Finding an apartment

Woo hoo! I have just done my last commute from the boondocks to Taipei. I have been staying with my in-laws for the past 2 months in a small town called Zai Chiao. They operate a hotel and conference centre and I have I have enjoyed living there, but each day I have been travelling by train from Zhunan to Taipei, then by subway to Neihu where my office is located. The 6 hours per day of commuting is now that is at an end.

I signed a lease on an apartment yesterday and I am moving in tomorrow.

Finding an apartment has been an experience. We considered buying a property, but the cost of homes in Taipei compared to the rental prices is way out of whack, so it seems better to rent at this stage. I read an article that said you would have to rent your investment property out for over 50 years just to get your money back. The investors are happy enough to invest the money, get the capital gain as the property goes up in value and use the rent to offset some of the expense.

When looking for the property we made a list of things we wanted such as: be located close to an MRT train station, close to my office, close to schools, minimum of 3 bedrooms, ideally have a designated car parking space, space to park the motor bike, and so forth.

On the most part when living in Taipei you are generally looking at small apartments, unless you want to spend more. We saw a couple of very large places with 5 bedrooms, but these larger places were old and grotty. I prefer “small, new and modern” to “big, old and grotty”.

When looking at apartments the floor space is measured in “ping”. According to the results of a google search I performed, 1 ping = 3.3 square metres. One thing to be wary of is that sometimes people quote a larger ping than you actually have because they are also incorporating common areas such as the lift foyer.

When searching for an apartment we had a look at a few real estate agents, but found online to be a much better way to search and compare. The website that we used was www. rent.591.com.tw . My wife is Taiwanese and can read Chinese no problem, but I was able to look at apartments myself online using the Google Translate option. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to get a good understanding of what’s on offer. There are real estate agents that speak English and specialise in helping westerners with their accommodation needs. We did not use these so I cannot comment on these, however I suspect that you would be paying a premium going through these guys.

We were looking for an apartment in the Neihu area. Most 3 bedroom apartments in this area seem to vary from NT$25,000 to $40,000 per month. Also they want 2 or 3 months rental as a security deposit. There are two types of apartment buildings: ones with a lift and ones without. If you are renting in a non lift building the higher the floor, the lower the rental fee. Non lift buildings are meant to be no higher than 6 floors, but that’s not always the case.

Neihu is about 5 kilometres from central Taipei and is the home of the Neihu Technology district where many of the household hi-tech firms are based. Firms such as Acer, Asus, BenQ, etc etc. It also where I have my office located.

Once we had our shortlist of apartments decided, we then printed out the details, rang the owners or agents and made a time to go and inspect the properties. When I say “we rang the owners and agents” I mean my wife did. All communications were in Chinese. So if you can’t speak Chinese it will be very helpful if you have a friend who speaks Chinese to help you.

For 2 days we ran around from place to place checking each property out. We did not find a place that had everything we wanted. There was always one or two things that were missing. I am sure we could have got everything we wanted if we were prepared to pay more, but we were working to a budget.

Once we had it down to the final 2 properties I then took some time to walk around the neighbourhoods to see what they were like, what shops and facilities were there. I also used Google Maps and the satellite view as well to assist.

The place we ended up with was a compromise...

On the positive side it is a brand new fully refurbished apartment, clean and modern with 3 large bedrooms, close to schools, and it is just 2.5 kilometres from my office. With 3 bedrooms we should be able to squeeze friends and family from overseas in for a short time, should they decide to come and visit us.

On the OK side of things it is 1.5 kms from a MRT station, it’s on the second floor (ground is considered first floor in Taiwan) in a non lift building. There is no actual designated car park, but there is a public car park 200 metres away, where we can pay NT$2,500 per month to park a car. It is 28 ping in size which is approximately 92 square metres. They achieve this by having one largish room that has the kitchen at one end and we need to fit the lounge/dining in the same room.

We are located in a laneway off a large road. There are a few restaurants within 50 metres of our home and a Family Mart convenience store (similar to 7 eleven) just 100 metres away. I have not seen them yet but apparently there is a supermarket and a traditional market within 5 minutes walk of the place too.

On the negative side there is no window in the master bedroom, and limited natural light in general.

Overall I like the place and am looking forward to living life as a Taipei-an and a Neihu-an. The apartment as shown in the photos here is empty and as such looks kind of spacious. Tomorrow when we move all our stuff in that arrived from Australia in a container, we will see how much fun living in a shoebox really is.

One good thing to know is that you can generally haggle on the rental price. Our apartment was advertised at $23,000 per month and we haggled down to $20,000. We also had them make a few changes to improve the facilities. The other thing is that if you are an expat the accommodation can be paid by your employer and is a tax deductable expense. There are some rules and regulations around this, such as the lease had to be in the name of my company. Doing this put the rent up from NT$20,000 to 22,000 per month, but in the end being paid out of pre-tax dollars will make it cheaper. I will write more about the Taiwanese tax situation in a separate post.

The lack of car space is not too much of problem as we have decided to see if we can live without a car. To catch a taxi the 1.5 kms from the apartment to the MRT is NT$75, once you are on the MRT you can travel via train to almost anywhere. If we need to do a big shopping trip once again we can use a taxi, and it will be way cheaper than owning a car. Petrol costs around NT$30 per litre, just a little bit cheaper than back home in Australia. Whilst we won’t have a car, I will have my motor scooter which I will use to travel to and from work, and for small errands.

Getting Around

The train and subway system is a great way to get around Taiwan. I am temporarily living in a small town near Zhunan, which is about 100kms south of Taipei. I commute by train to work most days. It is a time consuming affair – about 3 hours each way – door to door.

I bought a little 125cc motor scooter which is a very handy thing for getting around across small distances. It is about 8 kilometres from my home to Zhunan train station, and the scooter is great for this. The reason for getting a scooter instead of a car for this task is all about parking. Parking spaces for cars are near impossible to find.

Motor scooters are everywhere in Taiwan. They are cheap to buy and cheap to run. I bought a second hand scooter with about 15,000 kms on the clock for NT$25,000. You can buy a new scooter for between NT$60,000 to 80,000. Its cost me about NT$105 to fill the tank and that lasts me for at least a week.

Please note that I am using the local currency everywhere because exchange rates can vary wildly over time, and there are too many to worry about. At the time of writing however AU$1 = NT$29, or US$1 = NT$ 31.8.

When I was looking around to buy a scooter I had heard that scooters get stolen and sold to China. So I figured a second hand bike is less likely to stand out and be stolen versus some of the nice new shiny ones that are around. Given the amount of scooters on the road I think you would have to be unlucky to have your bike taken out of the millions on the road.

(A little bit of the gloss with the motor scooter has gone because I have witnessed about 3 incidents in 3 weeks where I have seen scooter riders on the road after coming off second best against a car.)

If you do get a scooter be aware that you need to keep your wits about you when riding in Taiwan. The road laws are more like guidelines than rules. People run red lights like there is no tomorrow (and for some of them that will be true). In Taiwan they drive on the right hand side of the road (same as the USA). For a guy like me having driven on the left hand side of the road in Australia for the past 25 years it takes a little time to adjust. But what really freaks me out is when I am driving on the right hand side of the road, like I should be, and someone in a car or on a scooter is coming directly at me in the same lane. I have to consciously think and make sure that I have not slipped into the wrong lane.

Anyway my recommendation is that a scooter is a great way to get around, but I would not want to be doing really long distances on the scooter.


Back to the trains. Taiwan has a variety of trains for getting around. There is a network called the High Speed Rail (HSR) which is similar to Japan’s bullet trains and allows you to move great distances very quickly. I have not caught one of these trains yet, but I believe that they travel at around 300 kms per hour.

Next level down is the TRA network. Within the TRA network they have express trains and ordinary trains. The best of the express trains are known as “Tze Chiang”. These provide comfortable seating and allow me to work on my computer whilst travelling. My commute from Zhunan to Taipei takes around 90 minutes on the Tze Chiang and costs NT$223. The next level down in train called a “Chu Kuang”; it does the same trip in 2 hours and costs NT$172.

Once you are in Taipei you can utilise the subway which is known as the MRT. The MRT network in Taipei is extensive and growing. The MRT or Metro is very well patronised and is responsible for taking around 1 million cars off the road in Taipei and helping to clean up air quality in Taipei.

During peak hour there are some subway stations where it is controlled chaos. There are just so many people moving through these stations all at once. It is a daily occurrence in a couple of the key stations at peak hour to have queues 200 metres long to get onto the escalator, and security will rope off stairways for a few minutes at a time to stop too many people crowding onto platforms at the same time.

Given the large numbers of users the system runs very well. Commuters line up at designated entry points for the carriages and usually wait for all passengers to get off an arriving train, before surging on. One thing I don’t understand is why they insist in jamming so many people in to a carriage at peak hour when another train is only 30 or 60 seconds away.

Ticket prices on the subway are pretty good. Most trips will cost you between 20 to 40 NT$. They also have a great smart card that you can get and pre pay funds into it. In addition to being very convenient they also provide a substantial discount. A $35 trip becomes a $23 trip.

The other way to get around is via taxi. Nearly every taxi that I have used has been very clean and well maintained, and an oasis of coolness to temporarily escape the heat and humidity of Taiwan’s summer.

Very few taxi drivers know how to speak English so you will need to know how to say your desired destination in Chinese or have someone write it for you in Chinese.

By western standards taxis in Taiwan are very cheap. The flag fall rate for taxi is NT$70 for the first 1.5 kilometres and NT$5 will be charged for every additional 300 meters. A 20% surcharge is added from 23:00 to 6:00 next morning.

Taiwan also has a large network of buses, but I generally prefer trains because I know exactly where they are going.

More information can be found on these train services via the links below:

High Speed Rail (HSR)
Taiwan Rail Administration (TRA)
Metro/Subway (MRT)

Setting Up

Setting up a company in Taiwan as a foreigner is relatively straight forward. I used a larger international accounting company (Grant Thornton International - Taipei) to do this. It cost me NT$80,000 to do this, but communicating with them was simple. This was particularly important as I was in Australia whilst setting up the company. The process takes about 8-10 weeks as it involves getting approval from the Foreign Investment Board.

Prior to going with Grant Thornton I did some searching on expat blogs and forums and found that some foreigners were setting up for as little as $NT30,000, but this was with a local accountant and you needed to be very good with your mandarin.
Be prepared spend time and money to have to get all kinds of documents certified by notorized republics and the local Taiwanese Consulate in your country.

About 3 months prior to setting up the company, I had come to Taiwan and interviewed a potential staff member. I found this candidate (Claire) via LinkedIn.com. I made contact and setup a meeting. Claire had good experience, was fluent in both English and Chinese, and appeared to be trustworthy and have high integrity.

Claire started working for me about 1 month before the company was formally established. I cannot emphasize enough how helpful the local knowledge is, and would recommend that anyone planning to set up in Taiwan ensure that they have a local that they can work with and rely on. There are so many things that I would have hated to have to have performed on my own.

Banking...

I am still coming to grips with the banking system and practices in Taiwan, and have been frustrated a number of times.

When setting up the company, the accountants setup my account to deposit my funds with ChinaTrust Bank. Very few of their staff speak English, so I have been lucky to have Claire to assist me.

I asked for internet banking to be setup, but it is only in Chinese. I asked for a cheque book facility, but they want to “observe” your account for 6 months first. I told them they can observe me transfer my balance to another bank. I am thinking of moving to HSBC bank, will keep you posted on how things turn out. In the meantime I am paying cash for everything.

Other banking observations:

They love paperwork and documentation. Bring everything you have got in the way of ID, company registration papers, etc. Also as a foreigner you cannot setup a new bank account until you have your ARC. (Alien Residency Certificate).
Internet banking is limited to NT$30,000 transfers unless you register the person/business that you are paying as a “nominated account”.

They use “chops” on all official documentation and bank withdrawals. Chops are like a rubber stamp with your name on it in a stylised design. In the case of a company you have a chop for the company and one for the individual too. If you pay an additional NT$100 to the bank you can request that withdrawals from your account require a signature as well as chops.

I got an ATM card which has made banking a lot more practical. As yet I have not been paid any money so I can’t talk about the experience of depositing funds at the bank.

Trade Show... What a week!

For the past 4 days I have been manning a trade show stand at Taiwan Health, in the World Trade Centre in Taipei.

This was to launch the Zoono range of products that my new company is introducing to Taiwan. Zoono is an antimicrobial coating based on breakthrough technology. (long term germ killing protection for hands, surfaces, textiles and more.)

I have spent the past 3 weeks in Taiwan preparing for this trade show, plus a lot of time before that back in Australia. Any hopes I had of perhaps being able to operate the business in English have been quickly abandoned.

Whilst there is some English in Taiwan on things like road signs, train time tables etc, for dealing business to business or business to consumer - if you want to get the message across it has to be in Chinese. You also need a Chinese brand - not a western brand.

For someone that cannot yet speak Chinese this presents some challenges. For now I am creating the marketing messages in English, then getting them translated to Chinese.

Another challenge that I face is with my CRM system. Do I get everything entered in both English and Chinese or just Chinese? I don't know the best strategy for this yet. With my accounting I have outsourced this to a large company that is part of an international chain of accountants. I have done this because: I hate accounting, I don't want to spend my time doing this kind of thing, and they will provide accounting reports in both English and Chinese.

I know I am paying a premium over a local Chinese accountant, but communication is much simpler. Also I was able to haggle and save a few dollars anyway.

The justification that I had given myself for attending the trade show was that I figured it would be a way for us to meet a lot of prospective customers in a very short period of time and gauge the market reaction to our product. I am happy to report that the trade show has accomplished that in spades !!

In 4 days we have handed out about 1,000 flyers on our product offering. We met hundreds of people and have around 70 good leads to follow up on. The very first prospect that I spoke with within 15 minutes of the trade show opening was a guy that is a major distributor to around 2000 pharmacies. It was a great omen.

Taiwan has a lot of trade shows. This one was focused on Health. At the same time this was running there were 2 other trade shows running in the same building.. Seniors Care (SenCare) and Hospitality.

We are booked in for another trade show next month which focuses on Biotech. Hopefully that will be a success too.

The people that visited our stand generally liked what they saw and heard about our product. One thing to note is that they are very keen to see independent proof on any claims made.

I made a lot of new friends during the trade show. The Taiwanese people are very friendly and enjoy a good laugh. The interactions of people from neighbouring stands was very friendly. People from each of the stands would take drinks or snacks and offer them people working on the neighbouring stands. One other observation I have is that it seems accepted practice to eat your lunch while on the trade show stand. This is not something that would happen commonly in Australia.

For the 4 days I was handing out brochures and welcoming people to our stand in Chinese. The Taiwanese seem to like and appreciate you having a go - even if your Chinese is not very good.

The show would have been of no value to me if I did not have my two amazing staff members helping. Clare and Lynne were amazing. Full of energy, always smiling and always doing their best to communicate our message to everyone that came by our stand.

A number of owners of other stands came to me and commented "where did you get such great staff?" A number of them also gave very "non subtle" hints that they would love to have Claire and Lynne come and work for them.

I have to say I am just very lucky that I got such great people on the team, and I think it has something to do with karma.

Now the work begins... following up all these prospects!

My first ever blog post

At the suggestion of a friend (Greg Head), I am writing a blog to tell my story.

I am an Aussie that moved to Taiwan 3 weeks ago to create a new business based in Taipei. This blog will capture my experiences, observations, frustrations, daily life, and hopefully provide a small window for the reader to see what modern day Taiwan and its people are like, and how a foreign entrepreneur goes about trying to establish a successful business in a very foreign land and set of customs.

I am sure this will evolve over time - but this is the goal for now.

Some background....

For the past 25 years I have been involved in the IT industry in Australia. The past 15 years running my own business implementing custom CRM solutions for the SME marketplace based on packages such as SalesLogix and Microsoft CRM.

One thing that I loved about the IT industry is that things are always changing. That kept things interesting. I hate the mundane and have a very short attention span for such things. But after 15 years of designing and implementing CRM systems it was becoming much less satisfying.

In around 2006 I read a book that changed my life. It was called "The Diary of Ma Yan". Ma Yan was a 13 year old schoolgirl living in Ningxia, a very poor province in Northern China, just below Mongolia. The book is her story as recorded in daily entries on scraps of paper of her struggle to get an education, whilst dealing with constant hunger and poverty. When living in such conditions a good education is a means to make a better life and escape poverty.

In November 2008 I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit Ningxia and stay with Ma Yan's family and see first hand how people in the region survive with so little. I visited a number of schools in Ningxia and also in Southern China in GuangXi. In GuangXi I was lucky enough to be able to teach a class of 4th graders for a week. Working with these children and interacting with their local community changed my life. Whilst these people have close to nothing - whatever they have they are willing to share with you.

During this trip to China I realised that I want to work full time in the future helping children in poverty get access to education. As part of this I want to learn to speak Chinese fluently and this is a contributing factor in my decision to move to Taiwan.

Another thing that I gained from this trip to China was an ability to appreciate simple things in life that we in the west take for granted such as hot running water, or a sit down toilet that flushes. We have so much compared to many people in the world, and the gap in living standards between the west and those in poverty is not acceptable.