I love tea and have heard that one can learn alot about the taiwanese culture through their teahouses. Does anyone have any recommendations of some teahouses that I can see? Thanks to all who reply…
The oldest- I am unaware of. Some older teahouses may exist in Lugang town in central taiwan. Check whereever there are old temples, probably nearby are a few teahouses. You burn your joss, do your toss, and then toss back some tea with your buddies after you leave is fairly standard for the culture.
Basically if you walk down any street in Taiwan, particularily in Taichung, you are likely to stumble across interesting little corner teahouses whereever you go. Whether its just someone’s first level garage done up or a sprawling palacial chinese garden setup you will be suprised at the variety that exists where ever you walk.
In Taichung, a chain of teahouses exists called Shuei-Wu-Zhuan. The decoration style is modern deco, with Asian contemperary. Basically think sofas and waterfalls and tea and food. Its alright. The english is not existent, so you are best off to have a partner or friend who can read and speak. Some of them have japanese style sitting areas where you sit on the floor and use a low table. that can get a bit uncomfortable after a bit if you arnt a japanese. This would be one of my favorites.
heres the site (its not in english, sorry):
http://www.toponelife.com.tw/water/
One of my favorites in Taichung is the wacked out architecture at the Wu-Jiao-Chuan-Ban (5 cent driftwood) teahouse. Its all inspired by driftwood art and is part of the ‘natural movement’ that is currently occuring in architecture for the last decade or so. Think high vaulted ceilings being supported by nude picasso-esqe woman/pillars, with pools of water and waterfalls. Lots of stone and stucco. Thats located off Wenshin Road across from the foreign affairs police station. I will dig up a website for you later, perhaps…
for a few other places:
http://www.taiwanfun.com/central/taichung/tea_coffee/0101/0101wnKenTuYuan.htm
really good article here with 4 or 5 places and a bit of history about milk tea…
http://www.taiwanfun.com/central/taichung/articles/0509/0509tea.htm
another article
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/08/26/2003269262
Compared to the entertainment industry in Japan, Taiwan and China seem to not care about age as much. Japan exploits teenagers at an early age.
For example, Cyndi Wang and Fahrenheit are close to 30 yrs. of age. This is still young, though.
Definitely! Japanese Industry has this obsession with young teens. I guess they want to show beautiful, young stars instead of older ones. Japan, in all honest, has an obsession with exposing teens. China and Taiwan don’t have that problem. Unlike Japan and South Korea, Taiwan and China choose people as stars based on their talents and skills. Japan and South Korean industries care about appearance too much that they become delusional to that fact that their stars aren’t talented.
that women should dress more "scantily" more often to ROCK THIS WORLD?!?!
I kind of feel a bit guilty about that actually :S
I am going to be in Taiwan for a month and want to know how much I should take out. I plan to be backpacking around the island, seeing as much as I can, and am going to try to be as frugal and cheap as I can be. Also I was wondering should I just wait until I land at the Taibei airport and just take out money there at an ATM (assuming there is an ATM…)? Any insight would be most appreciated!
Taiwan is a great place to travel around cheaply. Taiwan is highly developed with prices higher than most other Asian countries, yet is still relatively cheap by western standards. The food is amazing and only $2-3 USD at the cheaper restaurants.
Taiwan’s got excellent travel infrastructure that’s very good value by any standard. There are heavy discounts on the slower trains or buses, but fast trains are still reasonably priced. Check out http://www.railway.gov.tw/en/index/index.aspx for Taiwan Rail prices or http://www.thsrc.com.tw/en/ for the HSR prices (High Speed Rail – aka, bullet train). While you can save half or more by taking the slowest trains, in my opinion it’s not worth it to pull in to _every single stop_ on the line.
Students are eligible for an unlimited 10-day Taiwan Rail pass (~$45 USD). Even if you don’t have a student card, _anyone_ under 30 can get a Youth Travel Card to enjoy discounts at a huge variety of locations, like restaurants and museums. Highly recommended for the budget traveler. See http://www.youthtravel.tw for infos.
Hitchhiking works, but it’s an uncommon sight in Taiwan. I’ve done it half a dozen times, but usually didn’t get a ride quickly. But in all cases the Taiwanese were really nice, sometimes going way out of their way and twice offering me a beer!
Accommodation will likely be your biggest expense. Figure $10-15 USD per night in Taipei hostels. Here again, I wouldn’t go for cheapest–you’ll get a much better experience by paying that little bit more. I highly recommend Eight Elephants Hostel or The Cat’s Pajamas Hostel over anything else in Taipei–you won’t regret it! For other cities which may not have hostels, you might have to ask around for homestays (民宿 – minsu) or grab a cheap hotel room for ~$20 (all prices are generally lower outside of Taipei). Of course the best frugal travel advice is to not travel alone. Not only is it more fun, splitting the cost of rooms can save a bundle.
I’ve had good experiences too in Taiwan with couchsurfing.org, but you’ll need to contact hosts way ahead of time and likely give up a lot of travel flexibility by locking down your travel schedule. The great thing with couchsurfing is, in addition to staying for free, you’ll likely get treated to traditional foods and taken cool, off-the-beaten-path places by a self-appointed tour guide.
ATMs are everywhere and that’s usually the best option as long as your home bank doesn’t have outrageous fees for overseas transactions. Most people have no trouble accessing their cash, but bring ~$40 to exchange at the airport just in case there’s an issue. That will cover the bus ride from the airport and first night at least.
So overall $15-20/day if you don’t mind low-rated hostels and spending most of the day on a train, ~$30/day and up if you splurge on some extra comfort, speed and fun experiences.
Hello,
I’ve been seeing the same ad for quite some time now looking for a high school teacher in Taoyuan, Taiwan.
The job is offering a salary of 70 000 TWD per month for a 40 hour work week (20 contact hours) + 5000 TWD per month as a housing subsidy. I’m not sure about other benefits like paid vacation or health insurance, but they do offer a completion bonus of 70 000 TWD at the end of the contract. They will also be offering free lunch and dinner during the week at the school’s cafeteria. The only thing I’m not crazy about is having a co-teacher in the classroom and up to 50 students…(not sure how you’d go about teaching conversational English to a class of 50 high schoolers…sounds challenging to say the least!)
Anyway, here are my questions:
I’m really not familiar with life in Taiwan, so I was wondering if this is considered good pay for a certified teacher, And will the housing subsidy be enough?
Since I would be moving there with my girlfriend, who incedentally, will not be working, I can’t help but wonder if this will be enough money to support the two of us, and save enough money to chip away at a monstrous school debt. (I was hoping to pay off about 10-15 grand US per year).
Any insight would be very much appreciated! Thanks!
For a starting rate 70,000 is pretty good, taxes and your health insurance is paid you will have around 57-60K NT/mo left which is a decent amount here (about 18-1900 usd). I have been working here for 4 years and my pay is around 90K each month, but thats due to having excellent performance reviews renewed contracts, and a few other things. So I will tell you a little about my budget, currently I am living in a large house with 5 friends so our bills a little higher but I am moving into an apartment soon. So after my taxes my monthly pay is approx NT$73,300, from that I my budget usually looks like this (everything is in NT$ unless stated)
Suburbs Medium-cost apartment — $9,500 (my new apt is 30ping w/2bdrms 1bth 1kitchen and a terrace)
Electricity — $300 (this is my share of the electric bill)
Gas — this is about $300~400 depending on how much cooking at home we do and how much hot water we use. But recently we change the tankless water heaters from gas to electric so the cost has gone down some.
Water — around $250~300
Phone (landline) with ADSL internet $1000 Taiwan’s internet is pretty darn good.
Phone (mobile) – pay as you go ~ I am usually around $1500~2000/mo on this one because I call back home several times a month
Day-to-day home cooking — this depends on what I eat but I think I spend about $300US on cooking
Moderate restaurant (twice/month) — again this depends on the place but its about NT800~1500 (for 2)
Scooter/Motorcycle (monthly running costs) — for both bikes it is $2000 this is fuel and maintenance
Misc Shopping/Entertainment — I spend about $1000~3000 on random things, mostly my dog (food, meds, vet check ups, etc)
Day long trips (biking around) — $500 this is gas and food
Long weekend trip (not often but i do them) — $1100~2000 (depends on the hotel and how far I go)
So my average budget will range from $27650~$31900, and this is my rounding things out. *If someone has a better budget please give yours*
For the most part I think you will be able to have a decent life here, at first it will be tough (like first 3-6mo) because you have to find a place, furnish it, get use to the environment, get lost 1000 times, buy things that you later find you could have gotten cheaper at a night market or at a different place, adjust your budget monthly until you get use to conversion and things like that. Just don’t go over board on your spending and you will be fine, one of my coworkers after her first month wrote out a very tight budget plan for her & her boyfriend to follow for the first 6months so that they can save a lot to pay back their huge school debts. So far they are doing really well. So assuming that you have a budget close to mine and taking home $57000/mo you will have about $30400 to spare which is about 970usd a month. Barring that you get sick, your girlfriend is a shopaholic, you don’t like Chinese food, or that you have very expensive tastes for thing I think you will do fine to save about US$9-10K the first year. Once getting a proper budget, a proper apt., and everything else cemented out you could start saving more after your first year.
I work in a public Elementary school and while my class size is not nearly as big as yours will be (usually around 30~40)and having a co-teacher is extremely helpful. Because unless you speak fluent Chinese, you will run into moments where you need to explain something and will hit the language barrier between you and the students. Besides being your own walking teacher to student translator, a co-teacher helps to enforce the class/school rules and will save you in a pinch in case some incident occurs when you attempt to disciple a student.
I hope this helps you a little.
I bought a new flat in Jhong-Li city, and wanna rent it to foreigner English teachers. But I don’t know what are those teacher expectations for a flat.
If you are a English teacher in Taiwan, what would you consider ?
Junk-wei~ if you are wanting to rent the apartment to English teacher (which I think is your question), the most important thing that "I" have looked for in a new apartment is that it is clean and is not too small. Usually these are the first things that I look for the second would be price and location. If the apartment is too far from the city or it is in an older building then the price should be lower than if it is in a new 電梯大樓 (high rise apartment) or if it is a 別墅 or a 普通住宅. The last thing that I look at is if it is a 公寓家具 (furnished apartment), if it is furnished then I am willing to pay little more for the apt. than if I have to bring everything myself. I guess most things that we look for in an apartment are the same things that Taiwanese people look for in their apartments.
Ok, so tomrrow Im buying my iPhone from teh taiwanese telecom company. I live in taiwan. But, ofcourse, the map feature doesn’t work. I heard about locateme adn navison. Can anyone tell me which one is better? Also, can somebody give me the names of apps that can be downloaded from installer. I want a MMS app, Voice recorder, and possibly a video recorder. Thanks.
www.ziphone.org
Like any country that has a Nationalist type "or something similar" of government?
If so, which countries?
Wait, I know one already, isn’t Taiwan/ROC aka Nationalist China still that way?
Any other countries?
Maybe Japan???? idk
Anywhere else?
Any European countries?
Well what do you mean by nationalist countries? There are no doubt many nationalist political parties, such as Sinn Fein here in my lovely Ireland. They are not in government in the Republic of Ireland but they are in a coalition government in Northern Ireland. They are a nationalistic party but i would not be as careless to call Northern Ireland a ‘nationalist country’. Similarly the Basque political party in spain or SNP in Scotland are also nationalist parties.
Most countries in Europe could be describeded as a nationalist country, or at least self proclaim to be one. So would America, come to think of it they are perhaps the most nationalist citizens in any nation.
Perhaps maybe what you are looking for is a nationalistic political party wit absolutete control in a state?
1) Metropolitan Hotel;
2) Taipei Golden Hotel;
3) Janfusan Prince Hotel;
4) Taipei Garden Hotel and
5) CingJing Vacation Villa
1) Metropolitan Hotel : I found this hotel is in Kaohsiung city and it is a little bit far away to MRT.
2) Taipei Golden Hotel : It’s close to Taipei City Hall station or Kunyang station.
3) Janfusan Prince Hotel : It’s in Yunlin County. There is no MRT in Yunlin County.
4) Taipei Garden Hotel : It’s close to Ximen station.
5) CingJing Vacation Villa : I can’t find this villa. I believe it is in Nantou and there is no MRT in Nantou.
Which of these would be a good hotel which is near the MRT Station, shopping and food in Taiwan?
1. Sunworld Dynasty Hotel Taipei
2. Royal Biz Taipei
3. Starbeauty Resort
4. ECLAT
5. Fullon Hotel Linkou, Taipei
6. Landis Hotel Tainan
7. Fullon Taoyuan
8. Holiday Inn East Taipei
9. Riviera
10. Four Points by Sheraton Chung Ho, Taipei
Thank you =)
Hotel ECLAT is a good choice. Its in the city, on the corner of Dun Hua south rd and Xin Yi road. The MRT Da An station is to the west of it on Xin Yi rd. Other options for you are Royal Biz and Sunworld, but hotel ECLAT has better reviews.