Planning for this trip was officially done over a six month period. Things like getting the tickets, which needed to be open tickets since there wasn’t a set return date. Looking into the visa requirements, research how to become an English teacher without the degree or certification, cost of living ( this was important since I needed enough savings to last 12 months), needed to know what kind of things were and were not available to buy there. Housing cost was also looked at to have an idea on rent prices.
Cost of living in Taiwan is pretty low. They use the Taiwanese dollar, for every $1 you get 30NTD. So from what I found out 30NTD can buy you a full meal and depending on the meal you can have left over change. Food is pretty cheap in general, unless you are looking for milk or steak. Average cost of rent is 5000NTD a month, this is basically for a room with a private bathroom. Since the food is cheap and is everywhere there really is no need for a kitchen. Rooms usually come with a mini fridge so you keep essential there. Transportation is also very cheap and there is different options.
The highest expense that I saw was Chinese Mandarin classes. Since it was more legitimate to take them at a university, I found that most universities charge around $700-$900 per semester. Now the classes are structured to 5 days a week 3 hrs a day, which means they are very intense. Basically you are in class all morning and have the rest of the day to either study or work. By the way if you end up getting a student visa to stay in the country for more than 3 months a time, you can only legally work for 15 hrs a week. This was good to know before the trip.
Once all of this information was research, it was time to put things into action. First the ticket was bought through a travel agency, it wasn’t the cheapest ticket, but it did have an open return date that could be used up to 12 month after using the departure ticket. Second was to start saving as much as I could. I got a summer internship and basically saved up every paycheck. By the end of the summer I had about 5K saved up, also my very supportive parents gave me 5K as a graduation present so I had 10K to live off for 12 months. Lets do this!!
websites used to get all this information from were:
www.tealit.com
Also the Taiwanese economic and cultural center website.
