Well, I have lived in Taiwan for officially a week now. Taiwan is not new to me, I have visited at least once annually since I was old enough to travel. However, this is my first time residing in Taiwan which brought up a bunch of new experiences. Some great, some…not so great. While I want to build my blog to be an inspirational, uplifting space– I also want to air out some grievances as a new resident for sentimental reasons because there’s no such thing as a perfect place. So here’s a ‘Top 3’ list of grievances for those who are aspiring to visit or live in Taiwan.
#3. Everything costs money (LITERALLY!)
Everything in Taiwan costs money, even the most mundane things I took for granted back in America. For instance, parking. I’m not talking about parking in a designated lot or garage where an hour costs $10. I’m talking about parking IN GENERAL.
That’s right, in Taiwan if you park on the side of the street or ANYWHERE PUBLIC you will be billed for every 10 minutes. Sure, it is insanely cheap and costs less than $1 USD per 10 minutes (in fact, you would have to be parked for 30 minutes before being billed in the amount of $1 USD). Still, as someone who has yet received their first Taiwanese paycheck, this concept blows my mind.
What happens is, government officials constantly ride the streets over and over again ticketing cars every ten minutes. I’m not going to lie, sometimes– maybe even most of the time– government officials are late and you get a break. When I learned about this, I was lucky to not have someone stop by my car for 30 minutes and I only had to pay for the initial 10 minutes. However, because there is a timestamp of when the first ticket was issued, if someone had come by at the 40 minute mark I could have easily been ticketed for the time others missed. I honestly wonder how much money is made on a daily basis just because someone drives a car. The only exceptions are motor scooters which (to be fair) are the primary mode of transportation in this country. However, it is worth mentioning that the traffic is so hectic here that if I were to get a motor scooter, I’d surely get run over.
#2. You can die from a common cold
Okay, that’s an exaggeration– I should explain myself better. Taiwan is great in the sense that it has universal healthcare and since I am a citizen, I am insured. Going to the doctor is also extremely convenient besides their odd hours. Doctors break for lunch and dinner for 2-3 hours at a time, but also stay open until 9pm– I learned this the hard way when I shredded my left ankle around my Achilles tendon in a freak accident around lunchtime and literally NO ONE WAS OPEN. In America, not all doctors break for lunch. If they do, it’s for one hour and if you want to see a doctor after 5pm you’d have to go to an urgent care or a hospital. Another astounding difference is that American doctors have what they like to call “bedside manners”. They like to make small talk, are polite, and sensitive to your needs. Whereas in Taiwan, patients are treated as if they are going through a revolving door. They ask what’s wrong with you; you tell them; they type, type, type on their computer; they check you out; they type, type, type some more and BOOM! You are diagnosed, with a prescription and out the door in 5 minutes. (No exaggeration– it really is that fast.) All of this, I don’t have a problem with. In fact, America could take some notes so every patient that makes an appointment doesn’t have to routinely wait an hour past their appointment time just to see a doctor.
The reason why I say “you can die from a common cold” is because upon coming here I got sick as anyone would going through an extensive amount of travel and adjusting to a new environment. Getting medication for a common cold/flu was a TRIP!!!! I was so sick, I didn’t want to go see a doctor no matter how convenient and quick it was. Sorry, I was dying and I just wanted to go to a CVS/Walgreen, get me some Dayquil or Robitussin, and call it a day. Seeing a doctor was not warranted in my situation. But this is completely impossible and unfathomable in Taiwan. In Taiwan, if you want to cure a common cold/flu you have to go to the doctor to get medicine. If you don’t want to, there’s no such thing as a drug store. (I mean, there is, but it’s full of herbal stuff and I wanted some grade-A western medicine in me.) I had to go to a grocery store and still, consult a pharmacist before I could get my hands on some standard cold/flu western medicine that is literally 2x more expensive here, than it is in America. LAME!
#1 Government sanctioned banks are the WORST
One of the many processes I had to go through moving and working in another country was opening a bank account. Sounds simple enough right? In America, you can just go to a Wells Fargo or Chase and say “Hey, I need to open up an account!” You get escorted to a person wearing a suit sitting at a desk, show them a couple of IDs to verify your identity, talk about what kind of account you want, and skip on out with a checkbook and debit card the same day all in the matter of half an hour at most. Not in Taiwan! Ha, ha, no! That’d be too easy! Would you believe if I said it literally took me two whole days to open one bank account? And that I am technically not finished with the process to obtain the type of bank account I want?! Well, it is the truth! Let me walk you through the many hoops I had to jump through in order to open a bank account in Taiwan.
First of all, because I work at a university, I had to open a bank account at a government sanctioned bank so the university can directly deposit money into my bank account. These are a lot different from other banks and require more paperwork because it is through the government. When I first went, I had to pull a number to be seen and it was already a 2-hour wait. Upon speaking with someone, they said I needed a valid Taiwanese ID, and a signature seal/stamp. Already, we had hit a wall because my ID was two years old with an old address on it and I didn’t have a chinese seal.
We were advised to go to the county court to update the ID since we had to wait two hours to speak to a teller anyway. We went to the West district county court because it was the closest courthouse to the bank we were at. We were quickly turned away because you could only update your ID in your district. Since we lived in the North district, we had to go to the North district county court. (This was a brand new law that we were completely unaware of.) Getting your ID updated is similar to going to the DMV, so there was a wait before we talked to someone and found out they need documentation that I was a Taiwanese citizen besides my ID (i.e. my passport). They also needed my American passport since they knew I was born in America. So, we went home and grabbed every form of identification I had and went back to the North District courthouse.
Blah, blah, blah two hours later, I had my brand new ID in hand, with the updated address. My father and I quickly ran to the bank only to find that it was closed. WHAT! Banks close at 3pm and this is common knowledge amongst all Taiwanese people including the cab driver who didn’t think to say anything when we asked to go there after it had closed. Rude. We had to wait to get it done the next day. Second day we went, we arrived right as the bank opened and still it was an hour and 15-minute wait. I was dumbfounded! At least this time, I had my seal made and on my person.
Four hours and a million security questions later which included my education-level; my American social security number; my parents’ names; my Chinese birthday (yes, it is different from my normal birthday); where I lived (and when I didn’t know where I lived, that became a thing); etc., etc., etc. I had FINALLY successfully opened a bank account. HOWEVER, before I could use it, I had to activate it by depositing money into it which meant I had to pull another number just to go to a different teller. One that wasn’t responsible for opening accounts but depositing money. Oh yes, there was a difference and handled by different personnel. To this day, I don’t understand how Taiwan can operate. Seriously, who has the time to be like, “I can’t come to work today, I have to go to the bank. It is literally going to take all day.” It is absolutely ridiculous! I even counted how many stamps they had to use because I needed a signature seal. The process is sooo old school, a teller needs to use more than 15 different stamps/seals of approval on 8 different forms for me to open an account. They had computers there, but all looked like they were straight from the 80’s (not 90’s) and were barely touched besides by me, setting a PIN for the ATM.
As I stated earlier I still don’t have the type of account that I want because it’d be, yet again, a completely different process. The type of account? One that accepts foreign currency allowing me to transfer money I have in my American bank account into my Taiwanese one. It’s not done yet because after 4 hours, I was EXHAUSTED! To be honest, I may have developed PTSD from this entire experience and now feel like having that capability might not be so important. I’ll do it when I need it, which may be inevitable…but, it’ll be months before I physically step foot in that bank again. There were people even pulling numbers to convert their coins into bills waiting an upwards of an hour to do it. Again, WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT? IT’S INSANE!
Now you can see why I decided to list a couple of grievances after my first week in Taiwan. God forbid someone wants to teach English here and have to run around town all over the place like I did, taking more than one day just to open a bank account or die from a common cold because they just want some western medicine in their system…I should’ve coughed and breathed on everything while I was going around town out of spite.
So to recap:
- If you’re brave enough, invest in a motor scooter to avoid parking fees literally everywhere you go. I’m not brave enough which is why I have a car– and again, parking fees aren’t bad it’s just lame that it exists at all.
- Smuggle western common cold/flu medicine unless you are willing to pay twice as much for it here and have to consult a pharmacist before you can even lay eyes on a box of cold/flu medicine. That or, wait 20 minutes amongst sicker people to see a doctor who’s going to tell you in 2 seconds things that you already know to get the medicine you need.
- Bring a sleeping bag to the bank because there isn’t ANYTHING fixing that system. The only upside to government sanctioned banks is once you’re done, YOU ARE DONE.