Combat Zone, not Battle Zone…
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yup it will only die when the last people of memories from those days die. I guess in about 20 years then lol
I searched for this guys name on here and surprised it didn’t come up. Maybe someone else has posted about these videos in another post?
Really good stories from the mid 80s of Taipei . There are quite a few videos on his channel.
Memoir of a Lotus Eater
Maybe cos the guy tends to go on a bit as in the video. Still great footage and interesting insights into how things were in the 80s. Pretty desperate drinks back then.
The teacher at the end is so lively compared to the dull students. Not much changed there and it’s why I never liked teaching here. 
Anybody mentioned or feature in this video still around, I thought I might recognise one or two but nope.
There are other names mentioned in his other videos. I don’t recall any of the people as I was mainly down south…but I do remember doing the same milk run trip from Chungking mansions for the free ticket
In the ‘old’ days I was younger!
Definitely not old enough for Taiwan 80s/90s nostalgia, but I do have some crazy stories of Taoyuan and Zhongli in the mid 2000s. So long ago I know.
Maybe it’s still the same but that was the like wild west back then to me. Most foreigners were canadian except for the South Africans on Dayou Rd.
In Taoyuan nights started at Yima and ended at Room 95 where people were typically carried out. In Zhongli, I see River bar is still there but there were a few more Joker bar and one across the street run by a Canadian girl. She decided not to pay her 保護費 and the place got ransacked as did she… Saw her after with her hair all chopped off running what looked like a meth den out of the place. Later the same thing happened to River just after I left one night a foreigner got into a fight with the wrong dude. A friend of mine stayed behind and ended up taking a machete to the forearm trying to defend himself.
I don’t see so many posts about getting jumped for talking to the wrong girl in the club anymore, or places getting ransacked. Maybe it’s calmed down a bit.
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Well, if you want a full, in-depth look into life in Taiwan for a foreign national in the ‘old days’, I have a book on Amazon, The Taiwan Experience, which so far covers 1985 to 1992 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KT66DDT). I make the Kindle version free to promote it every so often, but I couldn’t make it ‘permafree’. The intro is on my own site free at: https://www.alixlee.com/index_files/TE_Intro.pdf
But, in a nutshell, yeh, definately the police were much more in with the gangsters in those days, and the government too, especially the Bamboo Union gangsters and the KMT, which was the only party when I arrived here. Fewer taller buildings is also correct; until the Shin Kong Life Tower (near Taipei Railway Station) was completed, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial was the tallest construction in Taipei!
Nightlife catering to foreigners was general pretty limited, but then there weren’t that many of us. AC-DC on Roosewelt Road, was the mecca in the mid-1980s, then later on came Roxy’s and Tops, I think all run by the same guy as I remember. Buffalo Town on Linsen North Road was where you generally ended up if you were sober enough to dance. Another popular form of entertainment which disappeared by 2000 was the ‘MTV’ lounge.
It may seem hard to believe but the standard of driving/ riding was much worse. I think the only reason people tend to stop at traffic lights nowadays is because there are cameras everywhere now, which there weren’t in those days. Crash helmets became compulsory in July 1997; before then only about one in ten riders would bother with them (I never did). The motorcycle license test consisted of only two items until about 5 or 6 years ago - riding in a straight line and doing a U-turn. Now there are eight items, so it’s a lot more difficult and about half of examinees fail the first time.
What made life a lot sweeter was that salaries were relatively much higher in the boom years of the late '80s and early '90s. Various studies have found salaries to have not changed for up to 20 years, while of course the cost of living has changed. In my own case (translation), I earn exactly the same rates as I did when I began doing this work 30 years ago! Maybe that’s the main reason people think of them as the good old days.
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Can you make the whole pdf available please? 
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I frequented Buffalo town, I briefly met the Australian guy they threw off the roof too.
There was an MTV a couple of floors down where you went to get lucky. It was a great club just way too many fights partiularly between ABCs and locals. I remember one pretty girl getting jumped in the Buffallo Town rest room by a gang of local girls and having her face carved up with hair pins. There were many other clubs too, cannot remember their names, one where the whole roof could open up…I look back on the old Taiwan fondly because I was very very young, but actually things are way better now just not my health 
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You went to the MTV “if” you got lucky, not to get lucky.
I went to that MTV but more on a Sunday afternoon…I’m a classy guy.
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Lol true true. 
I saw one girl fail the original “test” by falling off while riding in a straight line. They just told her to get back on and do it again 
True. My spending power is about half what it was in 2000.
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In the old days one could ride a scooter or a motorcycle and drive a car for like 18 years with no International or Taiwanese license and it was no big deal…soimtold 
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Interestingly my spending power was abysmal for the entire 2000s. I only stay here because I earn a lot more now (my expenses are also 4x I guess). Which means I’m always out of sync I feel. 
What I miss about the old days was the energy about the place. I don’t think it was just my youth and the chicks. They talk about starts up here and have incubators but back in the early 2000s every foreigner I met was launching something with their mates, people were coming to Taiwan from all over doing electronics business startups themselves. Buxibans. Bars…Restaurants…
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Roxy was Lin Wei who is still in the business, Tops was run by Marco who moved back down to Kaohsiung not long after, I heard.
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NASA, Kiss, Penthouse?
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