Tax Refund

I have just sent my friend to the airport and got to know how our tax refund works.

Foreign travellers to Taiwan can get a 5% tax refund if you spend over 3000 NT in the same day same store that have the "TRS(Tax Return Shopping)" mark on it, and carry the product out of Taiwan within 30 days. You have to fill in a tax refund form during the purchase, and bring those documents to the airport counter. They will return cash to you.

There is a list of TRS shops but unfortunately it's all in Chinese. This is the list, you might want to ask a friend that understands Chinese if you don't, or ask me.

June 30 Revise:
Find the English guidelines and shop lists of VAT refunds here.

Weather

The weather is a good reason for hating Taiwan. This island rains too much and is often very humid, clothes seem to never dry after hanging it up after washing. And Taipei is the worse of the worse, while it's always sunny down south, I, living in Taipei, always feel like celebrating when we get a glance of the sun here.

People here don't seem to mind though, especially the girls. Girls always have their umbrella's with them, for blocking rain when it's raining, and blocking the sun when it actually comes out. The trend here is "White is beauty, don't get tanned". Crazy.

If you plan to travel in Taiwan, be sure that there isn't a typhoon coming over.The whold island would be swallowed by the storm, and you might spend your whole vacation indoor, trying the get away from heavy rains and winds. The typhoon could get so bad that sometimes the government announces a day off, that's why people would rather have a fierce typhoon than a gentle one, if we have to have one.

And we have earthquakes. Most of them don't do any harm, so it should be fun to have an earthquake experience.

Weather conditions could be checked from the Central Weather Bureau.

Taiwan in other languages

Besides of English, you could find paragraphs and websites about Taiwan. I'll try to collect the ones I know and put it in this post, some are just from friends' blogs. If you have any website that is not in Engish nor in Chinese and you'd like to recommend it, please leave a comment and I'll add it to the list.


Deutsch (German):
Reisecast (podcast)
Deutsches Institut Taipei
Deutsche Kulturzentrum Taipei
Leben im roten Bereich

Nederlands (Dutch):
Liefde en eenzaamheid in Taiwan

Français (French):
Ugo.is.free.fr

Podcast: What's up in Taiwan

Despite of the beautiness, Taiwan does not do a good job in promoting tourism. I've heard people telling me that they didn't know there were so much to see here, or else they would probably make a longer travel plan here.

This is a great Podcast talking about Taiwan. Henry and Julian travel around the island, looking for foriegners from all around the world, to talk about what Taiwan is to them. The show itself is also fun, no matter you're Taiwanese or not, been to Taiwan or not, it's worth listening, and a great way to know this tiny island.

What's up in Taiwan

If you use iTunes, you could click on this link.

If you don't....well, the shows are also able to be downloaded through it's website, in mp3 format. But iTunes is easiler, just subscribe the show for free, and it would be automatically downloaded everytime you open up iTunes.