A couple months ago I decided I had enough of Taipei and ended my lease. After traveling around Taiwan for a couple months (and visiting a city in China), I have decided to settle in Bangkok for the time being. I see many people comparing life in Thailand to Taiwan. I also see many people who have lived in both for extended periods of time. I think it may be useful to add my own impressions of the difference between the two, for the sake of others who may be contemplating moving from one to the other.
Iâve lived in Taipei for 3.5 years. The entire reason I moved to Taiwan was because I have had a deep interest in it ever since I watched a bunch of Taiwanese films in college. That seed, once planted, grew and grew until I found myself self-studying Chinese for hours a day and day dreaming about living in a country that I had visited twice before. When I found out about the Gold Card and got my hands on one I quit my job and moved to Taiwan without any real plan other than to try to learn some Chinese and try to find a way to make some money so that I could stay financially solvent as I started a new life.
The Chinese thing sort of took over once I got to Taiwan. I found myself spending every waking hour, outside of those dedicated to (contract) work, to immersing myself in the language. In retrospect, this was probably a mistake. Visiting Taiwan was nice, but I found living here to be quite different than I expected. In a sense, Iâm not really sure what I expected. Perhaps that I would move here and everything would be milk and honey? I found the residents of Taipei to be polite but not necessarily extremely welcoming. I thought this was a language issue so spent even more time on that. 3.5 years later and thousands of hours of immersion and studying under my belt⊠I realized that my initial impressions of them being mostly aloof and a bit hard to make deep friendships with remained unchanged even though I could hold a fluent conversation with anyone I met.
Why was the hyper-focus on Chinese misguided? I found that those I were able to relate to most were those that spent significant time abroad. Those already had perfectly fine English to begin with. Though I would be able to speak Chinese with them, it didnât really make a difference what language we spoke in. Most of the time I was in Taiwan I was convinced that these âforeigner circlesâ were not the âtrue Taiwanâ that I wanted to experience. In a very juvenile way, I viewed English and western influence as a sort of âvirusâ that dogged me wherever I went, making it hard to find opportunities to truly immerse in a more âTaiwaneseâ or âChineseâ way of life. It wasnât until I started speaking with more and more âtraditionalâ Taiwanese that I realized that I actually shared very little in common. Which is obvious in hindsight.
Once I realized this, I began to question why I was even in Taipei. Given that my main reason was to âimmerse in Taiwanese cultureâ and âlearn Chineseâ, once I realized that I mainly enjoyed international perspectives and already learned enough Chinese to satisfy my goals, it seemed that being in Taipei was not really necessary by any stretch of the imagination. APRC in hand, I could live anywhere on the island, or go live abroad for a bit and come back once more.
Why Bangkok? I think my reasons are similar to the ones others have written about. Thai people are way more chill, especially in comparison to the residents of Taipei whose entire purpose in life seems to be to save enough money to buy a rotting concrete box that is absurdly overpriced. Rents here are a bit cheaper than Taipei, but more importantly, you get more for what you pay for. No more old ć„æż within a ârenovatedâ (read: partitioned) 80s apartment. Sure the construction quality isnât always the best from what I read, but a diversity of options is better than Taipei where it is either absurdly overpriced or absurdly decrepit. Or, due to the unique conditions of Taiwanese real estate, sometimes a bit of both! Indeed, the rent thing is what made me think about going to Bangkok to begin with.
The âchillnessâ of the Thai is palpable and the expats I see living here seem to take on a similar attitude. I donât feel stressed here at all though I pay the same money (and make the same money). I went to a couple meetups and unlike Taiwan, most of them had a pretty diverse group of people. Chinese, Taiwanese, a bunch of Thai of course, Russian, etc. All of them happily chatting along in English of various levels, or sometimes in Chinese. I found that even the Taiwanese people Iâve met here in Bangkok are completely different than the ones I would meet in Taipei. At the very least, they have a different perspective that lead them to realize that the endless rat race for overpriced Taipei real estate is maybe not the best way to live life. That there is more to life than doom scrolling on Threads or PTT or buying consumerist trinkets at a âpop-up cultural eventâ in front of an ESLite.
I of course miss Taiwan. But every time I think of going back, I canât help but picture myself back in that environment of extreme Chinese self-restraint. I went to a swing dance meetup on a whim and the entire time I couldnât help but picture the Taiwanese equivalent and its social discohesion and akwardness. I was so sick of meeting people with the same perspective all the time, having the same conversation each day. Going to China only confirmed my bias that Chinese, generally, seem ill-disposed to just chilling out. Or rather, Chinese society itself seems to produce this result, the culture itself seems to be what makes things so intense, comparatively. Chengdu, the sole city I visited in China, was supposed to be a very âchillâ place but it was just as fast-paced and self-centered as any big city, even more-so than Taipei.
Iâve only been here a month and change, but I feel a sense of possibility that I had long ago lost when living in Taipei. Iâm happy, or at the very least content, which was not the case before. I no longer feel boxed in a crappy apartment in Taipei trying to âmake things workâ. Who knows how things will go. In some sense I think I will end up back in Taiwan at some point. But not now. Right now Iâm not thinking ahead, endlessly ahead, as the I did when I was in Taipei just like the residents of Taipei are want to do. Right now, in this moment, things are just fine.
I hope my perspectives are of some use to someone. Over the past months I read countless threads here and elsewhere of strangers grappling with the same issues of living in Taiwan or elsewhere. Maybe itâll turn up as a search result for someone thinking similar things years from nowâŠ
Cheers