute commute to downtown Taipei. That’s about the only positive thing I can think of.
[/quote]
Nankan is an oasis of culture and entertainment. There are now two malls. Also, Costco may soon be building a store behind Taimall. Taimall itself has an excellent pub. For those who enjoy hiking there is a small mountain. Nankan river now has cycle paths. At night, you can hang out with many kindy teachers outside 7-11. If you say NanKan wrong it sounds funny, too.
[quote=“tomthorne”][quote=“monkey”]If you live in Taoyuan City near the freeway or in Nankan on the opposite side of the freeway, you have a 40-minute commute to downtown Taipei. That’s about the only positive thing I can think of.
[/quote]
Nankan is an oasis of culture and entertainment. There are now two malls. Also, Costco may soon be building a store behind Taimall. Taimall itself has an excellent pub. For those who enjoy hiking there is a small mountain. Nankan river now has cycle paths. At night, you can hang out with many kindy teachers outside 7-11. If you say Nankan wrong it sounds funny, too.[/quote]
Let’s not forget that Taimall has such subtle and tasteful exterior decoration. Also, where are these famed areas around Taoyuan City that are okay? Bade? Guishan? Neili? Why these are all the Paris, Venice and Vienna of Taiwan, respectively!
Seriously, one of the most exciting things my wife and I used to do there was go to that huge, 24 hour pet store (why anyone needs to buy a rhinoceros beetle at 3am, I don’t know, but don’t let anyone tell you Taoyuan is not convenient!) called Rainbow Fish so I could look at iguanas.
Another thing I like about Taoyuan? The way Zhongzheng road inexplicably divides around that temple downtown. Try getting across there on foot! Now that’s entertainment, and exercise, enough any time of day or night, and day of the week! Oh yeah, and Taoyuan is famed for its pedestrian access generally…not! Likewise, going the other way on Zhongzheng Road, I love how after Ciwen Road, there’s a set of about six traffic lights that always go green, green, green, red, green, green, and how when you get that red in the middle, you have to wait 90+ seconds until the next green, despite the fact that you only drove for all of fifteen seconds before getting that red light. Brilliant! Really, the whole city is just a gem of urban planning!
You don’t love Taiwan enough.
[quote=“tomthorne”][quote=“monkey”]If you live in Taoyuan City near the freeway or in Nankan on the opposite side of the freeway, you have a 40-minute commute to downtown Taipei. That’s about the only positive thing I can think of.
[/quote]
Nankan is an oasis of culture and entertainment. There are now two malls. Also, Costco may soon be building a store behind Taimall. Taimall itself has an excellent pub. For those who enjoy hiking there is a small mountain. Nankan river now has cycle paths. At night, you can hang out with many kindy teachers outside 7-11. If you say Nankan wrong it sounds funny, too.[/quote]
The Nankan river is basically just an open sewer. It’s not fun to cycle along 
You can rub excrement into any description of Taoyuan city and I’d agree with you…But, there are some superb burbs in the outskirts.
Long term Taoyuan County resident.
I’ve said it before–Taoyuan is not all that bad. Immediate downtown–not so good; areas like Da Yo Road are somewhat better. I managed 11 years living from Ping Jen to Nankan, and enjoyed my time. Tiger Head Mountain stretches quite a ways for hiking, and you can head over to any of the universities (Nei Li/Chung Li) for sports such as basketball, soccer or even ball hockey. I found it much easier to practice Chinese on a daily basis as well. Taipei is not that far away for museum/cultural trips–wasn’t a place I ever wanted to live.
Keep an open perspective–I know quite a few others who have lived in the area for 15+ years and enjoy themselves.
Dayou Road is as much of a hole as anywhere else in Taoyuan. It’s only drawcard seems to be that lots of foreigners live around there, though that’s not a drawcard for me.
Tigerhead Mountain is good if you’re not looking at the views of Taoyuan City (and the giant haze floating above it), and there are usually far too many people there, not to mention all those crappy food stalls about half way up. The one good thing I will say about Tigerhead Mountain is that my wife found our dog there. That said, I once had to peddle like a banshee on a mountain bike ride as I got chased by about thirty dogs.
I quite like that pet shop, too. Last time I went, they had these baby parrots (or some other kind of tropical bird) on display. Because they hadn’t grown feathers yet, they had this pinkish wrinkly skin. Freakishly fugly things they were.
But the shopping is one good reason to go to Taoyuan I suppose. They have proper-sized shops and car parking. Taipei feels like some sort of dwarves’ village where you have walk sideways around the shops because there’s not enough room to move without knocking all the displays over.
monkey: Yeah, sure. Taoyuan has shopping, though shopping is not really an activity I like, and besides which, 90% of the stores sell the exact same crap. Gaudy clothes? Check. Bizarre slimming powders you dissolve in tea or other “health products”? Check. 10 NTD plastic crap? Check. Horribly fattening and/or unidentifiable food? Check. Comic books? Check. I don’t think it’s that much of an exaggeration to suggest that almost everything else that is on sale can be bought at Carrefour (and Taoyuan has two of them, plus another two in Neili, and probably more in the general vicinity), making almost every other store in Taoyuan redundant. Like I said, I’m not a big shopper, plus the downtown area is absolutely awful for shopping because of the terrible traffic (including the public transport), poor parking options and difficulty to move anywhere as a pedestrian.
Regarding Rainbow Fish, whilst I used to like going there if we happened to be in the area with nothing to do for fifteen minutes, I would never have bought anything from there. I think that pet stores are generally fairly immoral. Firstly, should half of the animals they sell even be kept as pets? Secondly, the commodification of dogs at those places is awful. Especially in Taiwan they end up selling dogs like stuffed toys in a toy store.
When I first lived in Taoyuan there was this really cool restaurant out by the stadium in a giant old post and beam wood structure. Looked like a tavern in an old kung fu movie. Had the best gongbao jiding. Great place to hang out and have a few pints with some great food.
Out near Tigerhead is one of the few remaining intact Japanese-era Japanese temples.
So there.
Great, but how often is someone going to go to the Japanese temple? Once? Twice? Then only after visitors from back home come over. There’s still a real lack of stuff to do in Taoyuan, plus it’s an ugly shithole with awful town planning and traffic.
How often can you collect stamps, look at butterflies, bird watch, hike the same trail, sleep with the same person? You are so limited.