Ah that’s a useful compromise
Managed to live here for 10 years without a bank account and 5 years without ARC, so those things are not a must if you ask me.
For a place to stay, I recommend Kaohsiung. Living cost is cheap, living quality high but the caveat being fewer job opportunities. Less people speak English but you don’t come here to speak English I guess, so not sure if that is a con.
Power, Internet and Water can be paid in any 7eleven and those are literally everywhere. They are normally not included in your rental bill and paid separately.
Getting an ARC can be done by 3 ways:
- Marriage
- Offshore company creating a representative office in Taiwan and employing yourself basically or
- Finding an employer willing to get one for you.
Bank account: No idea, never had one, never wanted one.
Phone number: I got myself a prepaid card from Taiwan Mobile that served me well for 10 years.
EDIT: Sorry, didn’t see that most questions are already answered by other posters, so you can safely ignore my post. I came here by a different route than most people and took different paths.
Not sure if it applies to you, but I heard that got extended to 30 days as of January 1st… I was exempted since I’m reclaiming my citizenship (a whole different process), but I wasn’t able to get everything done within 15 days since getting my mom AND 97 year old senile grandma for everything to line up well enough to efficiently do stuff is like herding cats. Even worse, I just so happened to have a family emergency on the 15th day and wasn’t able to make it to the NIA until the day after.
That makes sense, hopefully I will have a place sorted within a month but I’ve sort of accepted that it might all be too much, and ill just get an airbnb for a month if that happens while I keep looking.
I’ve got a friend of a friend who says I can register at theirs and they will forward mail to me so hopefully that makes everything else a bit easier
What the heck is up Forumosans. I’ve succesfully moved to Taiwan as of yesterday. I’ve got a hotel in Ximen overlapping the lantern festival by mistake which is cool, but crazy busy!
I figure I will work through some of the list to help out.
- Phone Number - we went with the Klook one as suggested above, the counter does close at 8pm, and we got there at 7:55 with one of us staying in the airport the collect baggage. I think it was a bit of a waste of time to be honest, we got a taxi direct to our hotel, and then immediately got a SIM the next day. We went with Taiwan mobile, they have a 6 month foreign student SIM that you can pay for in bulk for $3500, unlimited data. Not the cheapest but it didnt require anything.
- Bank account - no idea yet, I imagine without an address / ARC this will be rough so it’s on pause.
- Getting ARC - tomorrows job
- Finding a place to stay - we’ve been looking at 591, and managed to find a friend of a friend of a friend who lives in Taiwan and speaks Mandarin so they’ve organised all viewings for us for this week.
- Good Locations to stay for first-time visitors - we picked Ximen, seemed centralish
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ARC application completed!
A lot of what I had read online was false.
I tried going in with a friends address, as I read online that hotel addresses weren’t allowed(which felt harsh). As I’ve said above we are here with a visa, no job, no employer, no friends or family so we don’t have anybody sorting all this for us.
In Taipei, our day resulted in three trips to immigration. By 10am there were about 40 people in the queue, and that took about 1.5 hours to process. We didn’t have proof of address, because we didn’t know that was necessary, and didn’t think our hotel would have one.
We returned to our hotel and tried to organise what that was, in Mandarin. we found the proof of address forms online and showed them that form, just so they could see whatever the government trasnlation for “proof of address was”. They told us they could give us that once we checked out, which felt pointless. Eventually they relented and gave us a copy of our booking with the hotel official stamp and this was apparently good enough to apply for ARC.
Another thing I didn’t figure out, the immigration office has an ARC pickup desk, so my worried about needing to collect mail were off-base. Effectively, you could put any address, as long as you can get proof of address it seems.
We can return to pick up our ARC in two weeks exactly, hopefully!
tomorrow we have 10+ apartment viewings organised by a local we met online thankfully!
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Quick tip for apartment hunting: If you find a place you really like, don’t hesitate to sign a contract - good (and reasonably priced) apartments tend to go away fast.
On the other hand, if something feels “off” about a place or you have doubts, don’t be afraid about letting it go - there will be other, better options. And by no means let anyone put pressure on you because they pretend to have other people who are about to sign a contract. When they try to put pressure on you, it’s usually a bad and/or overpriced option. The good options rent out without the agent / landlord doing that…
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Thank you for that, It’s a daunting process. Luckily we don’t speak any mandarin so the pressure will have to be mimed haha.
Most agents seem to be showing us multiple units in the same large apartment so I am hoping it’s a more general “This area looks good” check and a sanity check for us before we rent something without seeing it!
Be aware that what Americans call condos are also called apartments in Taiwan. I.e. one (condo) in a building could be really nice and another could be a vermin infested shithole because one owner cares and the other doesn’t. Always check things out in person!
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In one day, we managed to view about 8 individual apartments in one apartment? None of them looked derelict minus one that had lots of bird poop on the balcony haha.
We got a lease agreement template from seven-eleven which was very jarring, but overall felt very wholesome and grateful on both sides. We did find an assistant to help us contact landlords and agents, as we have heard some will upcharge for being foreigners so we figured that paying about TWD 1000 or so for this probably saved us an extra large deposit and gave a sanity check, proofread everything.
In person we got away with google translating whatever we needed, though I will admit we were probably looking at the nicer end of apartments!
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You’d be surprised. I recall the first place I looked at when I arrived in Taiwan. It was clearly a complete crap hole, but there just happened to be a couple of western guys who were also ‘viewing’ it at the same time, talking very loudly about how great it was.
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“Wow - that mold on the bathroom ceiling really gives that place a unique character!” 
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I know I going to regret this, but care to explain how:
and if you stayed long here, why?
People live decades without an ARC. Cash in hand.
Why? That’s another question altogether.
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Fighting the system!
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I’m not engaging that guy, but I admire the willpower and resiliance haha
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I am now successfully moved into a fully stocked apartment.
We got an IKEA delivery, which to my suprise cost $300 only, so maybe I will get everything from IKEA. They did contact me because the address had to be in mandarin, not English, fair enough. They rang on the day to say they’d be there in 10 minutes, but I couldn’t understand that I don’t speak Mandarin.
We are facing a return trip to Taipei because now that we have moved in, we have to update the address on our ARC. We have a flight soon, I’ve been told we can update our ARC as long as we return to the office in person and hand in our card.
Next up is figuring out how to pay our bills, which are all in our landlords name which sounds fairly common. I am not sure how we take that over.
Also I am trying to get internet set up, which seems doable, they said we need a two year contract and I can’t tell what the exit fee is. Apparently we have to go in store once a month to pay in person too.
It’s going pretty well, as expected things are difficult, but not impossible even with no langauge skills.
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Usually you can set up automatic payments from your bank. It doesn’t matter on whose name is the bill as long as someone is paying. For me, that is the easiest way.
Now, be aware how much you pay for utilities depends on where you live, meaning fancy place pays more. I pay 200 NTD for water, 300 NTD for electricity average, more in winter than summer. Electricity bill must be paid every two months.
Gas, if it is piped in, at least in our building, they paste a list and you fill in your meter reading and they send you a bill based on that. Ask your neighbors if so required.
As to Internet, there is a world of options but I haven’t heard of one where you pay every 2 months and only on site. That’s puzzling.
For example, I have the cable-internet bundle. It has several speeds to choose from, as well as additional services. I pay every 6 months, can pay up to a whole year, from an app on my phone.
I don’t have a bank haha. I will go try again with my passport anyway and see how it goes!
I am from England, my last electricity bill was $9000 so I welcome the fanciest places!
I think I misunderstood they mail a bill and I take it to a convenience store, among other options? She pointed atthe ground haha.
My electricity and water are in my landlord’s name, but the bills are mailed to the rental address. Just take the bills to a convenience store to pay, easy peasy.
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