This has undoubtedly been discussed before, but how about some fresh views.
Romantic weekend with my wife. I want soem good ideas of good things to do in Taizhong.
What are the must sees? Good restaurants? Good bar? Any excellent teahouses or anything? Can you hire scooters near the railway station like you can in smaller cities?
Guanxi for good information.
Brian
Oh man! Its on the tip of my tongue but I can’t remember the name. Its in a suburb of Tai-chung called ////// and is one of those brick and wood old-style joints furnished with antiques with lots of weeping willows and stuff, all built around an ornate pond full of giant koi. Not cheap, but very nice and peaceful indeed. I’ve left a message on the wife’s phone because I think she might have their business card. If she calls back before I leave the office I’ll post here.
Thanks Sandman. It would be great if you could find it.
Does anyone have the number sof any good hotels in Taizhong? All the 5-stars are booked out. I’ve tried the Evergreen Laurel, Plaza International, Howard Prince, Landis, Hotel National and Splendour (Grand Formosa). Anything els? Doesn’t have to be 5-star as long as we have a good place to stay (although I would really like a pool). Please help me.
Brian
Brian, are you talking about this weekend? If so, you might want to try booking a room at the Landis again, www.grs.de shows they still have (at leat one) double room available right now.
Teahouses: The most romantic I know is called 快雪時晴 (I hope the Chinese characters will display correctly and that you or your wife can read Chinese 
- or just print this out and ask at the hotel reception, this place has been there for a long time, they should know it). Making a reservation is highly recommended. Not far away (if you’ve got a scooter or take a taxi or just enjoy walking) is a great Japanese restaurant called 岩島燒. Sorry, I can’t give you any street names (anybody knows a good online map of Taichung?), but it’s all not far from the Landis and Sogo II. Compass magazine calls that area “little Europe” because of the many foreign restaurants (you should be able to get a copy of that magazine containing a very useful map at most good hotels). They have a website at www.taiwanfun.com, too.
Then, of course, a bit farther away (near Tunghai University) is the so called “ideal world street” (at least that’s what I call it) 藝術街 (東海大學旁), while “little Europe” has got the western restaurants, this place looks (somewhat) like “Europe”, at least it’s very different from the rest of the city and it can be quite a romantic location. Some nice teahouses there, too, though not as special as the one I mentioned above. 
Hope this helps, no need to reward me with guanxi, I’m just killing some time while uploading a large website update to my ftp server.
Thanks. Where did you get the information that the Landis has a room available? I’m curious because they say that they have a waitlist of 30-40 people. Maybe they give some rooms to agencies, and if I went throuigh the aganecy I could get it?
Brian
Hypermegaglobal, could you possibly write the pinyin for the teahouse and the restaurant?
BTW, do you want to share your website address? I’m always interested in looking at people’s home pages.
[quote=“Sir Donald Bradman”]Thanks. Where did you get the information that the Landis has a room available? I’m curious because they say that they have a waitlist of 30-40 people. Maybe they give some rooms to agencies, and if I went throuigh the aganecy I could get it?
Brian[/quote]
I got the info on www.hrs.de (you can change the language to English by clicking on the “24 Sprachen” drop down menu). Sorry for the typo. 
Hrs.de is excellent for making room reservations in Europe, never tried it in Taiwan, maybe someone at the Landis made a mistake and now it shows available rooms no matter which date you chose. Or they have a quota for visitors from abroad? Anyway, since it is showing available rooms you could immediately make a confirmed reservation online. … on the other hand, a discussion with the hotel staff might not be the best way to start a romantic weekend.
Joesax, I’ll try, but don’t laugh too loud if I post something ridiculously wrong 
:
Teahouse: kuai4 xue3 shi2 qing2
Restaurant: yan2 dao3 shao1
If I remember this correctly, the teahouse is on Ching [jing1] Cheng [cheng2] 21st street (精誠21街). The Japanese Restaurant is near the parking on Ta [da4] Tun [dun1] 19th street (大墩19街), unfortunately, I always park the car there so I never had to tell the exact street name to a taxi driver. It’s just a few steps away from the beginning of the famous pedestrian street (it might still be the same street name, but it is on part of this street not reserved for pedestrians).
Anyway, the teahouse is a really very quiet and unique place. The Japanese restaurant is more lively, nice interior, too, and excellent food. They have a room downstairs with two more private tables but I think it is for larger groups only - or VIPs? I don’t know, I prefer the atmosphere on the ground floor. These are really the two upscale places in Taichung I can recommend most, I’m sure there are lots of other good locations (maybe some western restaurants, too, I rarely tried those), but there are quite a lot of disappointing restaurants and teahouses, etc., as well.
Sorry, it’s in German and it is not finished yet (I uploaded it to an area reserved for our beta testers) and it’s not a personal homepage, anyway. If you still want to have a look, it will be available on www.satrue.lu in a few days (I hope). (No need to look at that page right now, what is there is only meant to enable the search engines to index our page).
We were lucky enought o get a room when I did another ring around the other big hotels. Stayed at the Plaza International which was alright, but nothing special. Very ordinary breakfast and a sorry excuse for a swimming pool. Good view from the 21st floor though and good price at 2700 for a double.
Didn’t do much because it was so hot and muggy. Lying Taizhongers always going on about the lovely weather down there!
Had a great veggie Pizza and Fingas (run by a Kiwi bloke), but my wife didn’t like her pasta. Really nice Veggiue restaurant too. I’ll dig out the addresses later.
Checked out the night market. What was it called? Fengjia or something. A lot like Shilin nightmarket just without idiots with silly hats banging shoes together.
Went to the Science Museum, saw big queues, didn’t look to interesting and didn’t know where to go becasue you have to pay seperately for every exhibition, so turned around and left.
Bought lots of cheap clothes.
So didn’t do much, but had a good time anyway.
Brian
For the record, both of my recommendations are “suitable for vegetarians”.
Thanks for the guanxi, Brian!