Looking for an apartment in Tainan

Finally, today, after a month in Tainan, I signed my contract for an apartment. Let me see… I must have probably looked at over 20 apartments, and each of those has opened a new door into some strange bizarre Taiwanese culture and peculiar life in Tainan. I owe a big thanks to my London guardian angel for helping me through this…

If you’re someone searching for an apartment in Tainan, there are a few methods to go about that:

• Apartment boards for students in the university – mostly one room student accommodation, I was looking for something a bit bigger.
• Just walking around and noticing “rent out” ads.
• Going into building that look promising and asking if they know of anything.
• Websites – foreigners rely on the Tainan bulletin board which is very limited, but there are about 10 Taiwanese websites in Chinese that are very helpful
  • 6mama – even has an English interface.
  • Yahoo auctions.
  • Yourmama
  • 591
  • Ruten
  • E-rent
  • TW-houses
  • Kijiji
  • Formosa House
  • Egboon
  • IPig

This flat I got was actually auctioned in Yahoo. To sign the contract we used the template sold in convenience stores for 15NT$:

After over a month in a small ensuite hotel-like room I was looking for something a bit bigger with a kitchen that I can actually make something to eat and a room – anyroom – that’s not the bedroom. Here’s a little of what I ended up with:

That whole apartment hunt was completely surreal. I’m happy I won’t have to do that again for a while.

BTW – if anybody wants to come over and visit, I’ve got a spare room standing by…